[HN Gopher] Audacity 3.0
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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.
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(page generated 2021-03-17 23:00 UTC)