The Book of Audacity

Fixing Defects

First do a rough trim to delete any unwanted sections. Don’t cut too closely but leave some extra, and then apply the finishing touches later. Trimming away unwanted sections of your tracks is easy; just select the parts you don’t want and press the delete key, or click the Cut button. Another way to do deletions is to select what you want to keep and then click the Trim button. This keeps your selection and deletes the rest.

Deleting part of a track makes it shorter, and sometimes you might not want to do this but rather keep it the same length. Do this by silencing instead of deleting—select the part you want to get rid of and click the Silence button. This makes it silent instead of removing it, and your track stays the same length. ...