Recording and converting audio files to mp3

This article is in conjunction with part 1 of Create mp3 audio files for free. Please refer part 1 first before you follow these instructions here.

Assuming you had installed Audacity software and installed the LAME encode plug-in, let’s record something from internet …. ummmmm say from youtube.

Launch Audacity if it is not already launched. Open up your web browser and go to youtube.com. Find a song that you want to record and play it. Assuming you can hear it playing, click on the record button in Audacity. It is the red button as shown below.

This should start recording. One thing is if the audio quality is bad find one that has a good quality audio. Good quality is also depending on how excellent your sound card is.

As you can see here there are two blue wave audio files are being registered. One is for left channel and the other is for right channel.  If you see only one channel, it is time to go back to part 1 and do the adjustments. If you see blue peaks touching top or bottom edges of left or the right channel as shown below, you need to adjust the input. What this means is that the audio file is being saturated and the waves are being clipped which results in distort audio.

To do the volume adjustment double click your speaker icon located at the lower right of your screen. If it is not visible click on the < button in the icon bar to expand it. 

Once you double click on the speaker icon you should see a pop-up window as below.

Bring down the Wave volume down (sliding bar). You can do all this sound adjustments while your song is being recorded so that you can see the changes to the Audacity file. You can exit from this recording window once you made the correct adjustments.  To exit from this recording window click on Stop button (it is the yellow square button, two buttons to the right of red record button) and then the cross at top left corner. It will ask you whether you want to save it ..... say no.

Lets open up a new record window. Click on the record button once again. Replay the song from the beginning. Once the song is ended click on the Stop button in Audacity. Once you are done recording select all your recording by going to Edit in the top menu of Audacity and selecting All in the drop down menu or you can click on Control + A. This should highlight your entire recording. Now go to Effects and select Amplify in the drop down menu.

Selecting Amplify, prompt you to an amplify window which looks like below.

Note that Allow clipping is deselected. This is important. If the clipping is allowed the sound quality is so distorted that you would not be able to enjoy your recording. Click OK while allow clipping is deselected. This will amplify your recording which now looks like this.

You may want to trim beginning and end of your recording. This may be due to empty gaps just before the song starts. To trim unwanted gaps in the recording do the following. Please refer to the below image for easy understanding.

To do this click on the Selection Tool. It is located on the top left corner in Audacity and just looks like a capitalized "I". Next, left click and hold just before your song begins and drag and select the entire empty space to the left. Now, release the mouse and click on the cut tool. This will get rid of the entire empty space. Do the same if necessary at the end of the song. This time dragging to the right.

Now you are ready to export this recording. Go to File in the top menu of Audacity and select Export as mp3.

In the pop-up window choose where you want to save your song and the song name. Click on Save. That brings another pop-up window which talks nonsense …... well …. sort of.

You think computers are smart but what it says is that it does not know where the LAME encode Plug-In that needs to encode mp3 file. Don’t worry. Say yes and you will get to the following window. If you see something else navigate to your local hard drive. In this example my local hard drive is located in My Computer.

Double click on My Computer (your local hard drive may have a different name). Usually it is the C: drive.

Double click on the C: drive ..................

............... and then double click on the Program files folder.

Do you see Audacity folder (highlighted) as below?

Double click on Audacity folder and then Plug-Ins folder. Now you should see the lame_enc.dll file as below.

Select it by clicking on it once and click on Open. That opens up another window where you can type in Title of the song Artist and Album. If you like fill in those info. This is optional.

Now the final step. Go ahead and click Ok. That should save your recording as mp3 file.

That is it. Enjoy !!!

Thanks for hanging with me this long. You have patience. Good luck!

I hope this will benefit you. If you have any questions/comments you can go to Contact Me page to yell at me. 

Cheers,

Shantha