[HN Gopher] Audacity 3.0 ___________________________________________________________________ Audacity 3.0 Author : app4soft Score : 328 points Date : 2021-03-17 21:16 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.audacityteam.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.audacityteam.org) | vz8 wrote: | I'm happy to hear about the new file format. The prior "piles of | files" were a problem when saving to folders watched by Dropbox / | OneDrive. | | Thanks Audacity, for an excellent tool! | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Ugh. FOSSHub. That enormous VPN downloader at the top. | | It took me some time to remember to avoid it. | | I do luvs me Audacity, though. | | Good show! | app4soft wrote: | FOSS Torrents team already provided `.torrent` downloads for | Audacity 3.0.0.[0,1] | | [0] https://twitter.com/FossTorrents/status/1372176177708818433 | | [1] https://fosstorrents.com/softwares/audio/audacity/ | marcodiego wrote: | Audacity is an example that being good enough is enough. It | probably doesn't competes against industry giants, but | considering its simplicity and license, it is probably the most | used audio editor in use today. | | Congrats audaciteam! | | Disclaimer: I was a contributor a long time ago to the noise | filter effect. | rosmax_1337 wrote: | Fantastic. Audacity keeps it simple and does it well, if there | was ever a hall of fame of applications, Audacity deserves a | spot. Heck, if I were to distribute any kind of "creative suite", | I would always include Audacity, no matter what operating system | I was targeting. It is a near essential tool for working with | audio, daily, or every now and then. | | The genius of the application is that it does not try to be more | than a waveform editor. Oftentimes, no matter if you are new to | audio production or a veteran audio technician, you just need to | edit some sound, and Audacity lets you get it done in a easy | enough way for newbies, and in a complex enough way for veterans. | | Maintainers of projects like these should carry themselves with | pride. Projects that stand the test of time and continue to | deliver exactly what you needed is what makes the IT-world go | around. | maxfurman wrote: | I'm pretty sure all of the songs I recorded in high school are | gone forever, since I only backed up the Audacity files and not | the entire folder. Perhaps this is for the best, but either way | I'm glad future emo teens will have an easier time preserving | their work. | Igelau wrote: | Maximum emo-ness: the darkness in these songs is so | irredeemable that even the project file couldn't save them. | shmerl wrote: | I wish developers would merge the XDG Base Directory support | patches. | saghul wrote: | Thanks Audacity team and contributors! I love to see major | releases from tools I've been using for decades. So dependable, | always ready to save my bacon when I need it. | corytheboyd wrote: | If ever we needed to archive timeless bits is software to rebuild | society with, Audacity would definitely be on that list. | nvr219 wrote: | Audacity is one of the best open source software products out | there. Grats on the release!!!! | codetrotter wrote: | Interesting that they decided to change the project format from | bag of files to single file. I certainly remember when I was new | to computers and I was using some software and brought only the | project file with me to a friend and didn't know I had to bring | the source files also. But after the first time of making that | mistake I learned from it. Personally I still like the bag of | files approach for music and video projects because it keeps the | source files accessible and I use a few different pieces of | software and don't want my source files locked into a project | files (even when it's a SQLite based approach like Audacity 3). | And for me personally I don't want to duplicate files on my local | storage medium either. | | But I can see how it will be helpful to users in general. | | macOS has a really interesting feature that allows bag of files | to appear like a single file to users but it's actually just a | directory and you can still access the files inside by opening it | as a directory. Of course that doesn't help for cross platform | software though, as on other platforms you will still only see it | as the bag of files that it really is. | rectang wrote: | > _macOS has a really interesting feature that allows bag of | files to appear like a single file_ | | I think this is what you're referring to: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_(macOS) | | I used to have problems with running out of file descriptors on | MacOS, and I recall that the maximum number was 256. I was | wondering if this package abstraction could be used to work | around it. | | But then I checked `ulimit -a` and it looks like on Big Sur the | max is now 2560. Progress! | quesera wrote: | The wikipedia article does not mention the most common | example -- .app "files"/bundles. | | E.g.: zsh% ls | Applications/Firefox.app/Contents CodeResources | Library PkgInfo _CodeSignature | Info.plist MacOS Resources | codetrotter wrote: | > I think this is what you're referring to | | Almost. I was actually referring to | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_(macOS) which is the | same concept. | | See also https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/document | ation/Mi... | jdmichal wrote: | I wonder: Is it like the new Office formats, where it's | actually a zipped bundle? In this case, maybe they just zipped | up all the files they already had and saved a lot of | reimplementation in other parts of the system. | coliveira wrote: | No, they're using SQLite3 as the repository. | klodolph wrote: | > We also fixed over 160 bugs that had been accumulating over the | years. | | This is good news indeed. Previous versions of Audacity are so | buggy that they're barely usable. Version 2.4.2 crashed more | often than not when I used it. | rsj_hn wrote: | I was taking a zoom class and they released some youtube videos | in which the vocabulary words were pronounced by a native | speaker. I downloaded Audacity, grabbed the youtube video with | python's youtube downloader, and was able to splice up the | recording into individual vocab words and put them on my Anki | cards. | | So Audacity helped me to learn a foreign language. Thanks! | dang wrote: | If curious, past threads: | | _Audacity 2.2.0 Released_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15621681 - Nov 2017 (146 | comments) | | _The Future of Audacity, Interview with the Team_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9392035 - April 2015 (28 | comments) | | _Removing background noise in Audacity by differencing stereo | channels_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6158058 - Aug | 2013 (13 comments) | | _Audacity 2.0 Released_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3714766 - March 2012 (63 | comments) | | _Learning a new language with Audacity_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2962284 - Sept 2011 (9 | comments) | tony wrote: | For those interested Audacity's underlying design, it's featured | in _The Architecture of Open Source Applications_ : | https://www.aosabook.org/en/audacity.html | | There's a section that references .aup files, see _2.6. | BlockFiles_ (Audacity 3.0.0 introduces the .aup3 file format) | | The most memorable parts of this to me was wXWidgets. Here's | ShuttleGUI: | | https://github.com/audacity/audacity/blob/master/src/Shuttle... | app4soft wrote: | Also may recommend to read FLOSS Manuals' book on Audacity[0] | | [0] https://en.flossmanuals.net/audacity/_full/ | | [1] https://en.flossmanuals.net/audacity/_info/ | | [PDF] https://flossmanuals.net/pub/audacity-en-2018.02.pdf | | [EPub] https://flossmanuals.net/pub/audacity-en-2018.02.epub | tomduncalf wrote: | Audacity is a great project and I'm very glad it exists. | | Personally I only need pretty basic wave editing and am happy | with OcenAudio (https://ocenaudio.com - free but closed source), | it's the closest thing I've found to Cool Edit 2000 (which I | still think is the best wave editor ever!) and has quite a nice | UI. | brtkdotse wrote: | Cool Edit became Adobe Audition and is still very nice to work | with. | tomduncalf wrote: | I tried it out a while back and it felt really heavyweight | for what I needed (often just trim, normalise, export)... so | I'm happy with a lightweight, fast wave editor, then I do | anything more involved in a DAW. Thanks for the | recommendation though! | schlowmo wrote: | Very pleased that Audacity is still actively developed. I said it | before but I think this can't be overstated: | | Audacity may had some quirks over the years but it's still one of | the most (if not the most) accessible tool for audio editing by | non-professionals with an adequate feature set. It's used by | community radio stations all over the world since it's easy to | teach and cross-platform while being free. | ObsoleteNerd wrote: | Audacity is up there for me with those open source projects | that deserve to go into some form of OSS Hall of Fame. | | Audacity, VLC, Blender, KeePass, Inkscape, OBS, etc (there's | many more but those are the ones I use regularly). Programs | that have been around forever, are used by millions every day, | and yet continue to do it (and do it damn well) just because | they want to. | xtracto wrote: | Audacity has a chapter in the "Architecture of Open Source | Applications" book ( https://aosabook.org/en/audacity.html ). | It is a nice read to understand the internals of the | application and some of the technical challenges the have | confronted. | nick0garvey wrote: | The main lesson I learned from that chapter was the | importance of a clear plugin interface. Especially for | software used by people with different needs. This avoids a | lot of pull requests into the main code that are unlikely to | be maintained. | simias wrote: | Audacity is a godsend for amateur audio makers, but man the UI | is really really clunky. If I was a rich philanthropist I'd | throw them some money to gut the core of the software and | rebuild a decent user interface around it. | | But hey, UI is hard and audio processing UIs are probably | harder than most. | dharma1 wrote: | I'm working with the Audacity dev team on a redesign of the | UI/UX. More on this soon! | the_cat_kittles wrote: | im sure youve heard it before, but priority 1 for me is get | the playhead scrubbing reset and looping all sorted. | something like logic is very intuitive imo. cheers! | ketzo wrote: | Wow, that's awesome news! | | I'm super interested in the UI design of really complex | applications (like Audacity, or Photoshop, etc.). I would | _adore_ some kind of writeup on y 'all's design process | whenever you towards the end! | | (Obviously a big ask for someone already doing a bunch of | work for free, pls feel free to ignore me; just saying that | I'd be interested :D) | noizejoy wrote: | You could volunteer ... | leviathant wrote: | This is fantastic news! | rosmax_1337 wrote: | I completely understand that people find the UI offputting. | But the UI is effective. Or maybe I should say the UX is | effective? Either way, an effective UI/UX is more than what a | lot of "newer and fancier" UIs have going for them. And since | the application is meant as a tool for creators, and not a | product facing consumers (as a website might be), personally | I can completely forgive a "clunky ui", as long as it is | logically laid out and with normal workflows. | nitrogen wrote: | I use and like Audacity, but it really is clunky. Having to | use separate "tools" to edit envelopes, move events, etc. | is pretty clunky compared to, say, a DAW like ACID or a | commercial audio editor like Soundforge. The active regions | for hovers, clicks, and drags (e.g. to resize tracks) | really need tweaking as well, and the horizontal scroll | after a zoom change is also really hard to predict or | control. | [deleted] | Guest42 wrote: | I feel as though early 2000s was the peak of UI, they took | peak performance and made it look good enough | app4soft wrote: | What about _AzPainter_ [0] UI? | | [0] https://git.io/azpainter | zelly wrote: | if someone "upgrades" the UI you just know it's going to be | some Typescript/React/Electron monstrosity. so I'll keep the | 90s look. | jpindar wrote: | Last time I checked, Audacity Portable had a better UI than | the regular version, so you might want to try that. | Ericson2314 wrote: | "MS Paint for sound" | marcodiego wrote: | I'll agree the day MS Paint becomes multiplatform and FLOSS. | cmehdy wrote: | Does this count? | | https://jspaint.app | | (& github: https://github.com/1j01/jspaint ) | Ericson2314 wrote: | I agree, but that wouldn't be so pithy would it? :) | jan_Inkepa wrote: | Audacity is a wonderful piece of software - I've used it in a lot | of projects for mastering/tweaking sound-effects. And it's come a | _very_ long way in terms of stability. Long may it continue to | thrive :) | Humphrey wrote: | While I use Logic for making "real" audio, Audacity is great for | those other audio tasks. For example, I used Audacity's "Import | Raw Data" feature to open a dd image of a USB drive to recover | corrupted audio FTW! | app4soft wrote: | JFTR, There is already a _project_ [0,1,2] on adding Audacity | into Blender: | | > _The Blender & Audacity add-on playing both apps in sync - | without Jack - so you can edit sound in Audacity and using | Blender as video player_ | | [0] https://github.com/tin2tin/audacity_tools_for_blender/ | | [1] https://twitter.com/tintwotin/status/1371885605735530500 | | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61Zvb8AipA | VectorLock wrote: | I remember seeing this project launched at CodeCon way way back | in the day and I'm happy its been cruising along ever since. | nickjj wrote: | I have to commend Audacity for making a tool so easy to use that | regular (but technical) folks can use it with no prior recording | experience. It being cross platform and runnable on so many | devices due to low hardware requirements is a big perk too. | | I've recorded 70+ episodes of the Running in Production | podcast[0] and to get the highest quality audio I can for the | show I ask guests to locally record their side of the | conversation with Audacity while I do the same on my end. Then we | talk in real-time over Zoom to have the actual conversation. | | Out of 70+ episodes there hasn't been a single case where | something went wrong due to Audacity. These are shows where we're | continuously recording for 60-90 minutes too. | | All I ended up doing was write up a quick guide. Basically how to | download it, making sure your "good" mic is selected and doing a | test recording. No one has ever complained that the process was | too involved or hard to follow. Most folks get set up in less | than 2 minutes with no assistance and most guests have never | recorded audio before. | | [0]: https://runninginproduction.com/ | dvirsky wrote: | Audacity is an awesome project. I know a LOT of non technical | people with no affinity to open source who are using it. I think | a UI refresh to something modern looking will help it increase | its popularity even more, I hope they find someone to help with | this. | ShaneMcGowan wrote: | Love to see audacity still going strong, was one of the first | audio tools I used for music production back in the day and is a | great piece of software | EamonnMR wrote: | Audacity is a great tool. It's not a DAW and doesn't try to be | one; I find myself using it most when I need to do a quick edit | on a sound or make a recording and I'll be done before my DAW | would even have started up. | sidpatil wrote: | It's like the Microsoft Paint of audio editing. | xuhu wrote: | More like the GIMP of audio editing. | TestPersonTwo wrote: | this is six | sedeki wrote: | Did they fix the macOS issue(s)? You had to run Audacity from the | command line for whatever reason from macOS Catalina. | roddylindsay wrote: | Thank you Audacity for an absolutely indispensable piece of | software for anyone who works with audio. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-17 23:00 UTC)