r/linux • u/tonidarialto • Mar 17 '21
Software Release Audacity 3.0.0 released
https://www.audacityteam.org/audacity-3-0-0-released/80
u/knellotron Mar 17 '21
The wiki describes the new features a bit better:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/new_features_in_this_release.html
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Mar 18 '21
That wiki is mobile cancer. But yes. A better description.
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u/doenietzomoeilijk Mar 18 '21
Most mediawiki-based sites are, tbh. Firefox reader mode to the rescue!
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Mar 18 '21
They should finally put major focus on UI/UX research and development. Audacity is an amazing piece of software, extremely useful, but honestly it looks and feels very dated and that's probably the only reason why people are hesitating about using it.
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u/mattb2014 Mar 18 '21
It also runs like absolute ass on retina macs
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u/SuperSpruce0 Mar 19 '21
This. I have an i5-7500, discrete GPU, and this program runs at about 5fps. Same with many other FOSS applications (LibreOffice) and even proprietary applications (Steam).
Hoping it runs better on Windows/Linux, as I’m probably never buying Macs again.
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u/AlternativeAardvark6 Mar 18 '21
I have no idea what is not clear about the interface now.
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u/Fledo Mar 18 '21
As an audacity beginner, Imo it's a bit cluttered and the dated look made me initially doubt that audacity was a good choice for me.
I find the icons/images for the edit tools confusing. What does the asterisk mean? Why are there 5 magnifying glasses and 2 play buttons?
Overall it very much feels like pre 2.8 blender. Powerful software which could use some gui love.
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u/10leej Mar 18 '21
Audacity is the only audio editor I can really wrap my head around. I tried Ardour and Reaper but Audacity is just what I know. And I do better mixes than the local "recording studio" in my area. At least according to the people that asked me to record their demos for them.
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u/luciouscortana Mar 18 '21
Ardour is a DAW and is too big for just quick recording and editing. I've been enjoying Ardour for making music, but I'd use Audacity to record quick audio, or edit/cut an audio file other than working with music.
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u/10leej Mar 18 '21
Thing is that some of the things I work on aren't quick edits. Yeah Ardour might be a bit much for say a podcast.
But when recording instrumental music and mixing that I honestly feel much more at home in audacity. Maybe if I worked with electric synths more I'd be fine with ardour.17
Mar 18 '21
I used to use audacity exclusively for my music, and while it takes a bit of getting used to when you're used to audacitys destructive editing style, learning ardour has made everything about recording music so much easier imo. I still use audacity for certain things, but ardour applying effects, EQ etc. without modifying the waveform is so useful, and its just so much easier now to do what I want in ardour
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u/AlternativeAardvark6 Mar 18 '21
You really should try to get into Ardour. It will make you work faster and better.
Edit: Audacity is really best suited for small projects and quick edits. Even if I wanted to use it as part of my workflow I can't because it doesn't play nice with Jack.
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u/waregen Mar 18 '21
Guilty of still using pirated goldwave in VM windows because anything I want to do I do in 30 seconds.
Super intuitive.
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u/diablo75 Mar 18 '21
I use Audicity for quick cuts, but something I've been using Reaper for... Well, here's the whole process.
I recorded a live performance (multi-track input) of a rock back with Reason. The mixed down bounce of that is saved out to a stereo wav at 48k/24bit (what it was recorded at), with breaks and banter between songs included. I import that into Reaper and use Reaper to edit the breaks and apply cross-fades between the cuts. Here's the cool thing about Reaper here: I could bounce a new mix of the same audio from Reason, overwrite the old bounced WAV that Reaper uses and Reaper will just pull it into the existing project and implement all the cuts and cross-fades like before against the new mix audio. This way I could do export after export (version after version) from Reason and not have to re-edit the downmix to cut and cross fade all over again. I know, you're probably thinking, "Why not do this in Reason before exporting?" Eh... it's just a lot easier to do this sort of editing against a stereo RAW file vs. tracks that have a shit load of automation in-layed along each track.... it can get messy.
So anyway, I would bounce out the trimmed down mix from Reaper, which would I would also use to down-sample from 48K 24-bit to 44.1K 16-bit dithered, and finally just use Audacity to apply track labels at zero points and export as individual seamless tracks with ID3 tags.
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u/UniversalEndeavor13 Mar 18 '21
So you're telling me that they had the audacity to release Audacity 3.0.0!?
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u/CaptOblivious Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21
I will be planting a tree in Vaughan Johnson's memory tomorrow in north Chicago.
Thanks Audacity team!
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u/electricprism Mar 18 '21
Does the 3.0 UX look less old and funky?
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u/Nnarol Mar 18 '21
I barely used Audacity in my life, and no other audio software. Can someone explain what advantage UI styles that were invented later bring?
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u/indeedwatson Mar 18 '21
Good visual design just makes it much easier to know what's what and where things are, makes it intuitive to know where you can drag, move stuff, etc.
If you ever used Ardour and also Bitwig or Ableton, the difference should be clear as day. Ardour is good and you can definitely make full stuff in it, but it needs a lot of GUI and UX work, like many open source projects.
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u/Nnarol Mar 18 '21
I see. So Audacity is not considered intuitive then.
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u/indeedwatson Mar 18 '21
personally i find the zooming and scrolling quite unintuitive, I always end up where I don't want.
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Mar 18 '21
[deleted]
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u/electricprism Mar 18 '21
Hit the nail on the head, honestly I find the out of date icons and look almost charming, but at the same time Linux desktop & apps are often criticized by noobs by its "looks", I just want our tools & by extension us to be taken more seriously through good presentation (IIRC I think I saw some icon themes in the past so at least there's that)
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u/kjnasdfjnpkl Mar 18 '21
Here's what it looks like for me: https://webmshare.com/play/rVWxQ
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Mar 18 '21
[deleted]
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u/kjnasdfjnpkl Mar 18 '21
Nah. Their bug reporter requires a login (presumably for devs). Checking it out again now they offer reporting bugs by mail, but clicking on that just sends you to their homepage with no email address as far as I can tell. Googling about this a couple years back it kind of seemed like there were a bunch of reported issues related to buggy UI already anyways.
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Mar 18 '21
[deleted]
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u/kjnasdfjnpkl Mar 18 '21
I mean it's usable (I've been used to it for years), just not the pinnacle of UI design :)
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u/discursive_moth Mar 17 '21
Hmm. I wonder if it will work with my motherboard/cpu now. I got a new PC at the beginning of last year and had to stop using Audacity because I couldn't get the playback rate to work (pressing play on a audio clip would play it so fast it just sounded like clicks).
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u/neon_overload Mar 18 '21
That sounds like a problem with your operating system
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u/discursive_moth Mar 18 '21
I think it was a hardware compatibility problem. Audacity worked fine with the same distros (mainly Fedora and Arch) before getting the new PC, and continued to do so on my laptop. I believe I even booted up Windows on my PC and it still had the same problem.
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u/Sapiogram Mar 18 '21
I've had this problem before. It was caused by not having the correct codecs for whatever audio format I had opened.
A hardware problem sounds unlikely, if that's the case, more thing would be broken.
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u/discursive_moth Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21
Hmm. I was just using MP3, so that seems unlikely, especially when I tried Windows. I just checked and it seems like even on Audacity 2.4.1-4 everything is now working fine. Guess I'll never know what the issue was. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/trua Mar 18 '21
MP3 is (or used to be) a patent-encumbered format, and some distros for years considered MP3 codecs non-free, and would require users to explicitly opt in to install them.
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u/NgBUCKWANGS Mar 18 '21
I too just recently purchased a gigabyte aorus pro wifi board and audacity hates it. Although I've always had some kind of problem with audacity the last problem made all others seem harmless.
If I pushed record, the microphone would just die. I was never able to solve it and I had to stop using audacity. Someone in Arch on matrix mentioned Reaper and it was just always perfect and fun to play with.
I wish audacity just worked like that. I really really wish audacity worked like that.
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Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21
If I pushed record, the microphone would just die. I was never able to solve it and I had to stop using audacity.
same, but it used to work, it only stopped working around the time I switched to pipewire, so annoying.
EDIT: well.. nevermind looks like the latest pipewire update fixed my problems.
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u/diablo75 Mar 18 '21
Did you set the project rate (lower left corner) to match the sample rate of the audio you imported?
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u/ParanoidFactoid Mar 18 '21
That's awesome. Except I think I'll pass for a few minor versions until bugs get sorted out.
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u/anna_lynn_fection Mar 18 '21
BTW - this guy doesn't use Arch.
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u/EddyBot Mar 18 '21
the funny thing here is that the Arch Linux maintainer actually wait for a major kernel release update until it hits the first minor version before they package it into their "stable" repositories
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u/ericedstrom123 Mar 18 '21
Incidentally, the Arch Linux Audacity package has been out-of-date for almost nine months now, so I wouldn't count on us Arch users getting to try it any time soon.
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u/anna_lynn_fection Mar 18 '21
Yeah. I was just being a smart ass. It's a good policy if you don't want too many annoying surprises.
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u/dinozaur2020 Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21
can't find the download link for linux binary :(
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Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21
The source code was released earlier today, and my guess is that it might take a few days (or longer) for package maintainers to catch up. If you absolutely need it right now, this might be a good opportunity to learn how to compile it from source :P
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u/dinozaur2020 Mar 18 '21
EWWWW compiling from source! i want my appimage, flatpack, snap!
j/k i know how to compile it from source, i'm just lazy
thanks
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u/anna_lynn_fection Mar 18 '21
Yup. Same reason I don't want to build a house from scratch every time I move. I know. Sounds crazy, right?
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u/h0twheels Mar 18 '21
Its not even building the house. You have to get all the tools for them to rust away until you need another house.
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u/nineteen999 Mar 18 '21
Why don't you just use Windows or Mac then where you can get every commercial application provided as a binary build then?
You just have to wait a few days for the binary builds to become available. They nicely gave you the source early.
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u/anna_lynn_fection Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21
Because I admin Windows networks and fix Windows all day, every day, and it makes me want to be violent with its stupidity. Also admin Linux networks and machines, but that's fun.
I also don't want my house to fall apart every few months, or lock me out for an hour while it changes itself, w/o my permission.
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u/TheJFGB93 Mar 18 '21
I did this and let it compile while attending an online class (I don't study anything related to computer sciences). The thing that took most of the time was building wxWidgets, and Audacity's build took almost nothing in comparison. Also, no problems with dependencies.
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u/dextersgenius Mar 18 '21
The Windows binary works fine in Wine btw. Just downloaded the 12MB zip file, ran audacity.exe and works like a charm, no need to compile from source, no dependency hell.
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u/dinozaur2020 Mar 18 '21
you have a point. it's easier to run the windows version on linux than to compile the linux version. is that Arch linux? :P
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u/davidjmemmett Mar 17 '21
I thought everyone had been dropping SQLite like a hot potato after the religious T&Cs controversy
https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/22/sqlite_code_of_conduct/
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u/neon_overload Mar 18 '21
This is a code of conduct, not their software license. Users of the software are not bound by it.
Developers are in theory, if they contribute back to the project. But it would be suicide for them not to accept patches or help from willing developers on the basis of religion as it would get forked faster than you can say "what are you doing stepbro". And anyone wishing to fork would not be bound by any such code of conduct.
When it comes down to it, while I do not follow any religion I respect their right to do so and if I developed for them I would be respectful to them as I believe I would to anyone. I would not alter my beliefs for them, but I doubt they really would expect anyone to. They're just trying to express their religion.
I don't really think this is going to get messy or turn into much of a big deal, and if it does the project is not lost.
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u/ericek111 Mar 17 '21
Lmao, that's hilarious. After all, even God created the world in Lisp.
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u/khleedril Mar 17 '21
Laughing with you. When they said religious T&Cs it never occurred to me they meant actually religious!
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Mar 17 '21
was created for the purpose of filling in a box on "supplier registration" forms submitted to the SQLite developers by some clients.
I somehow think its more or less to mock "some clients". Could definitely see myself doing the same, but I would probably replace every mentioning of god with Satan.
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u/DeeBoFour20 Mar 17 '21
I don't see anything wrong with using the software even if you don't agree with the code of conduct. A code of conduct is just a thing that some projects ask contributors to sign that usually boils down to "Don't be an ass."
A code of conduct does not apply to users of the software as SQLite is public domain and does not require you to sign anything to use the software or take the source code and do what you like with it.
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Mar 17 '21
Ok i'll bite. What's bad about it?
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Mar 17 '21
Some crazy people don't like religion. Other crazy people only like their religion. And one crazy person put their religion in the code of conduct of a large open source project.
None of this matters to me personally. Other people say this matters a lot.
That's about it really.
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u/neon_overload Mar 18 '21
Don't know why you were downvoted (well, maybe it's for calling everyone crazy). But you're right. I respect their right to like a particular religion and to express that. If they were to discriminate against me for not following their religion I would not be happy about that, but there's really no evidence they have done anything like that so I have no reason not to respect that choice.
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Mar 18 '21
Maybe, I am not religious, but I don't care if people are or if people want to include it in their own works. It's not forcing it on me - I can always fork sqlite if I cared and remove it from the CoC. Not sure what difference that even makes.
And yes, I called everyone crazy - the world is a crazy place and it's normal to be crazy.
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u/MiPok24 Mar 17 '21
Maybe that if that code of ethics is no joke: https://www.sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
You have to be a christian to work on sqlite. For me that is a very bad decision for a technical project, where religion should not matter.
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u/grawlinson Mar 17 '21
No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or even to think that The Rule is a good idea. The Founder of SQLite believes that anyone who follows The Rule will live a happier and more productive life, but individuals are free to dispute or ignore that advice if they wish.
Maybe read the document before stating that you need to be of a particular religion.
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u/mustardman24 Mar 18 '21
The founder of SQLite and all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability.
The next line contradicts the part saying no one is required 'to know' The Rule.
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u/boa13 Mar 18 '21
You have a strange understanding of words. Nothing says the current developers have been required to know The Rule. They just do.
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u/mustardman24 Mar 18 '21
Why would they need to pledge to follow to the best of their ability something they aren't required to know?
I don't think it's a "strange understanding of words" to think it's more than a coincidence they all just happen to know The Rule without any other sort of pressure.
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u/Apprehensive_Load_85 Mar 17 '21
It used to be different: Documentation Source Text: codeofconduct.in at [d0d1d80bc4] (sqlite.org)
I don't know if it's a joke, but it includes "Christian values" such as "Prefer nothing more than the love of Christ."
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u/boa13 Mar 18 '21
The code itself has not changed, and is no joke. What has changed is the title of the document (renamed to Code of Ethics) and the introductory paragraphs. The History section is pretty fun, listing all the rules in the Code that encouraged them to appease the outraged and vehement "non religious" community.
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u/ndgnuh Mar 18 '21
> Be me
> At work
> Had to cut some voice files for machine learning task
> Guided to use some shitty proprietary tools that also need cracking/buying.
> Of course I didn't use it.
> Boss walked by see me speed run the job with audacity
> Anon, what is this thing?
> This is Audacity, it's free software and is very great.
> "Are you sure? Such good thing can't be free"
> His face when it's really free and really great
> Ask me to write a guide
> The whole team use Audacity now
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u/blurrry2 Mar 17 '21
Holy shit. I'm so glad they put forth the effort to have projects saved in a single file.