Audacity 3.2.1 & the new 'cloud' for storing music files.

[Hugh Tyros 4]

Audacity 3.2.1 & the new 'cloud' for storing music files

The Audacity team have brought out a completely new version of their product, and not only that, they have introduced a new storage area ('cloud') where musicians can store and LINK to their music recordings (WAV or MP3).  You have the options to allow people to just 'View' (ie. listen to) or 'View and Download', and you have to choose which of these options you want for every piece you upload.  So this is a bit like having a BOX Account with people clicking on your LINK being able to listen to your music. 

But the Audacity Team have taken their idea a step further, and they give you your own 'space' .. rather like a YouTube 'Channel'.  You have to decide in advance whether your music upload should be made Public, or Unlisted.  Anyone visiting your 'Channel' can see all your Public music uploads, and can listen to any one of them.  The Unlisted ones won't appear on your page (although you can see them) so the only people able to listen to those are people you have sent the LINK to privately. 

This is their new storage area ...



Note that everything the Audacity Team do is always FREE, and FOREVER.  They believe that one should not have to pay for programs or storage space when creating music.  BOX have been pushing for you to 'Upgrade your plan' and pay them.  If you were worried about the implications of this, worry no more.  Get yourself a FREE audio.com account.

https://audio.com/about

When you get there, this is what you will see.  You can CREATE an account, or Sign In to an existing account.



I have already created an account, so I click on Sign In .. and see this:



That's a bold statement to get your head round!

I then put in my Username and Password (actually, I don't have to do that as Google Chrome remembers my Username and Passwords and puts them in for me) and I am taken to my page.

Edit (by Hugh): Images are now LINKED to a new 'cloud' storage.  Text has not been edited.

[Hugh Tyros 4]

How to upload a music file to your page.

When I get to my audio.com page I see this, top right.



To upload eg. an MP3, click on Upload.
You will then get this screen, with two options for uploading .. Drag and drop; or Select File.
I normally select the file I want to upload.



Choosing Select File I am shown the FOLDERS on my computer, so navigate to where my MP3 file is, highlight it and click Open.
While it is doing it, I see this.



At this point you can add a few words to the Audio Title of the song (I have added - Now and Then, There's - to the name of the file that was automatically entered into this box).

Note:  All the 'starred' fields have to be filled in.  This was done automatically except for one .. Category.



Click the down-arrow to see what these Categories are.



Music is the one you want.



Without filling this in, the Save option at the bottom will not be available to click on.

Now earlier on I had said that as this is all set up for Musicians, you have to set your 'permissions' individually for each song you upload.  To see these options scroll down the page .. and they will appear down at the bottom.

Note:  The options are greyed out until you hover you mouse over them .. and you have to click into the circle and/or box on the left to choose what you want to happen.  Then you click on Save.



Once you have done that your upload looks like this.  You can then click to upload more, or go to your My Audio page.



Note:  The options above can be found and changed at any time by clicking on the pencil icon at the top of your recording and scrolling down.



I now need to get the SHARE LINK copied to my clipboard so I can PASTE it for people to click on and listen to.
You get this by clicking on those three little circles, top right.  The LINK will have the 'permissions' you set up earlier.



If you then click to go to your My Audio page you will see this.
The only difference is that it no longer says File Uploaded.
Note:  The PLAY arrow doesn't appear until you hover your mouse over the track you want to listen to.



As you can see, the pencil icon and the three little circles are still there for you to change the priorities if you so wish, or get the SHARE LINK. 

Clicking on that SHARE LINK I see this.



Then I have clicked on Copy Link to copy it to my clipboard ..
... and have PASTED it just below for you to click on and listen to.

https://audio.com/hugh-ar/a-fool-such-as-i

You have to click the PLAY arrow to start it playing.

You can also see my 'Channel' name at the top (Hugh-AR).



If you click on that you will be taken to my 'Page' and see all the other tracks I have uploaded (so long as I made them Public.  If I had them as Unlisted then they won't be listed here). 
Hovering your mouse over any one of them will reveal a PLAY arrow for you to click on.

Hugh

Edit (by Hugh): Images are now LINKED to a new 'cloud' storage.  Text has not been edited.

[Hugh Tyros 4]

So what is the connection between Audacity 3.2.1 and this cloud?  Well, you'll find out as soon as you install/upgrade the version of Audacity you have.  Look along the top and you will see this:



That's a new button to click on.  Share Audio.  What it does is to load the music file you have in the program (the waveform you are looking at) straight up into your audio.com Page (Channel).  So I tried this, and I had this come up ...



... understandably, as it didn't know who I was!   And I certainly didn't want it going into the account of my friend Anonymous. 
So I clicked on the words Link Account ... and got this.



I couldn't see any Open Audacity (I was doing this on a laptop, not on a Mobile) so clicked on the words Link Audacity and was able to LINK it to my Hugh-AR page.

And now I see this, which has my name showing ...



... so clicked on Continue to upload my file.

When it had done it I got this.



In order to do an upload like this you have to have a 'waveform' showing in the program. That Share Audio button is inactive until you have something to upload.  But you do have to 'read between the lines' with that message box.  Here it is slightly larger, so you can read what it says.



The words say, Only people you share this link with can access your audio.

What this actually means is that by default, it has uploaded it as Unlisted (so it won't be in the list of uploads on your page) and also, anyone listening to your music won't be able to download it.

If that is what you wanted .. fine.  If you were creating a piece of music of your own ready to burst onto the pop scene then you may only want a music friend to listen to it, and certainly not to be able to download it.  The LINK created from the Copy button can be sent to them in an email for them to click on and listen to.

But for me, I would want my 'performance' to be listed on my page, and for people to be able to download it if they wanted to.

So I will click on Go to my file .. which takes me to my audio.com page.

I can then click on the pencil ...



... which takes you to Edit Audio.



Scroll down to the bottom and change those options to Public and Allow other users to download my files.
And don't forget to click the Save!



All I have talked about so far is how to upload music to the new storage area created by the Audacity Team, either by doing it directly to your page from an MP3 or WAV file stored somewhere on your computer; or by uploading it directly from the Audacity program, which must be synced to your page.  In either case you should check that the permissions are set as you want them. Public or Unlisted; and if you want to Allow other users to download your files.

Edit (by Hugh): Images are now LINKED to a new 'cloud' storage.  Text has not been edited.

[Hugh Tyros 4]

Now I don't use Audacity to deconstruct my music, as I play an organ (the Yamaha AR80) and a keyboard (Tyros 4).  Therefore all the 'experimenting' I do with sounds is with these instruments before I record a piece. 

The Tyros 4 records either to MIDI or to WAV.  I usually record to WAV, as I am not likely to want to change anything after I have recorded it.  But then I do use Audacity to do a few 'tweaks' afterwards, like cut out any silence at the beginning and end of a recording; Normalise the recording to optimum levels if it is too quiet; and finally to convert the recording to MP3.  The music I play is listened to on the internet, and it is better 'streamed' as MP3 as the files are roughly 10% the size of WAV files and you are not likely to experience 'buffering' with slower broadband speeds.

The AR80 organ, however, is a different matter.  I have to record the audio from a LINE OUT (phono plugs) under the organ, and use an Audio Interface (the Behringer UCA202) to record to Audacity via a USB Port on my laptop.  I have been recording to Audacity this way for years, and then all of a sudden encountered a problem.  I realised that all my recordings were coming out as TWO TRACK MONO.  This is where both left and right channels are the same, and the waveform looks like this. 



That is completely unacceptable!  Without the recording being in STEREO you don't get instruments panned to the left and right, and you get a 'hollow' sound coming from 'over the top of your head'.  Not something a musician would want to listen to.

This was happening despite setting up Audacity with the correct choices.  In the end I did suss out what was going on and managed to get STEREO recordings again.  It was a WINDOWS update that had caused the problem.  Windows had decided that the DEFAULT for recording should be MONO as all recordings were of people shooting each other when playing Computer Games .. and you didn't need STEREO for doing that!

If you want to read about how this was sorted, click this LINK below:

https://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php/topic,63442.0.html

Recording with Audacity 3.2.1

As I am back to recording my AR80 from the LINE OUT with the Behringer UCA202 Audio Interface and Audacity 3.2.1 via a USB Port on my laptop I thought I would draw your attention to a couple of settings in this new Audacity 3.2.1.

To set up the options for my Recording Device I need to click on Audio Setup.
This is at the top, next to the Share Audio we were looking at earlier.



Below, you can see the choices I have.  The word BEHRINGER is one I had put in when I sorted the WINDOWS recording options from Two Track Mono to Stereo .. so I would recognise my Audio Interface Device!  ie. the Behringer device hadn't been identified as being a BEHRINGER device.



And in this next box I made sure it was set to Stereo and not Mono.



Bottom left I set the Project Rate (Hz) to 44,100.



I did try doing a recording with these settings, and it was a disaster!  The recording was much too loud and was mostly in the red.  Lots of clipping going on!

So how to alter the Input Volume?  I had no volume control on my LINE OUT or on my BEHRINGER UCA202 (only a volume control for headphone playback).  Eventually I did find out how to do it.

Top right of the Audacity screen are a Microphone (Recording Level) and Speaker symbol (Playback Level).



You grab the little rectangle with the mouse and slide it to the left or right to decrease/increase the recording volume.  The 'default' was on zero, all the way to the right.  For the piece I was recording the correct level was about -22.

The piece I was recording was played by a Church Organist friend of mine, Don Wherly.
Click the below to listen.

https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/donwherly-wedding-march

This was uploaded to my audio.com page from Audacity with the default of Unlisted and no option to Download.  So I clicked on Go to my file, and using the 'pencil' have gone down to the bottom and changed these to Public and Allow other users to download my files.

Hugh

Edit (by Hugh): Images are now LINKED to a new 'cloud' storage.  Text has not been edited.

[Hugh Tyros 4]

There is a video about Audacity 3.2.1 & the new 'cloud' for storing music.

Audacity 3.2 - Real-Time Effects and Free Cloud Sharing



And you can join the Audacity Forum (which is FREE) to see the sort of questions their Members ask about this program.

https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewforum.php?f=46&sid=8a69f6cec55732166d5c7648e973840c

As far as I can tell, most people use Audacity to create their music.  Audacity is a DAW.

What is a DAW?

To answer your main question right away, DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation. It's a software program for making music: recording, editing, mixing, and manipulating sound.

When we play music on our organs/keyboards we have already set up the sound we want to hear, so most of the things Audacity can do will not have much relevance for us.

Hugh

Edit (by Hugh): Images are now LINKED to a new 'cloud' storage.  Text has not been edited.

[Jeff Hollande]

Thank you so much, Hugh, for all this very useful information and help.

Best wishes, JH

[Hugh Tyros 4]

Jeff,

Thank you for your comment.  It obviously takes me a long time to put a Tutorial like this together, so it's nice to know that at least somebody appreciates my efforts!  As you will have realised, I do not use Audacity to any great extent for recording music, and my main interest was in this new 'storage cloud' the Audacity Team have set up.  It's in it's early stages of development at the moment and audio.com say this on their website:

What's audio.com all about?

We are an early stage audio-sharing platform currently in beta-stage of product development. Created by musicians, producers & technologists from Muse Group (Audacity, Ultimate-Guitar, Musescore) we're dedicated to providing technical solutions that help you further your creativity by helping you upload, share and collaborate on your audio creations.

We're still trying to figure out exactly the kind of product we want to be so please share your thoughts on our progress so far over on Reddit or directly via email - help@audio.com

There were several questions I wanted to ask them, so I did that .. and surprise, surprise, I had an email back from one of the developers just this morning answering all my questions!  Wasn't expecting anybody to respond to what I said!

I will post a REPLY to this post outlining the questions I asked, and the REPLY I got from the developers.

Hugh

[Hugh Tyros 4]

These are the questions I asked the 'cloud' developers:

1.  I have uploaded a few MP3 files to my 'page' now.  Looking at my page, the uploads are all in order of 'last viewed'. 
They are not in alphabetical order!



If I had about 50 uploads and wanted to find the Share Link for one of them, it would be a nightmare trying to find it if they are not listed in alphabetical order.  Maybe you could automatically list them in alphabetical order?  Or, if people really wanted their latest creations at the top, have another tab at the top that would list them in alphabetical order.

2.  Are you genuinely happy for us to use this space to host songs we want to be linked to Forums for other people to listen to?  Taking the music community as a whole, this could mean an awful lot of songs!

3.  When we play songs on our keyboards they are usually 'covers' of songs created/sung by other artistes.  We obviously wouldn't put anything up by them and claim it as our own work, or put up their original recording track.  YouTube have algorithms that trawl what is uploaded, and if they find Copyright material they tell you, and normally say that the Copyright Holders give permission for the video to be played .. but that adverts will appear on it and the revenue go to the Copyright Holders.  Are audio.com going to do something like this, or is audio.com only for posting your own created music?

4.  Will there be a way of finding other musicians who have uploaded music?  Maybe an alphabetical list of 'uploaders'?  Then I could look for eg. Ron Fraser, a friend of mine who I know has a page.

5.  Is there going to be a 'Search Box' for us to search for uploaders or songs on this site?

Hugh

Their email Reply to my questions is below ...

Edit (by Hugh): Images are now LINKED to a new 'cloud' storage.  Text has not been edited.

[Hugh Tyros 4]

Hi Hugh,

Thank you for your detailed tutorial. Nice to see that you are helping other users with understanding how things work. 

Regarding your questions:

1. We currently order uploads by date added as a default but will definitely be looking at implementing better sorting features for profiles in the future.

2. Yes we are    Let us worry about the logistics.

3. While we are in the Beta stage of our product we don't have limitations on the posting of "Covers" as from a master-recording stand point this is your own content. I can't speak too much about any plans regarding revenue sharing of songs that have publishing attributed to it but for the moment you are more than welcome to upload covers to audio.com

4. We are working on a browsing feature at this very moment, stay tuned.

5. As with above this should be able to find both users, uploads and pieces of audio for your convenience.

Thanks,

Aleksandr Zharkov

[Jeff Hollande]

You are most welcome, Hugh !

I really appreciate all your efforts. WOW !

For many years I am a frequent Audio Cakewalk ( Sonar ) user but now ... I am very interested in Audacity too.

My midi editing work is done in Yamaha's XGWorks. Old but Gold !
In my perception the best midi editing program ever for ( older ) Yamaha arranger keyboards, like my Tyros4.

Today I have installed Audacity's newest version ( 3.2.1 ) after reading your fascinating input.
Thank you very much !

All the best !
JH

[Ronbo]

hello Hugh,

I just want to say that you are doing a superb job with this new program from AUDACITY.

You definitely have a real grasp for explaining what it is, how to get it and how to use it.

I commend you for doing this for the entire forum family

Keep up the good work.

Thanks again,

Ron

[Toril S]

Thank you so much Hugh! This is much more useful for me than a video!!

[abr]

Thank you very much Hugh for this excellent post.
I use Audacity for my very few recordings
using the Tyros 4 recording to midi first then Audio before transferring to Audacity
I will certainly look into this Upgrade after reading your wonderful description.

regards
Arthur

[Hugh Tyros 4]

I put this Topic up in October 2022, and like all things electronic or internet based, things have moved on since then.

However .. the programs themselves, now very much improved, still carry out their original purpose.  Although the way you go about doing things may be slightly different to what I have explained above, everything is there .. if you can find it!

For starters, when you first visit audio.com (and don't yet have an account) you see this:



Scrolling down a bit, looking over to the right there is a LINK to click on to open an account:



And if you want some of your questions about audio.com answered, scrolling down further will give you this:



Hugh

PS.  The latest version of AUDACITY is 3.5.1.

[Ron]

Do we really need those long winded, step by step instructions?  Fine for kids but we are all grownups. 
Where are you going to post these when YOUR forum dies a death?

[Michael Trigoboff]

Do we really need those long winded, step by step instructions?  Fine for kids but we are all grownups. 
Where are you going to post these when YOUR forum dies a death?

I'm a 77 year old retired software engineer "grownup" and I really like the instructions. They're a lot quicker to go through than the equivalent video.

Neither I nor the forum need mean responses to well done and sincere efforts to help other people.

[Ron]

Sorry !  This was only my opinion.  What you call a mean response is classed as banter in the UK.  Apologies if this offended you which was not my intention.  To prevent upsetting any other members on this long established forum, I will desist from making any other " mean" comments about the person who posts these online lessons and I will only post positive responses in future.

[danand]

Don't trust any one with your data!
Soon or latter this service (as many-many others in the "digital" history) will go down and you will loose all your data. Or service will lock-you out of your data because you fail to put the correct password three times in the row....

Keep back ups of your data in house on Hard Disks, don't trust any "cloud" service as you main and only back-up option.
The suggestive service looks OK as a gimmick but no real value.
Keep your precious data  in-house!