Audacity

[phil cash cash]

tá'c 'alaxp (good day!) ILAT,

Audacity just released 1.2.0!  Audacity is an open source and completely
free audio editor.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

At the 2003 American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) here
at the Univ of Arizona, we tested and used Audacity in our course
"Computer Applications for Indigenous Communities."  We recieved a very
postive response from all our students, both elders and college age
students alike, on its simplicity and ease of use.  The elder students
really liked its graphic interface with its "big" buttons.

The student's main use of Audacity was simply to capture live speech in
digital format and transfer it into a simple multimedia environment
like PowerPoint.  We used standard headset microphones, though now, you
can buy headset microphones with "noise reduction", a very very useful
feature that blocks out ambient background noise when recording a
native speaker.

When recording in Audacity, you are able to use an unlimited number of
audio tracks.  One of our Hupa students created a traditional song
composition with mutiple tracks using only her voice.

Audacity supports a wide variety of audio formats (including WAV, MP3,
and Ogg  Vorbis).  In 2003, we created only WAV files in our course due
in part to the difficulty in downloading the MP3 plug-in, however, with
the latest version it is now much easier to do.  You will notice that
you download Audacity and the MP3 plug-in separately.  After
downloading, I did a simple test to create an MP3 file and it went
smooth without a hitch.  Of course, the advantage of using the MP3
format for your sound file format is the reduction in file size and
ease of use in multimedia environments.

Btw, Audacity's "help" files are outstanding!

I encourage language people to go buy a headset (w/noise reduction;
although you really don't have to...really), download Audacity and the
MP3 plug-in, and try it out.  Send me an MP3 greeting in your language!

qó'c (later),

phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce)
UofA, ILAT