Audacity
Instructions written by newstarshipsmell.
Go to https://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/ (there's a Mac version too which can be installed in the habitual OSX way by unpacking and dropping into Applications. Set up is about the same regarding parameters and values).
Download the installer (Audacity 2.1.2 installer) or portable (Audacity 2.1.2 zip file) version.
The portable version is smaller and contains no help files.
Install or unpack Audacity to the desired location.
Of the audio filetypes allowed on Redacted, only FLAC and MP3 are natively supported by Audacity. To add support for AAC, AC3 and DTS files, you must also install the FFmpeg library. Follow the instructions here to download and install it: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#ffdown
Once you've installed both Audacity and the FFmpeg library, launch Audacity.
Open the preferences. Click Edit, then Preferences... (Or press Ctrl+P):
In the treebar on the left, click Tracks.
Check the box "Automatically fit tracks vertically zoomed" Change the Default View Mode dropdown from Waveform to Spectrogram. (This is optional, but will eliminate the need to manually select Spectrogram from the file menu every time you open a track.)
Check the box "Select all audio in project, if none selected"
In the treebar on the left, click Spectrograms.
Change the options on this screen to the following:
Scale: Linear
Minimum Frequency: 0
Maximum Frequency: 23000
Gain: 20
Range: 110 but it'd be preferable 130.
Frequency gain: 0
Algorithm: Frequencies
Window size: 1024
Window type: Blackman-Harris
Zero padding factor: 1
Click Apply.
In the treebar on the left, click Import / Export.
Under "When importing audio files" make sure the radio button is selected for the option "Make a copy of uncompressed audio files before editing (safer)"
In the treebar on the left, click Libraries.
If under "FFmpeg Library Import/Export" you do not see "FFmpeg Library Version: FFmpeg library not found" but some version numbers instead, then you should be done setting up Audacity. Click OK to save/close the Preferences window.
Otherwise, if you see this:
Then click the Locate... button next to "FFmpeg Library."
Hopefully you'll get a popup message of "Success - Audacity has successfully detected valid FFmpeg libraries..." in which case, click No.
Otherwise, click Browse..., navigate to the folder where you installed FFmpeg for Audacity.
Select the avformat-55.dll file, then click Open, and click OK.
You should be done setting up Audacity. Click OK to save/close the Preferences window.
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