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My first reaction was "oh no..". Audacity has to be one of the most beloved and widely recommended software of all time. It's not often that an aquisition like

My first reaction was "oh no..". Audacity has to be one of the most beloved and widely recommended software of all time. It's not often that an aquisition like this goes well for very long. After looking at MuseScore and UltimateGuitar, however, it looks like they are also free and have a similar aesthetic to Audacity. Maybe this will work out after all.

arbitrage 5y ago
Beloved is a little too strong of word choice for me. The UI is garbage. The plugin architecture is rough. It's difficult to workflow -- no automation is really available. Audacity produces good results, at the cost of an insanely high requirement for patience and experience. What you are actually in love with is the creative process of editing and creating audio. As a project, audacity has languished for a long time. It has the potential to be great -- but it's not there, now.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  Much agreed on the history of Audacity. It has so much capability, but it's high time we fixed UIs that inspire anger or still depend on Athena widgets.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    Audacity uses wxWidgets (though almost everything of the primary UI is custom painted, so it doesn't really matter which toolkit is used).
- javchz 5y ago
  The great about Audacity it's that it's a great DAW starter. You can record, edit, multitrack, mix and apply effects. It's fast, out of the box, multiplatform... and I haven't used it in years, but that's mostly because Reaper it's too great, the only thing I miss it's audacity loading times. Now I think Audacity has only a few bottlenecks, the main workflow it's not that broken. If what they say it's accomplished and they prioritize VTS non-destructive effects, improve the Timeline management and other UX details. I could see Audacity present in the majority of home studios and the software behind a lot of professional works (not big studios, but enough for self publish). I now a couple of local bands that recorded their demo with audacity, a cheap interface and a sm57 mic. ...and if I can ask maybe add support for ASIO (something hard to happen becauses licences, but I can dream).
- offtop5 5y ago
  Obviously it does what it does well. It can edit audio quickly. I'll never use it for anything else aside from chopping up samples. If you want a full DAW use Logic.
marcan_42 5y ago
What scares me is musescore.com. That website went from being a largely free repository of sheet music to a subscription service paying into the music industry, with no support for CC style licenses (it's either public domain or paywalled), locking everyone's sheet music retroactively behind a paywall regardless of actual license, sometimes in violation of said licenses (e.g. anything with a BY-NC or similar style license). None of the profits go to independent creators, only to a few major rights associations, regardless of who actually owns the music. They then tried to threaten folks who had written download tools with vague and ridiculous threats. [1] It seems these days they support CC (finally...), but not any ad-hoc or third party licenses. So most of the music I'm interested in, which is legal to distribute sheet music of for free but not commercially (but under a non-CC license), is still paywalled in violation of its copyright. MuseScore the software is fine, but the MuseScore.com fiasco has left a really bad taste in my mouth. I hope none of that nonsense bleeds over into the development teams of the actual OSS software, but absent any kind of apology or change of direction MuseScore.com, I'm scared. [1] https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5 https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5
- meibo 5y ago
  I was mentioning this last time MuseScore appeared on HN - their CEO gave some insight in the comments on how this came to be. Seems to boil down to "music publishing mafia didn't like it", which is understandable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825533
  - matkoniecz 5y ago
    This does not excuse > Otherwise, I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content. part https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issue-562094186 https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issu... Especially given that person making threats appears to be from Russia and target in China.
    - 5y ago
anyfactor 5y ago
I don't know about UlimateGuitar though. I have found their constant push to signup for pro account quite annoying.
hellcow 5y ago
UltimateGuitar is a horrible website full of dirty UX to force certain behaviors and block others. You wanted to zoom in on a tab? That's a paid subscription feature! Trying to browse on your phone while at a practice session with your band? Download our app, so we can track you, show you ads and prevent other basic functionality! They're constantly changing these and implementing new paywalls and ways to ruin their product while the core experience of tabs never improves. It survives only because of platform effects. I'm not holding out much hope for Audacity.
- epilloud 5y ago
  I fully agree. Trying to use the browser version of ultimate guitar on a 6 inches smartphone is a very frustrating experience. I remember subscribing to the pro version of ultimate guitar about 5 years ago when the app was a must go and in my opinion, it's just been downwards since then
  - kbrisso 5y ago
    I use it because it does have a lot of songs. The search on it is the worst and the UI has its own back button that is not easy to use. Most good apps on Android let you use the devices back button.
nyanpasu64 5y ago
Possibly relevant, MuseScore has a CLA requiring that all code contributors grant MuseScore the right to use the code in proprietary software. Audacity doesn't have such a clause and I don't know if they'll be able to get past contributors to sign such an agreement.
- DistressedDrone 5y ago
  All 126 of them? Doubtful.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Would they need more than 10 of them to agree to have 90% of the code they want to use? Doubtful too.

arbitrage 5y ago

Beloved is a little too strong of word choice for me. The UI is garbage. The plugin architecture is rough. It's difficult to workflow -- no automation is really available. Audacity produces good results, at the cost of an insanely high requirement for patience and experience. What you are actually in love with is the creative process of editing and creating audio. As a project, audacity has languished for a long time. It has the potential to be great -- but it's not there, now.

spacemanmatt 5y ago
Much agreed on the history of Audacity. It has so much capability, but it's high time we fixed UIs that inspire anger or still depend on Athena widgets.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Audacity uses wxWidgets (though almost everything of the primary UI is custom painted, so it doesn't really matter which toolkit is used).
javchz 5y ago
The great about Audacity it's that it's a great DAW starter. You can record, edit, multitrack, mix and apply effects. It's fast, out of the box, multiplatform... and I haven't used it in years, but that's mostly because Reaper it's too great, the only thing I miss it's audacity loading times. Now I think Audacity has only a few bottlenecks, the main workflow it's not that broken. If what they say it's accomplished and they prioritize VTS non-destructive effects, improve the Timeline management and other UX details. I could see Audacity present in the majority of home studios and the software behind a lot of professional works (not big studios, but enough for self publish). I now a couple of local bands that recorded their demo with audacity, a cheap interface and a sm57 mic. ...and if I can ask maybe add support for ASIO (something hard to happen becauses licences, but I can dream).
offtop5 5y ago
Obviously it does what it does well. It can edit audio quickly. I'll never use it for anything else aside from chopping up samples. If you want a full DAW use Logic.

marcan_42 5y ago

What scares me is musescore.com. That website went from being a largely free repository of sheet music to a subscription service paying into the music industry, with no support for CC style licenses (it's either public domain or paywalled), locking everyone's sheet music retroactively behind a paywall regardless of actual license, sometimes in violation of said licenses (e.g. anything with a BY-NC or similar style license). None of the profits go to independent creators, only to a few major rights associations, regardless of who actually owns the music. They then tried to threaten folks who had written download tools with vague and ridiculous threats. [1] It seems these days they support CC (finally...), but not any ad-hoc or third party licenses. So most of the music I'm interested in, which is legal to distribute sheet music of for free but not commercially (but under a non-CC license), is still paywalled in violation of its copyright. MuseScore the software is fine, but the MuseScore.com fiasco has left a really bad taste in my mouth. I hope none of that nonsense bleeds over into the development teams of the actual OSS software, but absent any kind of apology or change of direction MuseScore.com, I'm scared. [1] https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5 https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5

meibo 5y ago
I was mentioning this last time MuseScore appeared on HN - their CEO gave some insight in the comments on how this came to be. Seems to boil down to "music publishing mafia didn't like it", which is understandable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825533
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  This does not excuse > Otherwise, I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content. part https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issue-562094186 https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issu... Especially given that person making threats appears to be from Russia and target in China.
  - 5y ago

anyfactor 5y ago

I don't know about UlimateGuitar though. I have found their constant push to signup for pro account quite annoying.

hellcow 5y ago

UltimateGuitar is a horrible website full of dirty UX to force certain behaviors and block others. You wanted to zoom in on a tab? That's a paid subscription feature! Trying to browse on your phone while at a practice session with your band? Download our app, so we can track you, show you ads and prevent other basic functionality! They're constantly changing these and implementing new paywalls and ways to ruin their product while the core experience of tabs never improves. It survives only because of platform effects. I'm not holding out much hope for Audacity.

epilloud 5y ago
I fully agree. Trying to use the browser version of ultimate guitar on a 6 inches smartphone is a very frustrating experience. I remember subscribing to the pro version of ultimate guitar about 5 years ago when the app was a must go and in my opinion, it's just been downwards since then
- kbrisso 5y ago
  I use it because it does have a lot of songs. The search on it is the worst and the UI has its own back button that is not easy to use. Most good apps on Android let you use the devices back button.

nyanpasu64 5y ago

Possibly relevant, MuseScore has a CLA requiring that all code contributors grant MuseScore the right to use the code in proprietary software. Audacity doesn't have such a clause and I don't know if they'll be able to get past contributors to sign such an agreement.

DistressedDrone 5y ago
All 126 of them? Doubtful.
- coldtea 5y ago
  Would they need more than 10 of them to agree to have 90% of the code they want to use? Doubtful too.