The Book of Audacity

P–T

Peak Level

Highest volume level in your recording. Usually peaks are transient events and are higher and more abrupt than your RMS levels. Peak and RMS levels are represented by two different shades of blue in Audacity waveforms.

Phase

Phase is about timing, the location in time of a waveform relative to its beginning. When the phase of a waveform is nonzero, it has been moved forward or backward in time. We do this in Audacity with the Time Shift tool. Sound waves interact with each other in all kinds of complex and interesting ways, and phase shifting is often used to create audio special effects. For example, you can create a pleasing echo by copying an audio track, shifting the phase of the copy a little bit, and mixing the copy and original ...