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Audacity 2.2.0 Released

audacityteam.org

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Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#111

Post by wiz21c »

TuringNYC wrote: post #88
GuiA wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building 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 bei…

Perhaps 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.

I'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.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#112

Post by bartread »

Whilst 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.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#113

Post by bartread »

tomc1985 wrote: post #39
ukyrgf wrote: post #31

I 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 m…

> 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…

I fully agree with the above. There's a truckload going on in all these interfaces.

The thing people don't like here, which is absolutely true, is that if you want to use FLStudio, or Ableton, or even Cubase, and think you're going to succeed just by opening up the app and clicking around, you're wrong. You actually do need to use the tutorials and read the manual. (It's exactly the same if you buy any kind of complex pro audio hardware as well, from synths to guitar modelling tools like the Kemper Profiler.)

In my experience the documentation for FLStudio and Live is great. Full on, stellar fantastic. And there are a million quick tutorials from all kinds of people on YouTube to help. You just have to be willing to learn and invest the time to get the results you want. These things are not intended to be the audio equivalent of Instagram: for that you should look elsewhere (I'm not sure where actually).

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#114

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

hellbanner wrote: post #66

" 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 Aud…

Well, 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.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#115

Post by bartread »

SwellJoe wrote: post #56
darkmighty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also Deluxe Music in the Amiga 1200: https://youtu.be/OwROU4UkE84?t=45s

I won a copy of Deluxe Music for Amiga in a music competition when I was a kid; I'd made the winning track in MED or OctaMED, and kept using MED/OctaMED even after winning Deluxe Music. I found Deluxe Music cartoonish and not capable of doing what I wanted. I dismissed it almost immediately. It felt like wearing gloves to compose after coming from trackers, where you had tick-precision (this was sort of a weird combi…

Oh, man: MED and then OctaMED (when it eventually landed on a magazine cover CD) were my trackers of choice for creating music for the games I was always tinkering with back in the early 90s, and arguably the reason I got back into music production as hobby in the late noughties.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#116

Post by hashmal »

ukyrgf wrote: post #31

I 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 m…

Just look at Ableton Live 10 which has just been announced. Granted, it is an evolution, not revolution, but that's what happens when the people who make software care about efficiency and familiarity (instead of novelty and trendiness).

As a music app developer myself, I can say that UI design for music software is a completely different beast than "general" UI design.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#117

Post by hashmal »

bartread wrote: post #112

Whilst 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 thes…

I use both Live and Audacity, they are just not comparable. Audacity is an audio editor, not a DAW.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#118

Post by SwellJoe »

bartread wrote: post #115
SwellJoe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won a copy of Deluxe Music for Amiga in a music competition when I was a kid; I'd made the winning track in MED or OctaMED, and kept using MED/OctaMED even after winning Deluxe Music. I found Deluxe Music cartoonish and not capable of doing what I wanted. I dismissed it almost immediately. It felt like wearing gloves to compose after coming from trackers, where you had tick-precision (this was sort of a weird combi…

Oh, man: MED and then OctaMED (when it eventually landed on a magazine cover CD) were my trackers of choice for creating music for the games I was always tinkering with back in the early 90s, and arguably the reason I got back into music production as hobby in the late noughties.

If you find yourself wanting to play with trackers today, Renoise is the modern spiritual successor of MED and ProTracker and the like, and it's really great, and is competitive with modern DAWs in that it supports VSTs and controllers and automation and such. SunVox is also super cool, but for different reasons...it's more of a minimalist tool.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#120

Post by miclill »

anonova wrote: post #8
bitwisebob wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other free-as-in-beer software do you use to produce music?

Ardour ( https://ardour.org/ ) and LMMS ( https://lmms.io/ ) are probably the two most popular open-source DAWs. I also really like MuseScore ( https://musescore.org/ ) for composition.

Hey,

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 :-)

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