Effects

Realtime Effects

Effects that process a track during playback instead of rewriting its audio.

A realtime effect sits on a track and processes its output as the project plays. The audio in the track is never altered, so you can change a setting, reorder the chain, switch an effect off or take it away again at any point, and compare with the original simply by bypassing it.

Three of the effects that ship with Audacity 4 can run this way: Compressor, Limiter and Reverb. Every other effect has to be applied from the Effect menu, which rewrites the selected audio.

Where to find them

Click the Effects button across the bottom of a track’s control panel, or press E, to open the effects panel. Add effect lists what is available; choosing one appends it to that track’s chain. See Effects for the panel itself.

Working with the chain

Effects run in the order they appear in the list, and that order matters — compression before reverb sounds quite different from reverb before compression. Entries can be reordered in the list.

Each entry has a power button that bypasses just that effect, and there is one at the top of the panel that bypasses the whole chain at once. Clicking an effect’s name opens its settings, which can stay open while you keep working in the main window. To take an effect off the chain, open the menu beside its name and choose No Effect.

Notes

A realtime chain is part of the project, and it is included when you export. There is no need to apply it first.

The same panel also has a Master effects section at the bottom, which processes the mix of every track together rather than one track. See Apply your first effect.

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