[HN Gopher] Audacium has officially merged with Tenacity
___________________________________________________________________
Audacium has officially merged with Tenacity
Author : app4soft
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-02-17 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| CharlesW wrote:
| Audacity is audio/sample editor1 that's popular as a My First
| Editor(tm) for podcasters, etc. For anyone wondering why the
| Audacium/Tenacity forks exist:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/audacity-reverses-course-on-pl...
|
| Apparently, Audacity telemetry is now restricted to a self-hosted
| Sentry error reporting service, and to sending version info an IP
| address (anonymized to the first 3 octets) on update checks.
|
| 1 It's a so-called "destructive" audio editor2, and so is
| different than modern, "non-destructive" audio editors like
| GarageBand, Reaper, Descript, etc.
|
| 2 https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/hks-communications-pro...
| Blackthorn wrote:
| > 1 It's a so-called "destructive" audio editor2, and so is
| different than modern, "non-destructive" audio editors like
| GarageBand, Reaper, Descript, etc.
|
| I have to say as someone who recently got into this space, the
| value that these non-destructive editors provide for their
| price is absurd. Reaper costs a mere one-time payment of $60
| for individual use! That's ridiculous for the value you're
| getting.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Actually, Reaper's license expires after 2 major version
| steps, that is, if you purchase a license when the major
| version is x (currently it is 6.75) then you're licensed to
| use it until x+1.99 (now it would be 7.99). Not to detract
| anything from Reaper's value: its license is one of the best
| everywhere, the cost is very affordable and the unlicensed
| product isn't crippled like others around. I have been
| licensed a while ago, and plan to purchase a new one as soon
| as I get back to making music. I would love a crowdfunding
| initiative to buy it from the creators with the purpose of
| open sourcing it, but the product quality is so high that
| even if possible it would likely cost a fortune.
| mst wrote:
| I think regarding it as a one-time payment for individual
| use with free upgrades within the current and next major
| version is a reasonable use of the term 'one-time payment'
| in that while you can't upgrade any further after that the
| software still keeps working.
|
| It seems to me that 'free upgrades forever' is honestly not
| a wise idea if you want to develop for your actual users
| rather than having to constantly try and attract more
| because any existing user will never pay you again.
|
| So while I'm glad you mentioned the specifics, I don't
| think the 'Actually,' at the start was really deserved.
| (plus in general the quality of comments on the internet
| starting with 'Actually,' is terribad and what followed it
| in your case came as a welcome and pleasant surprise ;)
| Blackthorn wrote:
| > It seems to me that 'free upgrades forever' is honestly
| not a wise idea if you want to develop for your actual
| users rather than having to constantly try and attract
| more because any existing user will never pay you again.
|
| Funny you should mention that... Another one of those
| editors, FL Studio, has exactly that business model. It's
| not as cheap as a Reaper license, but they do advertise
| "free upgrades forever" and they're somehow in a good
| enough position that they bought out both Melda and UVI
| recently (the latter looks like a pretty big player in
| the software synth space).
|
| The C-suite philosophy there is that new people are
| constantly entering both the hobby and business which
| is...well, entirely correct really. Honestly I'm glad
| that it's working out for them because it's an incredibly
| honest way of doing business, even if I don't use their
| software myself due to a couple long-standing limitations
| that hopefully they'll address soon.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I imagine a big portion of imagelines (FL studio) is
| through the extras they sell. You pay once for the
| software, but then you buy new sound packs and VSTs. It
| is a good model.
| 1f60c wrote:
| > "destructive" audio editor
|
| I clicked your link, but I'm still unsure what that means. Does
| that mean it operates on the audio file directly? Or that it
| has no undo functionality? Or something else entirely?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| photoshop vs paint
| alexvoda wrote:
| it means that for certain operations/effects/filters/etc.,
| once done the only way to get rid of them is to undo enough
| steps or to load a backup, in both cases loosing all of the
| subsequent changes.
|
| With a nondestructive editor you can remove a change done
| several steps ago AND keep all of the changes done
| afterwards.
| TylerE wrote:
| Think of it like working in Illustrator, vs working not just
| in photoshop, but photoshop with a flattened source image.
| stonogo wrote:
| A "destructive" editor is just an editor. Your text editor is
| a "destructive" editor. A "non-destructive" editor does no
| editing, and instead stores (in a separate file) a sequence
| of patches to apply to the original file, resulting in your
| desired output. This isn't really editing, but the industry
| didn't do a good job at naming this stuff.
| jaywalk wrote:
| It's spelled out pretty directly: "if you delete something,
| save your progress, and close your project, you will never be
| able to restore what was deleted"
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| What you said may apply to both "non-destructive" and
| "destructive" editors just as well. A better example would
| be "if you add reverb to your track, save your progress and
| close your project, you won't be able to unreverb it". With
| "non-destructive" editor, all you did was to add a flag
| that your track should have a reverb added to it, so you
| can easily disable or adjust parameters of your reverb
| afterwards without having to rely on undo.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's the difference between making changes to the audio
| itself, and storing the changes as "now do this to the
| audio".
|
| Similar to photoshop using layers to apply all the changes
| you've done (so you can undo particular ones easily/turn them
| on/off) and doing everything in the "flat" image space.
|
| Or using git to track a file's changes vs just editing the
| file directly.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| Photoshop is still a destructive editor, it just has layers
| to separate what you're destroying. Smart objects are the
| non-destructive way to do it in Photoshop, but you can't
| really do a lot with them. A better example of a non-
| destructive photo editor would be Affinity Photo [0], which
| by design everything operates similar to a Photoshop smart
| object.
|
| [0]: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
| margorczynski wrote:
| I think it operates on the absolute state of the audio where
| e.g. Reaper uses deltas - your current result is simply all
| of the deltas applied on after the other so it is easy to go
| back with each change by just removing a delta from the
| sequence. Quite similar to e.g. Event Sourcing vs your
| regular source of truth in the DB
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I don't think this is the right description.
|
| DAWs (digital audio workstations) edit by using metadata.
| Suppose you have an audio file that is 2 minutes long. You
| start using it in the application. The application notes
| "we have 2 minutes of audio, taken from the start of this
| file". Now if you "delete" the last minute of the file,
| _nothing_ is done to the file, but the "metadata" inside
| the DAW now says "we have 1 minute of audio, taken from the
| start of this file".
|
| If you then copy 20 seconds from the middle of that
| section, the DAW refers to this with metadata essentially
| saying "20 seconds of audio starting 20 seconds into this
| file".
|
| Nothing is ever done to change the contents of the actual
| file.
|
| ps. I write a DAW for a living.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The descriptions seem equivalent, to me. I tend to think
| of it as: a "source" is either raw audio, or the result
| of applying a parameterised filter to zero or more
| sources.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The reason it's not equivalent to me is that the concept
| of "a series of deltas" does not make clear that what is
| edited (with or without a delta model) is metadata. No
| DAW ever edits an audio file (except for a few specific
| operations where the user explicitly requests that). All
| the edits are carried out on metadata (some would call
| them an EDL - edit decision list; some would use other
| names). But the delta model is orthogonal to this.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _No DAW ever edits an audio file (except for a few
| specific operations where the user explicitly requests
| that)._
|
| This feels like semantics. No self-respecting DAW will
| overwrite your source files, but the DAW's project file
| is, technically, an audio file. And here's a 30-second
| video file: A = BlankClip() B =
| A.Subtitle("Hello, world!") Dissolve(A, B, 30)
|
| (Modified from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?titl
| e=AviSynth&oldid=11...)
|
| You're using "audio file" in a domain-specific way. The
| common meaning of "audio file" is "a file that contains
| audio": a .aup file is an audio file, just the same as a
| GarageBand project is, to a room full of 14-year-old
| amateur musicians.
| jcelerier wrote:
| when i was a 14 (or even 12) year old amateur musician it
| was very obvious to me that DAW projects weren't audio
| files, I have never ever seen anyone saying this except
| your post across all my childhood friends who were
| dabbling with "artisanal" versions of FL studio, cubase
| SX, etc etc
| swyx wrote:
| > It's a so-called "destructive" audio editor
|
| this is out of date as of Audacity 3.1.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH1CndkiBiU
| CharlesW wrote:
| Wow, that's _great_ news for its users! Non-destructive
| effects as well!
|
| https://support.audacityteam.org/audio-editing/using-
| realtim...
| andrepd wrote:
| Audacity also offers non-destructive editing.
| Retr0id wrote:
| IIUC both were projects spawned after Audacity added telemetry to
| their release builds.
|
| The telemetry in Audacity is behind both a build flag, and a
| runtime opt-in setting (although it was originally going to be
| opt-out, hence the uproar (I need to go fact-check this, it's
| been a while)).
|
| So, if you install Audacity through your distro's package
| manager, you're probably not getting any telemetry, opt-in or
| otherwise.
|
| With that in mind, I'm not sure I understand why these forks
| exist exactly. If I was a windows or macOS user, I might be
| interested in telemetry-free builds, and I'd be very thankful for
| anyone providing them, but I'm not sure why a whole fork is
| needed to do that.
|
| Looking at the git tree, it's clear that these forks have
| diverged significantly from upstream Audacity (simply from
| looking at commit counts and screenshots etc.), so it's
| apparently not a simple build-config-change and rebrand. However,
| the marketing blurb on https://tenacityaudio.org/ does not make
| it clear which features are distinct from upstream.
|
| Edit: You can read about the telemetry options currently present
| in Audacity here: https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-
| privacy-notice/
| jraph wrote:
| > Edit: You can read about the telemetry options currently
| present in Audacity here:
| https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/
|
| Seems pretty reasonable actually. I remember that the situation
| was more arguable when there were the push backs against the
| privacy issue, The Muse seems to have responded appropriately
| to the criticisms.
|
| The community split is unfortunate and sad but I sympathize
| with people wanting to avoid having to sign a CLA. One of the
| benefits of contributing to a GPL project without a CLA is that
| for the project to get rid of the GPL, it has to go out of its
| way asking for permission to every contributor or to remove the
| concerned code, which ensure your code does not risk ending up
| in a future, proprietary version of the project.
|
| The reasons given for the existence of the CLA are reasonable
| too and I empathize (ability to release under GPLv3 and to
| release an version in Apple's App store, citing the example of
| VLC), but the CLA gives way too much right to The Muse which
| has all the rights to say "thank you, now we will actually make
| Audacity proprietary". Ideally its scope should be reduced.
| duped wrote:
| Muse group has a history of acting as a bad actor, eg
| UltimateGuitar.com. They don't have much goodwill to deserve
| the benefit of the doubt here.
| jraph wrote:
| They sure take concerning decisions.
|
| The MuseScore 4 release is otherwise awesome (and we must
| credit them for this!), but they include a non-free (but
| gratis) optional sound renderer, Muse Sounds, and don't
| make it very clear they do it (edit: and Muse Hub too, same
| thing). They also encourage users to save their work in the
| cloud way too strongly.
|
| I'm not interested in their cloud. I would be interested in
| Muse Sounds, but there is no way I'm going to start to rely
| on non-free software today. The whole point of MuseScore,
| besides it being beginner-friendly, is that's it's free
| software and Tantacrul sells this aspect very well in its
| first video about MuseScore by the way.
|
| I actually told them my concerns about Muse Sounds at their
| FOSDEM stand after they asked me if I saw issues with the
| new version. Maybe if there are enough voices about this...
| andrepd wrote:
| >They also encourage users to save their work in the
| cloud way too strongly.
|
| I mean... I usually don't like those sorts of things
| either, but it's literally a window when you click save,
| before the main dialog, asking whether to save on the
| computer or their cloud, with a tick box if you want to
| skip and always save on the computer. Doesn't get much
| lighter than this, other than not having cloud
| integration at all... :)
| dspillett wrote:
| _> I 'm not sure I understand why these forks exist exactly._
|
| A large part of it is mistrust of Muse, over the initial opt-
| out nature of the new telemetry and over other past decisions,
| unrelated to Audacity, that people have found questionable.1
| Fool me once, and all that.
|
| _> Looking at the git tree, it 's clear that these forks have
| diverged significantly from upstream Audacity_
|
| That in itself would be a reason, certainly from a dev's PoV,
| on top of that trust thing. If both projects fit what they
| want, but the downstream ones do it in a way they prefer, that
| is enough difference even if
|
| _> [sic] the marketing does not make clear the difference from
| upstream_
|
| implies that there is no major difference2 from an end-users
| PoV3 at this point.
|
| --
|
| [1] I've not looked into the latter in much detail, my use of
| Audacity is so infrequent currently that I don't think I've
| updated (or, obviously, switched to something else) since
| before the hoo-hah.
|
| [2] Yet, at least.
|
| [3] beyond the telemetry and potential trust issues
| btown wrote:
| With Muse Group's ownership and Tantacrul/Martin Keary as Head
| of Product of Audacity [0][1], Audacity will be moving in a
| radically different direction from a UI/UX perspective. I
| happen to think this will be a good thing, and I happen to
| think that (opt-in) telemetry is a perfectly good way of
| ensuring that a consumer-facing open-source project doesn't
| just build for its loudest users, especially in the context of
| large interface redesigns. And with MuseScore 4, the creative
| team struck what I think is a great balance between
| streamlining the interface and avoiding the removal of
| complexity/advanced features.
|
| But I can also see why a fork can and should diverge, for those
| who want a more stable and slow-moving evolution of the
| software. I hope the Tenacity project succeeds!
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMWNvwLiXIQ
|
| [1] https://uk.linkedin.com/in/martin-keary-88a5a7159
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _for those who want a more stable and slow-moving evolution
| of the software._
|
| As I recall, Tenacity started with some significant reworking
| of the development toolchain. But I get your point: that's
| not something end-users normally care about.
| btown wrote:
| Not sure about Tenacity's situation, but there are
| certainly ways in which development toolchains can be
| reworked to lend themselves towards predictable performance
| and reliable release management!
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| While true, this doesn't mean slow-moving evolution of
| the project. A project can have predictable toolchain
| performance and reliable release management and rewrite
| the whole thing every six months.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A more readable summary: https://github.com/Audacium/audacium
| anaganisk wrote:
| Why is error reporting telemetry bad? Im really lost at why this
| is such a big deal. They're not collecting personal info. They
| are just looking to make the product better.
| sneak wrote:
| When, where, and how you use your tools is personal info, even
| if your name is not put on the data.
| Entinel wrote:
| This is not true legally. If there is no way to link back to
| you personally then it is not PII.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Correct me if I am wrong, but it's going to be tied to your
| IP address.
|
| So it will be tied to a unique identifier.
| dspillett wrote:
| As has been repeatedly argued in cases of IP-rights-
| holders-vs-sharers, an IP address on its own does not
| identify an individual. We argue that both ways depending
| on what suits us at the time, or we are as bad as the
| music industry flipping between "you bought the CD" and
| "you licensed the music" when it suits them to.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| There's a huge difference between "identifiable enough to
| be legal evidence" and "identifiable enough to be
| unethical to collect".
| Ruthalas wrote:
| That's fair. (Though I certainly haven't argued it either
| way previously myself.)
|
| I do think it makes your statement that cannot, "be
| linked back to you personally", a little less absolute.
| dspillett wrote:
| That was someone-else's statement, not mine.
|
| My take: An IP address is usually not, in fact almost
| always not, PII on its own, but there are circumstances
| where it is part of a package of data that is PII, and
| others where it could be considered "circumstantial PII".
| Timon3 wrote:
| This is only true in certain jurisdictions. The GDPR
| recitals specifically mention IP addresses as examples of
| personal data:
|
| > Natural persons may be associated with online
| identifiers provided by their devices, applications,
| tools and protocols, such as _internet protocol
| addresses_ , cookie identifiers or other identifiers such
| as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave
| traces which, in particular when combined with unique
| identifiers and other information received by the
| servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural
| persons and identify them.
|
| from https://gdpr.eu/recital-30-online-identifiers-for-
| profiling-...
|
| Further support for this interpretation in case the above
| comes off as "only if combined with other data":
| https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-
| protection/r...
| noman-land wrote:
| I just wanna live my god damn life in peace instead of
| wondering if my belongings are leaking data about me.
|
| If I want to help the developers debug their app for free I
| will decide on my own when and how to do that.
|
| I consider any breach of these desires to be ideologically
| repugnant and indicative of an extreme disrespect for users of
| your app.
| Entinel wrote:
| > If I want to help the developers debug their app for free I
| will decide on my own when and how to do that.
|
| You say this like you pay for the app. Audacity is free.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Audacity is free, my data is not
| stonogo wrote:
| Whether or not I paid for the app and whether or not I want
| to help debug it are two completely separate and unrelated
| questions.
| Entinel wrote:
| They aren't though. You say "help debug it" as if you are
| actually lifting a finger to help. In reality, you have a
| problem that a company provides you an app for free and
| wants your anonymous data to help improve it. Something
| that cost you nothing in terms of time or money. Also
| something you can opt out of if you find that agreement
| disagreeable for whatever reason.
| stonogo wrote:
| If my data is valuable to them they can pay me for it.
|
| And don't forget this company initially tried to ship
| telemetry-by-default in this software before there was
| backlash. They retreated to a reasonable compromise, but
| in no way are they entitled to a single byte of my data.
| I owe them nothing. I did not compel them to "provide me
| an app for free," not only because that app existed long
| before they bought its branding, but also because I had
| no voice in their licensing policy.
|
| If they want to amend their license to require telemetry,
| they may do so, and I will stop using the software. But
| never, ever, as long as I live, will I owe them shit.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _In reality, you have a problem that a company provides
| you an app for free and wants your anonymous data to help
| improve it._
|
| No, _in reality_ , you have a company that _bought_ the
| branding of a piece of free software. They didn 't make
| Audacity. They contributed to versions 3.0 through 3.2.1
| (which I've, personally, never used). They had nothing to
| do with the award-winning version 1.3.x, nor anything up
| to 2.4.2.
|
| I'm not against companies taking on the maintenance of
| free software projects - provided it's not an Embrace
| Extend Extinguish ruse -, but throwing money around
| wouldn't entitle one to claim credit. (I'm not aware of
| Muse Group claiming credit for Audacity, but if anyone
| _is_ pulling a stunt like that, I would like to write
| them a strongly-worded letter.)
| noman-land wrote:
| Audacity chose to make itself free. It had nothing to do
| with me. I don't owe them anything for that. Giving someone
| a gift does not entitle you to a gift of your choice in
| return.
| croes wrote:
| Data traffic without consent is bad.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Unless it is opt-in it is spyware.
|
| You can't trust devs that have such bad judgement that they
| would even think about doing it opt-out with the opt-in data
| either.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Is (was?) Audacium related to Audacity at all?
| masklinn wrote:
| I think it's one of the audacity fork from when the main devs
| put telemetry in audacity a year or two back.
| [deleted]
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Could anyone familiar with this add something about Audacium to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity_(audio_editor) if it's
| significant to its history? I tried to understand what happened
| and if there was a fork but couldn't.
| branon wrote:
| If you want to understand even less, check this one out:
| https://github.com/Sneeds-Feed-and-Seed/sneedacity
| petecooper wrote:
| >Audacium has officially merged with Tenacity
|
| This appears to be the Tenacity referenced:
|
| https://tenacityaudio.org
|
| https://codeberg.org/tenacityteam/tenacity
|
| https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity
| mgsk wrote:
| Not sure why they wouldn't include that link in the
| announcement/on github.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Probably didn't think of it. If you were using Audacium it's
| because you were looking for Audacity forks in general, so
| you would already know about Tenacity too.
| tevon wrote:
| The Audacity of it!
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I'm surprised Tenacity isn't in Homebrew, even as a cask.
| ilyt wrote:
| Great! They can call it Audacity now
| talkingtab wrote:
| or tenacium
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Tenacious A
| 60secs wrote:
| or Teneculum
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(page generated 2023-02-17 23:00 UTC)