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Audacity 2.2.0 Released

audacityteam.org

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Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#141

Post by bastawhiz »

pishpash wrote: post #75
bastawhiz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, 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.

Oh 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.

I switched to Audition, and while the last CS release was pretty buggy, the CC version has treated me well.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#142

Post by pastelsky »

ericdykstra wrote: post #103
pastelsky wrote: post #81

I 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.

Good UI is overrated in utility apps. Audacity, for the people who use it, use it very frequently. It's a powerful tool with a specific purpose. The initial few minutes of confusing UI are trounced by the hundreds of hours people spend in the program after they have all the UI and keyboard shortcuts memorized. Could it be better? Yes. Should it be a priority? Nah.

If you're talking about tech folks, then maybe yes, but I see a lot of popular appeal for such tools comes from ease of use. My assumption is that a lot of designers would reject a tool like GIMP / Inkscape because it appears "clunky" and rather pick paid alternatives Sketch / Photoshop instead.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#143

Post by pastelsky »

gsich wrote: post #89
pastelsky wrote: post #81

I 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.

(UI) Designers don't want to work for free. This is more or less the observation I made in regards for Open Source software. Having some side projects or helping OSS is somewhat expected from a programmer. From other professions not so much.

Just as some programmers can be good at marketing products, I see no reason why developers can't be decent UI designers.

You don't need experienced UI designers to fix these low hanging issues, yet.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#144

Post by bbx »

alsetmusic wrote: post #62
tomc1985 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Logic Audio (I started at v5) remains the most complex UI I have ever had to learn. It makes perfect sense to me now, but I long thought it was designed by sadists. I just did t understand the why of it. > 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 w…

> Logic’s UI makes perfect sense to me now

Can you elaborate on that? That UI still bothers me although I love Logic’s plugins.

How did you learn the UI? Just through trial and error? By reading the manual? Something else?

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#145

Post by anonova »

miclill wrote: post #120
anonova wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

Though 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

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#146

Post by jhasse »

pastelsky wrote: post #142
ericdykstra wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good UI is overrated in utility apps. Audacity, for the people who use it, use it very frequently. It's a powerful tool with a specific purpose. The initial few minutes of confusing UI are trounced by the hundreds of hours people spend in the program after they have all the UI and keyboard shortcuts memorized. Could it be better? Yes. Should it be a priority? Nah.

If you're talking about tech folks, then maybe yes, but I see a lot of popular appeal for such tools comes from ease of use. My assumption is that a lot of designers would reject a tool like GIMP / Inkscape because it appears "clunky" and rather pick paid alternatives Sketch / Photoshop instead.

I think GIMP could have the best GUI in the world and still no designer would use it since it lacks non-destructive editing.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#147

Post by jhasse »

andai wrote: post #137
ericdykstra wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good UI is overrated in utility apps. Audacity, for the people who use it, use it very frequently. It's a powerful tool with a specific purpose. The initial few minutes of confusing UI are trounced by the hundreds of hours people spend in the program after they have all the UI and keyboard shortcuts memorized. Could it be better? Yes. Should it be a priority? Nah.

What should the priority be?

Fixing bugs and adding important features.

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#148

Post by marssaxman »

tomc1985 wrote: post #35
chiefalchemist wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used it? How does it compare to commercial DJ software? Iyho

Compared 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…

I'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?

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#149

Post by coldtea »

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…

>* 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.*

That's not even remotely true. Except if you mean "they superficially look similar to what they did 15 years ago".

That's because their fundamental functions are of course still the same as 15 or 20 years ago: sequencing MIDI and audio. Same with NLE, what did you expect, some thought-to-song interface?

Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released

#150

Post by coldtea »

bbx wrote: post #144
alsetmusic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logic Audio (I started at v5) remains the most complex UI I have ever had to learn. It makes perfect sense to me now, but I long thought it was designed by sadists. I just did t understand the why of it. > 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 w…

> Logic’s UI makes perfect sense to me now Can you elaborate on that? That UI still bothers me although I love Logic’s plugins. How did you learn the UI? Just through trial and error? By reading the manual? Something else?

Just trial and error is enough. And it's not that different from most others DAWs anyway
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