From Audacity Development Manual
There is also a standalone version of Nyquist available from the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Music Project. Nyquist was written by Roger B. Dannenberg and was intended to be used as a complete programming language for audio synthesis and analysis, with support for MIDI, audio recording and playback, file I/O, object-oriented programming, profiling, debugging and more. Audacity uses a subset of Nyquist's functionality, allowing you to use Nyquist functions in Audacity. Audacity also provides additional features and commands for Nyquist, including the ability to create plugins.
Nyquist
Nyquist allows you to use the Nyquist programming language to write your own plugin effects for Audacity. Unlike VST and LADSPA plugins, Nyquist plugins are written in plain text and don't need to be compiled.
Nyquist supports both a Lisp syntax and a more C-like syntax called SAL. Audacity versions prior to 1.3.8 only support Lisp, but the current Audacity 2.0 series supports both Lisp and SAL. To write plugins for use with Audacity, choose the appropriate Nyquist Manual for your version of Audacity and preferred syntax:
Nyquist version 2.37 Manual \xe2\x80\x93 entirely using Lisp syntax
Nyquist 3.1x Reference Manual \xe2\x80\x93 the latest Nyquist Manual (mostly using SAL syntax).
Note that you don't need to download Nyquist in order to write simple plugins to use with Audacity. All the basic instructions you need to work with Lisp and the 2.37 Manual are below. For the latest Nyquist features in Audacity.
Lisp
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