Wow; I was one of the first developers to work on Audacity way back in 2001, but I haven't kept up with its development in a long time. It's exciting to see a new major release.
I'm always amazed and proud at how widely I see Audacity being used. Most recently I spent the 5 weeks as a juror on a criminal trial, and I saw Audacity installed on the prosecutor's computer.
It sure has been a long time, hasn't it? Audacity 2.0 has been in development since 2005 (in form of the "unstable" 1.3.x series)!
haberman and I first met when I started contributing to Audacity more than a decade ago. Later he helped me apply for a job at Amazon.com and we became teammates. Since then we've drifted away from Audacity development, both left Amazon to work in startups, and haberman is now at Google while I ended up at Mozilla, but we are still good friends and keep in touch -- and also debate technical minutia on HN. :)
Audacity has always been short on developers for a project with such a large userbase, so development has often been slow. But the contributor community was one of the friendliest I've been involved in, thanks in large part to the great stewardship of Audacity's creator Dominic Mazzoni. If you use Audacity, please consider checking out the code and fixing a bug or two!
Audacity is AWESOME!!! It's perfect for removing background hissing on cheap mics.
For any of you who have a lot of hissing or humming coming from your mic when you record podcasts or demo videos for your startups. Audacity can take it out in just a few clicks using its noise removal filter. Just remember, whenever you start recording an audio track, wait 5 seconds before you start talking, and then use those 5 seconds of hissing to build a profile using the noise removal. And apply that to the whole track. My brother and I were blown away at how well it took all the hissing out. I recorded on a $9 Walmart mike and it sounded like studio quality work. Crisp, clean voice, pure hiss-less silence between sentences.
Thank you and all of its developers. Audacity is a perfect example of easy to use, easy to learn, open source software.
I use Audacity all the time: with customers' permission, I will record short bits of our Skype calls if I think that later I might want to refer back to directions, requirements, etc. This saves needless note taking.
Sorry, but I haven't used Audacity in a while ... how exactly do you record Skype calls with it? Is there some sort of integration with the app or your sound card?
* Many effects significantly improved, especially Equalization, Noise Removal and Normalize. Vocal Remover now included plus GVerb on Windows and Mac. VAMP analysis plug-ins now supported.
* Improved label tracks with Sync-Lock Tracks feature in the Tracks Menu. Multiple clips per track. Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard. Many more keyboard shortcuts.
* New Device Toolbar to manage inputs and outputs. Timer Record feature. New Mixer Board view with per-track VU meters.
* Automatic Crash Recovery in the event of abnormal program termination.
* Fast "On-Demand" import of WAV/AIFF files if read directly from source. FLAC now fully supported. Added support for optional FFmpeg library for import/export of AC3/M4A/WMA and import of audio from video files.
This hardly seems to justify a leap from 1.3. That and the fact that selection and playback still work in the most counter-intuitive way imaginable.
So when Audacity 1.0 was released, new feature development moved to the 1.1 branch, while the 1.0 branch received only bug fixes. When the 1.1 branch was considered "finished" it became the new stable version 1.2.0, and the 1.0 branch was abandoned. Then new feature development moved to the 1.3 branch, which has now been released as the new stable version Audacity 2.0.
If I remember right, many of the major changes between the 1.1/1.2 series and the 1.3/2.0 series were under the hood, such as support for new versions of Portaudio and wxWidgets (which added compatibility for newer hardware and operating systems), improvements to the file format, and enhancements to the importers.
I love audacity, it started me and my bro off on our music recording road. My bro recently produced his album with it!
"Shaky Horse"
http://declandoherty.bandcamp.com/
Nice songs, I would love to see them a bit more produced though. The guitars are beatifully recorded but the voice is somewhat more irregular. Keep the good job!
Whenever I have used audacity to do simple audio edits I feel like I am using an elephant gun for a fly swatter. For some reason I never feel the same way when I use gimp to do the equivalent minor image modification.
Really? I find the opposite; gimp has a two minute load time and an interface that expects you to study it. Audacity opens up and gives you big obvious buttons for the simple things - if anything it looks too simple, as if all you can do is basic cutting and splicing.
Agreed. I was really hoping that with 2.0, there would be at least some attempt at refining the interface.
Compare the interface to Reaper (The Cockos team has three main contributors, right?), Cubase or Vegas, or if you want to get shiny, Propellerheads or Line6.
Audacity is a great free tool in the arsenal of a budding musician and transcriber. You can slow down tracks without changing pitch to try to understand what notes are being played.
Coupled with Reaper, also free if you're a big cheapo, somewhat analogously to the WinRar model, you get so much great functionality for so little.
I love Audacity. The only thing I'd like to see changed is labelling/splits. It is a pain in the ass to the point that I usually just cut the start and end off save that and then undo.
A lot of people use "GNU/Linux" and "Linux" interchangeably to refer to the origins of the OS and not just the software that is being used. Pretty sure if you ask RMS he thinks that all distributions of Linux should be called "GNU/Linux".
Also, not sure what that has to do with them having a version of their software that runs on OS X. They could easily use libraries that aren't glibc for the Mac version.
I use Audacity to record live radio shows, DJ mixes, edit sounds for games and even for the odd bits of quick and dirty sample manipulation for music production. For the price it's a really great piece of software. :)
[+] [-] haberman|14 years ago|reply
I'm always amazed and proud at how widely I see Audacity being used. Most recently I spent the 5 weeks as a juror on a criminal trial, and I saw Audacity installed on the prosecutor's computer.
[+] [-] mbrubeck|14 years ago|reply
haberman and I first met when I started contributing to Audacity more than a decade ago. Later he helped me apply for a job at Amazon.com and we became teammates. Since then we've drifted away from Audacity development, both left Amazon to work in startups, and haberman is now at Google while I ended up at Mozilla, but we are still good friends and keep in touch -- and also debate technical minutia on HN. :)
Audacity has always been short on developers for a project with such a large userbase, so development has often been slow. But the contributor community was one of the friendliest I've been involved in, thanks in large part to the great stewardship of Audacity's creator Dominic Mazzoni. If you use Audacity, please consider checking out the code and fixing a bug or two!
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|14 years ago|reply
For any of you who have a lot of hissing or humming coming from your mic when you record podcasts or demo videos for your startups. Audacity can take it out in just a few clicks using its noise removal filter. Just remember, whenever you start recording an audio track, wait 5 seconds before you start talking, and then use those 5 seconds of hissing to build a profile using the noise removal. And apply that to the whole track. My brother and I were blown away at how well it took all the hissing out. I recorded on a $9 Walmart mike and it sounded like studio quality work. Crisp, clean voice, pure hiss-less silence between sentences.
Thank you and all of its developers. Audacity is a perfect example of easy to use, easy to learn, open source software.
[+] [-] robgough|14 years ago|reply
Is there anyone with some design chops who can't help them out though?
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|14 years ago|reply
Great app!
[+] [-] callmeed|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] latortuga|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndyKelley|14 years ago|reply
* Many effects significantly improved, especially Equalization, Noise Removal and Normalize. Vocal Remover now included plus GVerb on Windows and Mac. VAMP analysis plug-ins now supported.
* Improved label tracks with Sync-Lock Tracks feature in the Tracks Menu. Multiple clips per track. Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard. Many more keyboard shortcuts.
* New Device Toolbar to manage inputs and outputs. Timer Record feature. New Mixer Board view with per-track VU meters.
* Automatic Crash Recovery in the event of abnormal program termination.
* Fast "On-Demand" import of WAV/AIFF files if read directly from source. FLAC now fully supported. Added support for optional FFmpeg library for import/export of AC3/M4A/WMA and import of audio from video files.
This hardly seems to justify a leap from 1.3. That and the fact that selection and playback still work in the most counter-intuitive way imaginable.
[+] [-] mbrubeck|14 years ago|reply
Audacity uses even/odd version numbering for stable/unstable release branches, like the Linux kernel once did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning#Odd-number...
So when Audacity 1.0 was released, new feature development moved to the 1.1 branch, while the 1.0 branch received only bug fixes. When the 1.1 branch was considered "finished" it became the new stable version 1.2.0, and the 1.0 branch was abandoned. Then new feature development moved to the 1.3 branch, which has now been released as the new stable version Audacity 2.0.
If I remember right, many of the major changes between the 1.1/1.2 series and the 1.3/2.0 series were under the hood, such as support for new versions of Portaudio and wxWidgets (which added compatibility for newer hardware and operating systems), improvements to the file format, and enhancements to the importers.
[+] [-] shaydoc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omegant|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VMG|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leviathant|14 years ago|reply
Compare the interface to Reaper (The Cockos team has three main contributors, right?), Cubase or Vegas, or if you want to get shiny, Propellerheads or Line6.
A fresh coat of paint goes a long way.
[+] [-] joelackner|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akurilin|14 years ago|reply
Coupled with Reaper, also free if you're a big cheapo, somewhat analogously to the WinRar model, you get so much great functionality for so little.
[+] [-] frigite_|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] genu1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wildwood|14 years ago|reply
http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/
[+] [-] sbmassey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tommorris|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devindotcom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] udp|14 years ago|reply
Seems weird it's specifically GNU/Linux they support, yet they can't be dependent on GNU userland or GNU libc if they support Mac.
[+] [-] dljsjr|14 years ago|reply
Also, not sure what that has to do with them having a version of their software that runs on OS X. They could easily use libraries that aren't glibc for the Mac version.
[+] [-] dfc|14 years ago|reply
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy
[+] [-] oneweekwonder|14 years ago|reply
So maybe on a Linux Platform they are dependent on the GNU toolchain.
[+] [-] davedx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamroom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meatsock|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndyKelley|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lean|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alantrick|14 years ago|reply