Record audio from your microphone online

How to record audio, step by step

All you need is a microphone: the one built into your laptop, a USB microphone or an audio interface.

1. Click Open the editor to record. To choose mono or stereo and the sample rate first, use File ▸ New… (Ctrl+N); otherwise Auditius creates a new stereo file when you start.
2. Press R, click the red Record button in the transport bar or choose Options ▸ Start Recording. On an empty editor there is also a Record button in the middle of the screen.
3. The first time, your browser asks for permission to use the microphone. Allow it, or recording cannot start.
4. Speak, sing or play. While you record, an IN meter appears next to the output meters and shows the input level.
5. Press Space, R or the Stop button to finish. The new audio appears in the waveform, already selected.
6. Listen back, trim the silence at the start and end, and save with File ▸ Save As… as WAV, FLAC, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis.

Set a good recording level

Auditius asks the browser for the plain microphone signal, without the echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain that video calls use. The level you get is the level set on your microphone, interface or system sound settings, so check it before an important take.

• Aim for peaks well below the top of the IN meter, around -12 to -6 dB. That leaves room for a sudden laugh or a loud note.
• If the small clip light at the end of the IN meter turns red, the input reached full scale. Click it to reset it, lower the input gain and record again.
• A take that clipped can sometimes be repaired with Effects ▸ Noise Reduction ▸ Clip Restoration…, but a take at the right level always sounds better.
• Options ▸ Input Monitoring plays the microphone through your speakers. Use headphones, or the sound feeds back into the microphone.
• Auditius has no input selector of its own: it records from the microphone your browser uses. To switch, change it in the browser’s site permissions or in your system’s sound settings.

Where the recording goes

In the edit view, a recording is inserted at the cursor of the open file and pushes everything after it to the right. With nothing open, it goes into a new file. Nothing plays while you record here, and Ctrl+Z undoes a take.

To record over music or a backing track, use the multitrack instead. Switch with View ▸ Multitrack View (F12), click the R button on a track header to arm it, place the cursor and start recording. The other tracks play while you record, and Options ▸ Metronome adds a click.

To punch in, select a time range on the timeline before you press R: playback starts two seconds early and recording stops at the end of the range. With Options ▸ Loop Mode (Ctrl+L) turned on, every pass over the range becomes a take; right-click the block and use Takes to pick the best one.

If takes land slightly late against the music, Options ▸ Recording Latency… shows the measured delay and lets you add an extra offset in milliseconds.