Analyze

The Analyze menu inspects your audio without changing it — measuring levels, finding features, or displaying frequency content.

Below a separator, the menu lists the available analyzers. That list is populated from your installed plugins, so its exact contents depend on what is installed on your machine — the built-in Nyquist set includes Beat finder, Label sounds and Measure RMS. The individual analyzers are documented in the Analyzers section of this manual.

Plugin manager

Enable and disable the plugins that provide analyzers — the same dialog as Plugin manager on the Effect menu.

Contrast analyzer

Compares the volume of two selections — typically speech in the foreground against the background behind it — and reports the difference between them. It exists to check that spoken content is loud enough relative to its background, as accessibility guidelines require. Shortcut:

Ctrl+Shift+T.

In the current Audacity 4 alpha the menu item is present but the analyzer window itself has not yet been implemented.

Plot spectrum

Analyses the selected audio and plots how much energy it contains at each frequency — a snapshot of the selection’s tonal content, useful for spotting hum, resonances or how bright or dark a recording is overall.

In the current Audacity 4 alpha the menu item is present but the spectrum window itself has not yet been implemented.

Last updated 3 September 2026