11 ms·
Audacity 2.2.0 Released
- bfuller 9y agoI recently switched my workflow to all linux compatible free as in beer software. I like being able to produce music on pretty much any hardware no matter where I am. I love audacity and want to say thanks to the team!
- bitwisebob 9y agoWhat other free-as-in-beer software do you use to produce music?
- tomc1985 9y agoNot OP, but there's Ardour, Rosegarden, or Audacity
- anonova 9y agoArdour (https://ardour.org/ https://ardour.org/) and LMMS (https://lmms.io/ https://lmms.io/) are probably the two most popular open-source DAWs. I also really like MuseScore (https://musescore.org/ https://musescore.org/) for composition.
- bfuller 9y agoalso hydrogen is ok
- thomastjeffery 9y agoAll three of these are Free (as in freedom).
- dec0dedab0de 9y agotechnically Ardour is free as in free speech, but not as in free beer. They do not have official binary downloads for free. If I remember correcyly its more involved than ./configure && make && make install Though Ubuntu Studio has a version ready to go.
- Joeboy 9y agoLots of software that's considered free-as-in-speech-and-beer doesn't have official binary downloads at all. Ardour additionally provides the option of paying to download an official binary. Building from source is pretty much the same as anything else, although there are quite a lot of dependencies. If you're used to installing from source there's no reason Ardour should give you any great difficulty (unless you're unlucky and your distro doesn't supply the required dependencies or something).
- jononor 9y agoIt is waf configure/build/install. Ardour is also available as binary packages on every Linux distribution.
- oddlyaromatic 9y agoMuseScore is great, I have used it to produce lead sheets professionally on several occasions and it does not disappoint. I grew up on Sibelius but prefer MuseScore for simpler tasks. They have done a great job.
- miclill 9y agoHey, I have a score for a choir in musescore and want to create practicing files. For example in the soprano file the soprano voice should be louder than the others. Do you know of an automated way to achieve this? Maybe via midi then ardour? I looked at some other tools like timidity but none seem to have the required api. Thanks :-)
- anonova 9y agoThough there's no built-in functionality in MuseScore to do this, you can write a plugin that controls the mix for each voice. See this forum topic, which is quite similar to what you're trying to do: https://musescore.org/en/node/56916 https://musescore.org/en/node/56916
- tangental 9y agoNot for producing as such but there's also Mixxx DJ software where you can write your own controls and effects in Javascript.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoHave you used it? How does it compare to commercial DJ software? Iyho
- tangental 9y agoYes I use it regularly. It has more or less the same features as the commercial software. Where it falls down is with the quality of the audio effects which are nowhere near as good as the ones you find on Serato or Traktor, but they're getting better all the time. On the other hand, you can customize almost every aspect of Mixxx. I have an unconventional controller setup so created my own skin (XML and CSS) and MIDI controls (Javascript) and that has really helped my 'creativity'.
- tomc1985 9y agoCompared to digital vinyl with Serato, I found Mixx to be laggy (and more importantly, lacking of a dedicated next/previous track keys) with a low-end Pioneer DDJ SB. Track controls are replaced with a "hot cue" function, which makes beatmatching without cuepoints unnecessarily cumbersome. Don't recall if the UI had a dedicated next/prev track button but remapping the control scheme meant diving into some javascript datastructure that I wasn't in the right mindset to do at the time. Really wanted to like Mixxx but I could not see how I could perform with it
- marssaxman 9y agoI've been using Mixxx for years, but I've never tried Serato. I'm curious, since I can't imagine what the point of "next/previous" keys would be - what do you do with them? Next/previous relative to what, exactly?
- 9y ago
- piggybank 9y agoSame! I do youtube videos and I run exclusive on Linux, Audacity is part of my software suite, made a video about the set up here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRb5ioW-_Ec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRb5ioW-_Ec Kudos the Audacity devs.
- cleeus 9y agoI'll chime in: Thank you Audacity (-team) for always being there when I need you (aka consistent quality and maintenance).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tpabla 9y agoI recorded my first songs on audacity, I love this piece of software!
- xellisx 9y agoBack in my day, we had Windows Recorder and Cool Edit.
- laumars 9y agoI don't think anyone used Windows Sound Recorder for anything serious. It had a built in maximum record length for starters (I think to prevent piracy?). Sound Forge was my preferred editor for years before Audacity matured. Cool Edit was ok, but I seem to recall it had a bizarrely over-designed UI that made the thing feel more like a toy than a serious tool. Particularly when compared to the much older and more feature rich (at that time) Sound Forge. It took a while before Cool Edit really became competitive and by that point I was already using Audacity. I do still miss some features of Sound Forge even now. Though I don't tend to do too much with audio editors these days compared to the stuff I was doing in the 90s and 00s.
- whatever_dude 9y ago> It had a built in maximum record length for starters (I think to prevent piracy?). It was somewhat related to the memory the computer had. I think it tried to store audio all uncompressed in memory. At the very least it varied a lot between different machines. I remember trying it in a super low spec machine and it could record up to about 5s max.
- dguaraglia 9y agoHaha, Cool Edit... now, that's a name I haven't heard in forever. Cool Edit and Paint Shop Pro were like the highest end crackeable shareware I never had a use for, and yet for some reason were the first thing I'd install on every new Windows install.
- bobsgame 9y ago
- tomc1985 9y agoI am so glad for Audacity but the UI always feels more convoluted than it needs to be. I wish they would copy Sound Forge's controls
- microcolonel 9y agoThat's a thought! I think that Reaper is the one to beat these days though, is there an essay or review of Sound Forge which would capture (comprehensively) what is to love about it? It'd be nice to decouple the UI from all the major open source sequencer and audio software, just leave some sort of pure data + Core Audio style innards and reconnect the UIs on top. I've taken a few cracks at this in private, but embarrassingly have a hard time getting much done on this particular project without anyone watching.
- tomc1985 9y agoI am not at home with my audio software but, off the top of my head, zooming and navigating a waveform in Sound Forge is SUPER efficient and intuitive, as mouse-wheel zooms and middle-click scrolls, and click-drag to edit individual samples. You can quickly zoom into your work at a level of individual samples and them zoom out and see the whole waveform in only a few movements. My other favorite features are how editing doesn't rely on "modes' like Audacity (I hate having to hit a button before I make a selection then another to do something else), and Sound Forge's selection logic itself: - the playback cursor will intelligently snap and loop on your selections (or not, depending on how you set the toggle), - - the editing scrolls to follow your cursor as you are zoomed in, but not if you're currently editing something. A lot of programs do this but I find their logic is terrible and I have to control automatic scrolling myself. This is very helpful for working on seamlessly looping material, as you can leave playback on loop and continue working at the very end of your selection without the UI losing your place - load and save in native formats without having to use some proprietary intermediary format (AUP)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- uryga 9y ago
- designcode 9y agoIs the UI still terrible ?
- esaym 9y agoLooks like still no native pulse audio support.. dang.
- wohlergehen 9y agoI know I've come across a debugging story that ultimately ended up with the author loading binary data into audacity and hearing/seeing a pattern. Does anyone know what I mean, and has a link, since I can't seem to find it...?
- bayangan 9y agoThis is the only reference I have to it https://imgur.com/7ZoTLX7 https://imgur.com/7ZoTLX7
- mattkevan 9y agoIt’s fun loading images into Audacity. The audio effects look surprisingly like they sound.
- adrianN 9y agoReference https://questionsomething.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/databending-using-audacity-effects/ https://questionsomething.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/databendi...
- arthur_pryor 9y agocool! good to know.
- brian-armstrong 9y agoThere's some visualizing memory stuff in this bluray drive reversing https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/reverse-engineering-a-blu-ray-drive-for-laser-graffiti/ https://hackaday.com/2014/10/30/reverse-engineering-a-blu-ra...
- gh02t 9y agoIt's pretty common to use Audacity as a (very crappy) oscilloscope to capture analog signals via a sound card, is that maybe what you're thinking?
- sogen 9y agoMaybe Spectrograms? i.e. Aphex Twin's Equation More here: http://twistedsifter.com/2013/01/hidden-images-embedded-into-songs-spectrographs/ http://twistedsifter.com/2013/01/hidden-images-embedded-into...
- Cyphase 9y agoCan the link be changed to HTTPS? Unfortunately the site isn't doing it automatically, even though it does support HTTPS connections.
- blt 9y agoMIDI support seems like feature bloat to me...
- reaperducer 9y agobt and hundreds of thousands of other musicians would disagree. (Actually, let's hope that bt can afford something better than Audacity, but the point remains that MIDI is still a hugely popular protocol.)
- tomc1985 9y agoIt's not that. MIDI != PCM or any kind of audio data really Midi looks like (imagine someone playing two notes: a C then a D): C4 127 On C4 127 Off D4 127 On D4 127 Off (not literally, but that is the essence of MIDI) MIDI support means synthesizer support, which means VST support, which means now you need some sort of MIDI data editor, which means now you've got to work out all the weird timing shit with MIDI, and by this point you are better off with LMMS or FLStudio or Pro Tools or what-have-you. Use the tool most fit for purpose
- blt 9y agoI don't understand your point. Of course MIDI is a popular protocol, I'm just saying that a basic multitrack audio editor doesn't need midi support.
- da_chicken 9y agoKind of depends to what extent MIDI is supported. Many instruments output MIDI. If they're slowly adding MIDI playback support, they may begin adding MIDI recording support.
- tomc1985 9y agoAudacity is for audio data. If you want MIDI use a DAW
- harrumph 9y ago>MIDI support seems like feature bloat to me... Totally agree, but you know how it is. I really have always seen Audacity as a swiss army knife for PCM audio files, but I am always surprised to see what people do with swiss army knives.
- SnowingXIV 9y agoWoah, this is still around? Years and years ago when I poorly attempted that "band" life. My friends and I would use this as our recording software and it was great. Glad to see them keep at it!
- ukyrgf 9y agoI love seeing software that still has a "Screenshots" section of their website. It's looked the same for as long as I've been using computers to record audio, starting with my high school band's demo over 15 years ago. I could probably make fun of Audacity for not keeping up with the times, but if you look at other DAWs you'll see none are exactly bastions of good interface design. I got a little more serious about my music last year and decided I wanted to invest in a nice DAW, but after demoing I few I felt completely unimpressed. They're nearly identical to how they were 15 years ago, other than my PC being much more powerful. I ended up just sticking with Reaper, and hoping something comes along someday to mix the industry up. Proprietary dongles and tiered versions of the exact same software with gimped features doesn't cut it for me.
- pensono 9y agoHave you tried bitwig? It's fairly new and seems to do alot of things right.
- st0le 9y agoI'm more likely to download your app if you have some informative screenshots on your webpage.
- tomc1985 9y ago> but if you look at other DAWs you'll see none are exactly bastions of good interface design What? Modern "good interface design" (at least by HN standards) has almost nothing to say about complicated 1000+ feature apps. (In fact every time I rant that modern design sucks and that apps need more features the first response I usually get back is, "but that's so much more testing! Do you know how many execution paths we'd have to manage???" Well, that is kind of the point) Have you ever produced music with any of these tools? For one, their goals are different -- FLStudio, for example, tries to be "the fastest path from your brain to your speakers", and the interface seems as such and is loved for it. Ableton intentionally crams everything into one screen because it is used as a performance tool -- if you've seen any recent photos of Daft Punk et al performing, you'll see it running right there on a laptop, usually above the mixer or the CDJs. Cubase has kept an interface very similar to its original Atari 2600 (I think?) version, because people have been using that app for 30+ years now. Any time I see new-school UI designers' take on audio apps I cannot help but cringe. They are completely misunderstanding and underestimating their audience -- audio is complicated and we need complex tools to do what we do.
- clebio 9y agoI've used Audacity off and on for years. Love that it is still around and pretty much _just works_. It does just what I need, as infrequently as I need it, and doesn't require an idiotic (and steep) subscription fee to use (glaring at you Adobe CS).
- bastawhiz 9y agoHonestly, I couldn't disagree more. Audacity is one of the buggiest pieces of open source software I've used. Audio routinely gets corrupted or lost. Their "known issues" page is comically long, and little ever gets fixed. I have a lot of love for them for making audio editing accessible to the masses, but I wish a team would clean the app up like the LibreOffice folks did to OpenOffice.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoI hate to agree with you, but I do. Quite buggy.
- brian-armstrong 9y agoThey are pretty accepting of new patches, and the source is easily readable. Knock yourself out :)
- clebio 9y agoSure, but like, the licensing works well for me. :) Also, I don't know who decided to put a "Find out about LibreOffice Vanilla..." banner in that damn app, which appears Every. Time. I. Open. The. App. now. They need to be taken out back and code-reviewed harshly. It's not like LibreOffice is without many horrendous flaws either.
- pishpash 9y agoOh yeah, it did crash a lot and would get into weird states that would make it hard to recover. Oddly, commercial editing software, even late versions, also had weird corruption issues from time to time, usually when plugins are involved.
- futurix 9y agoComplete support for macOS Sierra after the follow up is already released.
- qwertybn 9y agoModern interface design is all smoke and mirrors, and not about empowering the user. Interfaces in the 90’s and 00’s were much more useful. Given a choice, most power users would downgrade back to more features if they had that option.
- armitron 9y agoStill looks like crap on OSX and Windows due to using GTK. I wish projects with aspirations of being cross-platform would stop using that shitty library and switch to QT.
- gh02t 9y agoIt looks like crap on Linux too, they deliberately chose a widget theme to make it look that way. This version at least includes revamped theme support, so maybe someone will give it a decent coat of paint.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hellbanner 9y ago" Download Audacity Windows Installer - 19.34 MB | version: 2.2.0 | SHA256 signature Download Audacity Windows Zip - 11.31 MB | version: 2.2.0 | SHA256 signature Download Audacity macOs DMG - 28.14 MB | version: 2.2.0 | SHA256 signature Download Audacity Linux source - 9.72 MB | version: 2.2.0 | SHA256 signature Download Audacity LADSPA plugins for Mac - zip - 2.74 MB | version: 0.4.15 | SHA256 signature Download Audacity LADSPA plugins for Windows - installer - 1.44 MB | version: 0.4.15 | SHA256 signature Download Audacity Mac OS X 2.1.1 - DMG (screen reader accessible) - 38.61 MB | version: 2.1.1 | SHA256 signature Download Audacity Mac OS X 2.1.1 - ZIP (screen reader accessible) - 16.50 MB | version: 2.1.1 | SHA256 signature " How can I trust the website to tell me the correct SHA256 signature? Shouldn't this be linked to a repository, or ideally something my client can verify the commits are correct?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- TheAceOfHearts 9y agoWell, for starters, the SHA256 signatures are on both the Audacity website and its FossHub page. You can check if both places match, which makes it less likely to be from an untrusted source. They even have a page explaining how to check the signature. If you're on macOS, before mounting a disk image the system will verify its checksum. Additionally, the default security settings only allows applications from the app store and identified developers. You can use the codesign tool (codesign -dv --verbose /Applications/Audacity.app) to verify the code signature as well as display the signing identity. In this case, it's signed by Paul Licameli, which is the author of this blog post. With that said, it's not foolproof, as the TeamIdentifier is not publicly posted anywhere, someone could possibly create a Developer ID with his name.
- gspetr 9y agoScrolled quickly through the comments and I want to ask one question: How good is this tool compared to commercial software?
- steamer25 9y agoWhen I need 10s of tracks (multiple drum mics, bass, guitars, keyboards, vocal mics, effects, etc.), I prefer to use Cakewalk Sonar. I've also heard good things about Reaper which is pretty inexpensive. I often end up using Audacity when I'm working on only one or very few tracks (e.g., a video voice over). It works quite nicely for basic edits, trimming, normalizing, etc. without as much clutter (tempo, time signatures, measures, etc.) as some of the more music-oriented packages. With the addition of MIDI tracks, it sounds like Audacity is moving more in that direction but we'll see.
- pishpash 9y agoAt least a few versions ago it was okay for basic stuff but quite far behind feature-wise to commercial software, which benefit from more integration, more polished UX, and a large bundle of plugins. Having said that a tool is a tool and in capable hands Audacity is as good a tool as anything.
- pastelsky 9y agoI wish there was a some sort of a Open Source UI squad that would just work towards making awesome UIs for projects like Audacity, GIMP etc. There are so many low hanging fruits here like - iconography, spacing, using the right widget controls etc. that would make a lot more people want to use (and hopefully support) such software.
- chrisweekly 9y ago+1 this, 1,000x this.
- GuiA 9y agoBuilding a solid design culture is extremely hard - in my experience having worked professionally as a designer and engineer, much more so than a solid engineering culture (which is already insanely hard). There’s a reason only a handful of organizations in the world succeed at both. I spent time volunteering for Gnome many years ago (2.x days), and it was extremely hard there, even though it had a reputation for being one of the most designer friendly open source projects. It was a struggle to push for design considerations with obvious benefits such as accessibility - let alone anything remotely resembling aesthetics. The issue with open source is that ultimately, the project maintainers tend to be programmers with programmers’ priorities and views on design. Good design requires consistent, thoughtful sacrifice and compromise, and someone at the top to enforce it. If the open source UI squad makes recommendations that the Gimp maintainers choose to ignore, then what?
- TuringNYC 9y agoPerhaps having "skins" capabilities would allow the best of both worlds...though it might end up like WinAmp with thousands of unuseably designed yet popular skins.
- wiz21c 9y agoI'm afraid it goes deeper than that. For example, you could decide to move some functionality from a sidebar to a context menu. this implies reprogramming the interface very differently; a skin can't do that. This also implies prototyping a lot. So basically the designer and the coder have to sit together quite a lot, that's not easy when you communicate via internet.
- unsatchmo 9y agoFull support for 10.12
- unicornporn 9y agoCan you apply real-time effects to tracks in multi-track mode these days? A big limitation if you still can't.
- bartread 9y agoWhilst Ableton Live has long been my DAW of choice I've been using Audacity since around 2004 and still use it today. Mostly it's quick edits on game sound effects: changing sample rate, bit rate, topping and tailing, fading, exporting MP3s. When I master tracks in Ableton I also still use Audacity to export an MP3 version (that's probably just force of habit though - I imagine there's a better way of doing that these days). I realise I could automate the MP3 export from the command line but it's infrequent enough that using Audacity to do it, edit the tags, and suchlike is probably the easiest option. Live is a great DAW, and I really enjoyed FLStudio back when I used to run Windows at home, but for quickly hacking around with raw audio it's pretty hard to beat Audacity. Great software, and good to see it still under active development.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- omission 9y agoStrange that OGG/Opus has been omitted from yet another release. I don't mind using ffmpeg but it would be nice to export from the same interface.
- app4soft 9y agoSadly, there no yet ready-to-use Audacity 2.2.0 packages[1] for most popular distributives or at least AppImage[2], that could be run without installing. Also, its look like all daily/nightly builds on Launchpad[3] and on Travis CI[4] failed... [1] https://repology.org/metapackage/audacity/versions https://repology.org/metapackage/audacity/versions [2] https://bintray.com/probono/AppImages/Audacity https://bintray.com/probono/AppImages/Audacity [3] https://launchpad.net/~audacity-team/+archive/ubuntu/daily https://launchpad.net/~audacity-team/+archive/ubuntu/daily [4] https://travis-ci.org/audacity/audacity https://travis-ci.org/audacity/audacity