[HN Gopher] I'm now in charge of Audacity [video]
___________________________________________________________________
I'm now in charge of Audacity [video]
Author : mqus
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-04-30 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| beigeoak wrote:
| I was introduced to Tantacrul via his video on MuseScore. I was
| thoroughly unimpressed by it and was taken aback by the things he
| chose to focus on and give priority to.
|
| A lot of the video felt like it was missing the forest for the
| trees and felt like more like a person trying to say "Did you
| notice this? I did!" rather than focusing on the actual big
| picture.
|
| At one point he says that software should try to build on
| familiarity and frameworks that the user would be used to and
| find intuitive. Later on, he completely misses how presets are
| represented and complains that it's unintuitive.
|
| The amount of time he chose to spend on iconography was mind-
| boggling, and his specific comparison of of iconography to
| typography was tenuous at best.
|
| Overall I feel that the lack of of FOSS UX devs is what Tantacrul
| is taking advantage of. His slick videos seem compelling and
| correct, but are extremely surface level.
| medlyyy wrote:
| So, you have experience in UI/UX yourself then to say this
| authoritatively?
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| The iconography part is a bit long and excessive, but as an
| uninvested party, the rest of his MuseScore video feels like
| good user interface criticism. It may seem like a lot of little
| nitpicks, but "death by a thousand cuts" seems like the
| relevant phrase, and he clearly understands how someone would
| want to use the software, because he is part of the target
| audience (composers).
| guitarbill wrote:
| The MuseScore video is part entertainment, part critique.
| Personally, I don't think it's fair to dismiss it so quickly.
| He's very knowledgable in the field of music notation software,
| and is in a smaller niche of having used several of them
| professionally (most people stick to one or two). In another
| video on Dorico [0], he did user testing. So he's not just
| pulling things out his ass.
|
| It's easy to hate. MuseScore is better due to his involvement.
| The FOSS community should be more welcoming to UX devs in
| general, and especially who have a methodical approach and
| actually listen. Maybe wait and reserve judgement.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3wEC6Fj_8
| jpindar wrote:
| I would just like to point out that the UI for Audacity Portable
| is somewhat better than the regular Audacity, mainly in terms of
| the menu structure and wording. If you like Audacity but find the
| menus awkward, try Audacity Portable.
| dang wrote:
| The Audacity of past threads:
|
| _Audacity 3.0_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26496887 -
| March 2021 (219 comments)
|
| _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)
| shaicoleman wrote:
| Can you please fix Audacity 3.0 under Linux with HiDPI displays?
|
| The interface is completely broken for me.
|
| https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/503#issuecomment...
| junon wrote:
| I love Tantacrul, weird but welcome to see him on the front page.
| pastrami_panda wrote:
| I never encountered his chanel before so I'm also glad, that
| bit about 6 magnifying glasses alone made me instantly
| subscribe haha!
| orls wrote:
| His video on Sibelius is highly recommended if you want more
| UX laughs.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI
| tclancy wrote:
| That may have been the fastest I ever hit Subscribe. Thanks
| for that!
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| ok that might just be the best video on all of youtube
| wombatmobile wrote:
| I didn't know Audacity is an actual city, where Auda lives.
| coziestSoup wrote:
| Somewhat off-topic, but I like the idea of announcing a major
| change in a project like this through video. It really provides
| the context and some background of what's going on and why the
| change is happening.
|
| Granted, tentacrul seems like an established YouTuber, and this
| was probably the natural way for him to announce this, but I do
| hope more people/projects adopt this approach.
| cbmuser wrote:
| Great. Could you add support for big-endian systems, please?
|
| > https://build.opensuse.org/package/live_build_log/multimedia...
| Joeboy wrote:
| First thing on my wishlist would be something less weird than
| shift+function keys for zooming.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| How we made it to 2021 without having per-application
| rebindable keys built in to our OSs is just one of many
| mysteries of how personal computing came to suck I guess.
| egypturnash wrote:
| OSX's Keyboard prefs lets you define custom menu shortcuts
| for any program. Sadly there's no global interface for stuff
| like "hold this to zoom" so you still have to deal with
| whatever the program's developer thought sounded good.
| matthewn wrote:
| In the Gnome 2.x days, you could (in GTK apps) assign a
| custom keystroke to any item in any pull-down menu by
| hovering over the item and then pressing the keystroke you
| wanted to assign. It was the most simple, intuitive way to
| customize app keyboard shortcuts I've ever seen, and I still
| miss it.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > It was the most simple, intuitive way to customize app
| keyboard shortcuts I've ever seen
|
| IFF you knew about it. Gnome X.X has always suffered from
| poor interface intuitivity, while simultaneously having
| some great UI/UX features.
| remram wrote:
| My OS has that (KDE) sort of. Non-KDE apps don't use it
| because it's OS-dependent.
|
| You'd need all platforms to have this and then a
| multiplatform abstraction layer to exist before it became
| useful... and by useful I mean: you can start rewriting every
| application.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Not really, you just need something like AutoHotKey that
| can intercept and re-write key events. Since the OS is
| responsible for delivering key events, the application's
| cooperation is not required.
|
| If you ask me, multiplatform abstraction layers are part of
| the problem with this industry, not the solution.
| remram wrote:
| That might work, but then the OS needs up-to-date
| profiles for each application (to know what to map events
| to), and changing the shortcut in the application's own
| settings would break everything (in addition to showing
| the wrong thing in the first place).
| blackshaw wrote:
| Isn't this kind of what Apple is trying to do with the
| TouchBar?
|
| Shame that the TouchBar is hot garbage.
| remram wrote:
| I was distracted a bit by his screen capture. Is he... editing an
| audio file sample by sample? Is that a thing people do?
|
| I assumed people worked from samples, recordings, and primitives
| like sine/square waves and noise, and applied filters...
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| In music production, mixers/producers will sometimes zoom down
| to sample-scale and draw out a click or a pop from a bad edit
| that wasn't properly smoothed. Otherwise, no. I wouldn't say
| it's common for audio editors to draw samples.
| amazing_stories wrote:
| It's not a common operation, but this is a massively important
| feature to have. Occasionally I clean up audio that's in such
| horrible condition I have to edit individual samples because
| there are no plugins that can do it automatically. For example:
| a pop or skip on a vinyl record. Sometimes you have to remove
| those by hand.
| david_allison wrote:
| Another step on the road to having more UX and UI designers get
| involved with Open Source. It's really exciting to see!
|
| Especially happy to see Tantacrul delving into the history and
| mission of the project. It's one aspect that many UI/UX designers
| miss which causes massive amounts of wasted effort.
| interestica wrote:
| It's great news! The little playful jab on the magnifying
| glasses suggests we could see some great UI/UX fixes.
| guitarbill wrote:
| Agreed. UX designers are a rare breed in open source, and
| Tantacrul is a treasure - as is Audacity. I'm also hopeful of
| the approach. The video is already very respectful of the
| existing work, UI, and workflows, which is promising.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Not enough people appreciate how stable, reliable, and
| battle-tested Audacity is as an audio production tool. The
| fact that it's free software only magnifies its usefulness
| within the audio space.
|
| In a former job capacity, I personally oversaw a group of
| >40,000 individuals all over the globe, who relied on
| Audacity to make a living. With Tantacrul on the UX side of
| things, my hope is that nothing too radical is done to negate
| the expectations of these users, as many of them are not
| tech-savvy and learning a new interface for them is basically
| the same as learning a new tool altogether.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Would you mind sharing what's the company/project? It seems
| very interesting.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Audacity has a lot of low hanging fruits in the UX
| department. E.g. every single one of these "You have not
| selected anything to apply [feature X] to. Try pressing
| Ctrl+A to select everything and try again!" dialogs should
| just not exist (if nothing is selected, apply to all,
| done), or when exporting to a format which doesn't do
| separate tracks and there are multiple tracks in the same
| channel, Audacity just silently merges them (throwing away
| data). When recording while a track exists there's some way
| (outside of punch-and-roll, I think) to have it record into
| the same track again with no warning, throwing away data.
| Scrolling is vertical for some reason, even though
| horizontal scroll is the primary scrolling timelines.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I do not think you will be seeing any sweeping revamp if
| that is what you're concerned about. Tantacrul is really
| focused on smoothing pain points and removing ambiguity.
| The changes we have seen from him in MuseScore so far have
| been small but welcome.
| cardanome wrote:
| While I am sure Tantacrul will do a great job, as seen by his
| interest in learning more about the history and existing user
| base of the software first, I do want to disagree in a more
| general way.
|
| Personally I hate UI changes and I want Audacity to change as
| little as possible in that regard. It is not a tool that I use
| regularly so I want to be able to not use it for a year or two,
| get back to it and still find the same familiar interface.
|
| That is not to say that there are not many sensible changes
| that could be and maybe should be made to Audacity. I am just
| saying that stability is far more valuable for me. I rather
| wish for more stability in software than better UI.
| diydsp wrote:
| Having seen many of his videos, I agree with you. Not that
| I'm against it, but under tantacrul, Audacity will likely
| become nearly unrecognizable. Many of us have a huge
| investment in the present, imperfect system. We should admit
| upfront this is a fork, and a separate maintenance effort for
| Audacity classic will be a separate project.
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| > Personally I hate UI changes and I want Audacity to change
| as little as possible in that regard. It is not a tool that I
| use regularly so I want to be able to not use it for a year
| or two, get back to it and still find the same familiar
| interface.
|
| And here is the beauty of non-web based software, you can
| guarantee that you always will! Same executable on your
| computer represents the same program launched, forever.
| Things don't change under the hood without you saying "yes",
| so if you want the UI to remain the same forever, you're
| welcome to. If you later want to upgrade, you can, but you'll
| never be forced to.
| cardanome wrote:
| That would only work if I never wanted to change or update
| my system.
|
| In practice, especially on Linux, binaries only work for
| specific distributions of specific major versions. It can
| be very difficult to get a binary to work a few years down
| the line.
|
| Of course solutions like Appimage help quite a bit as
| software comes with most dependencies packaged inside but
| even then its not perfect. It will slow down the bit rot
| but not stop it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's pretty simple to build audacity. If you're never
| upgrading then that's fine.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| Except that "just don't upgrade" is a very bad idea.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Why?
| sayhar wrote:
| Security patches, for one thing, right?
| glial wrote:
| Genuine question: what security vulnerabilities could
| Audacity have that would make not upgrading a risk?
| fors wrote:
| But Audacity right now does everything you need and you are
| not processing untrusted source files, so why would you ever
| need to update?
|
| On the other hand, lots of people encounter Audacity maybe
| for the first time and the UI might be unappealing or
| confusing.
|
| I think there is space for both you who wants an "eternal"
| tool and the new user who might want something more
| apporachable.
| triska wrote:
| There are many reasons why one would like to update
| Audacity also if it already does everything one needs, for
| example increased robustness and speed in newer versions if
| they provide it, and also new effects that simplify
| existing workflows.
| diydsp wrote:
| Also compatibility with future hardware, aka bitrot.
| alexvoda wrote:
| I am very glad Tantacrul is now involved with Audacity. This is
| great news.
| dfabulich wrote:
| His Audacity has a bunch of features that aren't familiar to me,
| including a De-Esser and a De-Clicker. Are those plugins?
| neltnerb wrote:
| Yes, there are hilarious numbers of plugin audio filters, you
| probably just need to install the extras. I know on my system
| they got installed by default but I have seen them absent
| before on bare bones installs.
| amazing_stories wrote:
| Those are generally for editing vocals. A de-esser is a narrow
| band compressor to used to soften the "s" in speech. De-
| clickers remove transient sounds, like the sound of your lips
| opening/closing between words.
| nuclx wrote:
| It's a great tool, though a feature I'm frequently missing is the
| ability to display a sample value in the original domain i.e. as
| int16.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| Audacity is a simple tool that does simple things quickly,
| efficiently, and for free. That's why it's popular. Generally I
| wince whenever people go monkeying around with tools like
| Audacity, because their instinct is to "improve" it by adding
| layers and layers of new features when simplicity was always the
| core appeal.
|
| That said, Tantacrul seems to have his priorities straight. It
| sounds like he's going into this carefully and thoughtfully,
| which is a good sign. And Audacity does have one glaring problem
| I'll readily admit to: it's not simple ENOUGH. There's a lot of
| UI/UX etc that could be cleaned up, re-orged and better labelled
| so that people can actually find what they're looking for and use
| it more easily. As-is, the program can be a little thorny when
| you're first getting into it.
| erwald wrote:
| MuseScore is such a great piece of free software, I assume this
| will be beneficial for Audacity!
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I've always found the Audacity UX to be cumbersome. I hope they
| make some big changes. I'm not super optimistic, though.
|
| If your needs are simple, I find mhwaveedit[0] much more pleasant
| to use than Audacity. It also ships with a ton of high quality
| filters. Really nice piece of software.
|
| 0: https://github.com/magnush/mhwaveedit
| phantomread wrote:
| Definitely an instance of "to each their own" for me, starting
| a project in Audacity was refreshingly straightforward the
| first time I tried it. The non-destructive effect stacking
| mentioned in the video sounds pretty awesome.
|
| The project you mentioned seems nice and clean, but looks like
| it's Linux only (specifically GTK2 only). For me that would
| limit the ability to share editing projects with others way too
| much, since so many are on Windows. Also, the 8 track limit
| might be frustrating for musicians.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-30 23:02 UTC)