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Audacity 3.4

audacityteam.org

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Re: Audacity 3.4

#21

Post by badsectoracula »

jadbox wrote: post #7
synergy20 wrote: post #4

this is made in wxWidgets by the way, a cross platform c++ GUI framework like Qt but 100% free on the other hand inkscape is made with gtkmm(gtk), which also runs cross platform.

How does wxw and gtk roughly compare? I have liked the UI of Audacity moderately more than Inkscape, but I don't know where framework versus implementation is at play.

wxWidgets uses whatever GUI functionality is native for each OS instead of implementing its own (though there is also a wxUniversal backend which does its own controls but i'm not sure how complete it is). On Linux wxWidgets can use Gtk, Qt or Motif (though Motif doesn't seem to be tested much and while it does compile and work, there are a bunch of bugs).

Re: Audacity 3.4

#22

Post by swyx »

KMnO4 wrote: post #12
RockRobotRock wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems like its because they tried to add basic telemetry?

Yes, they updated their privacy and data collection policy. That’s kinda the blessing and the curse of FOSS. You absolutely can fork the repo, remove the telemetry, and republish it as a new app. But fragmentation is confusing, requires a lot of maintenance, and really I’m not sure it was worth it. Those who are particularly conscious about the telemetry can block it with a single line in /etc/hosts.

seriously, people who get outraged over telemetry should temper their anger. most of the time the telemetry isn't used to sell your data or something nefarious (its quite useless if you dont even have a login, like audacity does), its just being used to try to improve the product for you.

i write this as someone who's been involved in one too many debates about the perils of introducing telemetry to a commercial open source thing because "HN would tear us apart"

Re: Audacity 3.4

#23

Post by dmix »

synergy20 wrote: post #18
jadbox wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does wxw and gtk roughly compare? I have liked the UI of Audacity moderately more than Inkscape, but I don't know where framework versus implementation is at play.

I was with wxwidgets now switching to gtk, as the latter is way more widely used, wxwidgets is native looking for each OS, gtk has its own appearance, both shall do fine.

Audacities OS UI theme is really bad on MacOS. I love audacity but it really could use a modern theme like Gtk 3.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#24

Post by dmix »

Aachen wrote: post #17

> You can now change the duration of your audio clips without affecting their pitch non-destructively. Audacity 3.4 uses a new time stretching algorithm specifically made for music, which outperforms many of the commercially available options. Way to bury the lede! What's this magic algorithm being spoken of, how does it work so well? > A more detailed overview of these changes can be found in our changelog . The cha…

> a new time stretching algorithm specifically made for music, which outperforms many of the commercially available options.

I wonder how it compares to Ableton Live, warping was always a big part of Abelton.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#25

Post by swyx »

Aachen wrote: post #17

> You can now change the duration of your audio clips without affecting their pitch non-destructively. Audacity 3.4 uses a new time stretching algorithm specifically made for music, which outperforms many of the commercially available options. Way to bury the lede! What's this magic algorithm being spoken of, how does it work so well? > A more detailed overview of these changes can be found in our changelog . The cha…

it would be nice to at least know in what ways it "outperforms many of the commercially available options.". is this asking too much?

Re: Audacity 3.4

#26

Post by mehlmao »

swyx wrote: post #22
KMnO4 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they updated their privacy and data collection policy. That’s kinda the blessing and the curse of FOSS. You absolutely can fork the repo, remove the telemetry, and republish it as a new app. But fragmentation is confusing, requires a lot of maintenance, and really I’m not sure it was worth it. Those who are particularly conscious about the telemetry can block it with a single line in /etc/hosts.

seriously, people who get outraged over telemetry should temper their anger. most of the time the telemetry isn't used to sell your data or something nefarious (its quite useless if you dont even have a login, like audacity does), its just being used to try to improve the product for you. i write this as someone who's been involved in one too many debates about the perils of introducing telemetry to a commercial open…

The developers who acquired Audacity had previously threatened to have someone deported to China and tortured over their API. https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/20/muse_group_deportatio...

Re: Audacity 3.4

#27

Post by ksherlock »

Aachen wrote: post #17

> You can now change the duration of your audio clips without affecting their pitch non-destructively. Audacity 3.4 uses a new time stretching algorithm specifically made for music, which outperforms many of the commercially available options. Way to bury the lede! What's this magic algorithm being spoken of, how does it work so well? > A more detailed overview of these changes can be found in our changelog . The cha…

This is the PR I believe

Time stretching 2 of 6 make audio track stretching effective

https://github.com/audacity/audacity/pull/5041

Re: Audacity 3.4

#28

Post by viraptor »

synergy20 wrote: post #19
viraptor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some values of "works". Inkscape is close to unusable on MacOS because it goes through the X server and every interaction is really slow.

why is that, never used it on Macos myself, but gtk/gtkmm does claim to have Macos support and I would not expect some X server got involved.

The contents are rendered through gtk/cairo which not only goes through https://www.xquartz.org/ but also doesn't use GPU rendering (it was experimental 3 years ago, maybe better now). The main issue seems to be that neither Inkscape nor gtk people have low level Darwin experts or time available to invest in debugging the whole rendering stack. See for example https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/1614 and all the other referenced issues for all the gory details.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#29

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

evgpbfhnr wrote: post #2

Speaking of which, how did that "audacity isn't FOSS" fuss end up? A quick search shows tenacity is still active ( https://codeberg.org/tenacityteam/tenacity ) but I have no idea how much the projects kept interacting after the initial debate

I recently needed to do some sound editing, and I had a dreadful experience with Tenacity. Running on PopOS, I encountered many crashes doing simple manipulations. Even trying to scroll while playing audio ostensibly resulted in a crash. Small favor, the restore-unsaved-work functionality did save me several times.

Eventually, I held my nose and ran Audacity in a VM, and not a single crash.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#30

Post by crazygringo »

Have there been any improvements in noise reduction?

That's what's always kept me from using Audacity in the past. I like the interface and operations and everything, but cleaning up audio (removing room tone mostly) has always been the first step in my workflow, and its built-in noise reduction has just been unusably terrible compared to basic commercial tools.

Or is there a common plugin people use with it that I've never known about?

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