Multimedia Resources: Audio

FreeMusicArchive.org
The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America.

Freesound
​A collaborative database of creative-commons licensed sounds

BBC Sound Effects
The BBC’s collection now gives you access to a huge collection of sounds for different objects, locations, and actions.

Videvo Royalty Free Music
Browse by music category, mood, instrument, and more to find music for your media compositions. 

Videvo Sound Effects
Browse a variety of categories such as 'Human' or 'Foley' to find sound effects that will enhance your media composition.

Jamendo
Browse a wide range of musical genres and download creative-commons licensed music

ccMixter
Free music for personal, educational, and commercial use

OpSound
Artists contribute music under a Creative Commons license; listeners can remix and use the music in their projects

Active sound: How to find it, record it and use it

This search includes all libraries on campus; note the location and call number.

Classical Music Library

Database of Recorded American Music

The National Jukebox (Library of Congress)

Smithsonian Global Sound

Your choice of editing program should be determined by the story of your project and the amount of editing you need to do to tell that story. Here are some rough guidelines to choosing the platform that would work best for your project:

Audacity (Mac and PC)

• Only working with a single track of audio (no multi-person interviews)
• Don't have to move a lot of pieces of audio around (from one point in the audio to another point)
• Won't be mixing in music, sound effects, or other sources of audio. 
• Generally, we do not recommend using Audacity for editing except as a way to work on individual tracks before moving on to a more advanced editing software because it is a destructive editor (meaning that you are working on the actual audio file when you make changes, which may make it difficult to go back and "undo" decisions you've made). 
• Learning How to use Audacity  - LinkedIn Learning @ Dartmouth

GarageBand (Mac only)

• Non-destructive editor, which means you're working on placeholders of the audio files, rather than the actual audio files themselves. 
• Working with multiple tracks of audio (for instance, multiple participants in an interview) as well as music, sound effects, and other audio elements
• Should not be used for very fine-grained edits (like removing "um," "uh," and other particles) as it can be hard to do very precise cross-fades
• Unfortunately, there is no PC equivalent that has the ease-of-use of GarageBand. 
• The interface is default designed for recording music, so you'll need to make some adjustments to settings to make it easier to edit non-musical audio. 
• Learning How to use GarageBand - LinkedIn Learning @ Dartmouth
• Tutorial: Podcasting in GarageBand

Adobe Audition (Mac and PC)

• Contains a destructive editor and a multitrack non-destructive editor. Make sure to use the multitrack editor if you're editing something with multiple tracks. 
• Precise fade-in/fade-out and cross-fade control, which is necessary for doing very fine-grained edits. 
• Creating a Podcast in Adobe Audition Tutorials

Please note that Reaper is a very similar program to Adobe Audition that has the same basic functionality and does not require a Creative Cloud subscription.