 Are you a content creator? Do you create video content on platforms like YouTube and on library? Do you do audio only podcasting? If you do this sort of content creation, one of the things that you probably want to do is you want to record your audio tracks as multiple separate audio tracks. And this makes editing your audio much easier when you have everything as a separate track. But many people struggle on a how to record multiple audio tracks and be how do you go about editing those multiple audio tracks? What kind of software do you use to do this sort of thing? So today I wanted to show you how I record and edit audio tracks using free software, things like OBS, Audacity, and Caden Live. So let's start with recording multiple separate audio tracks using OBS. I'm assuming especially if you're a video content creator you're probably gonna do all your recording using OBS, the open broadcaster software which is the gold standard when it comes to that kind of software. It is free and open source software. It is also free as in free of charge. So let me open up OBS and if you go to File and go to Settings and open up the settings inside OBS. On the left hand column you have various tabs. One of them is audio. Click on that. Now this audio screen here that you're seeing would be the devices that you see down here in the audio mixer. You say I have desktop audio and then I have microphone, auxiliary. So I only have two sources here in the audio mixer because I have desktop audio set to the controller on my computer. Then I have the mic audio set to my mixer that you see on the server rack behind me. You could add other audio sources if you needed to. Most people are just gonna have to the desktop audio and the microphone audio but you could have multiple inputs especially. I could have you know a second audio interface somewhere plugged into some other microphones and then I would need of course add that and it would appear down here in the audio mixer portion of the interface here. Once you have all of this set to your liking what you need to do then is go to Output and in Output make sure you're in the advanced mode and you're gonna see various tabs streaming recording audio replay buffer. Now there's nothing to do in the streaming tab as far as separating your audio into multiple tracks because streaming you're not really capturing that audio yourself. Streaming is you're sending that signal the video and the audio to some service like YouTube or Twitch. So there's nothing to do on this tab but the recording tab is the one where you can separate that audio into multiple tracks. The first thing you need to do is make sure that your recording format is set to some format that can handle separate audio tracks. MP4 is the most common video format people record in and MP4 handles having multiple audio tracks just fine so if you choose MP4 you should be good and then what you need to do is tick on however many separate audio tracks you want. You can have up to six. I chose three and I chose three because that is the number of sources I have down here in the audio mixer. I have one and then I have two and then you always need a third one which would be the mix of all the other sources in your audio mixer. I hope that makes sense so if you had three things down here in the audio mixer maybe you had two different interfaces picking up your microphones plus the desktop audio so you had three things down here you want to create four tracks. For me I'm just doing the two sources here so I created three tracks and if I wanted to name them I could go to the audio tab and give them proper names instead of just one two or three really one here is the main mix which is a combination of the desktop audio and my mic auxiliary audio. Two I believe I have set to the mic and then three is going to be the desktop audio. Anyway I'm gonna cancel all of this because it's already been set and once you have all of that set what you need to do is go to the cog wheel down here either one it doesn't really matter for any of your sources down here go to the cog wheel right click on it and choose advanced audio properties and the window is not quite wide enough for you to see all the tracks here again up to six tracks here in OBS but the first thing you want to do is however many sources you have as far as your audio mixer they're gonna be in this list and then you choose which tracks you want them to record to. One track needs to have everything so it needs to be the main mix so if you have five things in this list what I would do is I would put all of them on track one so that's a mix of everything and then after that I would go and add each one to its own separate track so you desktop audio it records to track one which is the main mix and then it also records to track three and track three is only going to be the desktop audio I won't put any other source on that that way if I ever need to edit you know scrub or clean up the desktop audio I have yet on a track by itself nothing else is on it the same thing with Mike auxiliary it records to track one which is again the main mix is a combination of all the audio sources but it also is on a track by itself on track to I won't put anything else on track to that track is strictly for my microphone audio so if I ever need to go and just clean up the microphone audio not the desktop audio or anything else that's you might be plugged in just the microphone it's on its own separate track so now that I have my computer's desktop audio separate from my microphone audio let's do a test recording and let me show you this in action so gonna open up an audio player here and I'm gonna play a song so I'm gonna go ahead and start the desktop audio here and I'll let that play for a minute and then I'm gonna talk over it yeah this is distro to guys record and edit multiple audio tracks using free software watch DT on YouTube and library follow DT on mastodon support DT's work over on patreon alright let me kill that stop recording now let's see if our separate audio tracks work so I'm gonna switch back to the desktop to check to see if this worked what you could do is open up a audio player that allows you to select between the multiple tracks on a multi-track clip so that mp4 that I had just recorded was this one right here if I open it in VLC so now that I have my computer's desktop audio separate from my my passport a little bit so we get the desktop audio this is distro to guys and the mic audio now everything is mixed together by default audio players the way they work is they always play track one that's why when we went into the OBS settings I told you to put everything on a main mix on track one is when you open something in a standard audio player like VLC it's always going to default to track one so really you should just put everything on track one but then you do have the other tracks available if I go into the audio tab here and go to audio track you see by default it is set to one but we could check out track two and now if I start this playing again so now that I have my computer's desktop mic audio what if I fast forward to explain no music right yeah because there was no music on track two there was no desktop audio I go back and I choose track three you know Mike is not working the microphone audio is not on track three but the desktop audio the music track is on audio track three so now let's talk about editing these tracks so now that we have the multi-track audio how do you edit it well probably the most common free and open-source audio editor on the planet is audacity so let me open up audacity and then let me import something into audacity that again we have multiple audio tracks so all of these have the three audio tracks all these MP4s I'm recording and when you drag it into audacity you get this pop-up window and this pop-up window it has three things in it why does it have three things it's because that mp4 that I'm trying to open in audacity has three audio tracks which one do we want to take a look at I just use this first one this is track one this is the mix of everything so it's going to be the microphone it's going to be the desktop audio music it's going to have everything in it but if instead of that one I drag it and import it again I choose the second thing in the list this is track two this is just the mic no desktop audio no music but if I wanted to I could go back and import it and choose track three and this is the desktop audio that is that music track that I played halfway through that clip now typically if I'm working on something like this what I would do is I would grab that audio and import it and I would choose all the individual audio tracks so not the first one not the main mix because that's difficult to work on because everything's together I would choose tracks two and tracks three together and hit OK and now I have the microphone audio up here and down here I have the desktop audio the music playing and I could edit them without really affecting the other one because they're you know on separate tracks for example in this section of the mp4 clip that I imported I am speaking this is me speaking on the microphone but you notice during that time there's also some desktop audio playing so that's the music track playing what if my microphone audio I'm barely audible because the music maybe is too loud well what I could do is because these are separate tracks now if they were one track I couldn't do this but because they are separate tracks I can go in here and I could adjust the volume of this in audacity I could go into effects and I could do amplify and you know if I wanted to I could drop the peak amplitude and you know lower the volume lower the gain quite a bit on that track there and if I wanted to I could go up here and do something completely different I can do a completely different effect because it's a separate audio track maybe I could do the amplify effect but instead of decreasing the volume maybe increase the volume to the microphone so that is the beauty of having these on separate tracks and let me go ahead and close out of audacity the last thing I want to show you guys is let me open up my video editor of choice which is Kaden live of course it's free and open source software as well how does Kaden live handle audio that has multiple separate tracks well let's import an mp4 and check it out so if I drag it to the timeline by default what you see is just one-way form here so kind of like most audio players default to just using track one Kaden live does the same thing by default this waveform this audio waveform is track one but what you can do is highlight that clip so just click on it make sure it's you know highlighted you can see the bright green now and then go to clip properties and if you go down to audio stream you have a drop-down menu here of all the audio tracks so remember I recorded three audio tracks and we have one which is set by default and that's the main mix of both the mic and the desktop audio then we have two which is just the mic audio and then we have three which is the desktop audio only so if I go to two this should be the microphone audio but no desktop audio so let me go to a section of the clip where there will be some desktop audio so if I start playing go ahead and start the desktop audio here okay so the microphone works but gonna let that there's no music playing see then I'm gonna talk over it every time there's just music and no microphone the music's not there too guys record knit it all right so that was just track 2 there so let me highlight that clip again go to track 3 and now no microphone and we should have the music though so there's no mic here's the music and I'm speaking on the mic but nothing's happening speaking on the mic again nothing's happening so you can preview the individual audio tracks in Caden live just highlight the clip go to clip properties go to audio stream and just choose what you need from the drop-down now before I go I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of this episode I need to thank Michael Gabe Nate Corbinian Mitchell entropy UK John Devin Arch 55 30 Chris Chuck DJ Donnie Dylan George Lewis Omri Paul Robert Sean Tobias and Willie these guys they are my highest tiered patrons over on patreon without these guys you wouldn't know how to record and edit multiple audio tracks using free software like OBS Caden live and Audacity you wouldn't know about it the show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen all these names you see on the screen these are all my supporters over on patreon because there are no corporate sponsors here at distro tube this show is supported by you guys the community you'd like to support my work you'll find DT over on patreon alright guys peace