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Audacity 4.0

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Re: Audacity 4.0

#241

Post by soundworlds »

boomlinde wrote: post #203
TehCorwiz wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you watch the admittedly long video from Tantacrul about what it took to get from 3.0 to 4.0 he talks about that. They had a lot of tech debt that made it impossible to update the audio engine. He talked about the new engine being the roadmap for 4.1.

I saw the Tantacrul video back when it was released. I think that's when I went ahead and bought myself a personal Reaper license. My thought then was: wtf are their priorities like if they'll focus on a complete overhaul of the admittedly basic but functional interface over broken recording and playback of audio?

I think you may be underestimating how crucial a good User Interface is for widespread adoption of a product..

Re: Audacity 4.0

#242

Post by the_other »

butlike wrote: post #119
Mashimo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that mean?

I think what they mean is it looks like a hodgepodge of different DAWs, aka: designed by a committee who's only point of references are features in other done software. It doesn't look like it has its own visual identity.

Quite the opposite.

It looks like a well crafted UI, with care and attention to detail. The kind of thing that takes coordination. Scrum can help with that.

The grandparent poster seemed to be claiming the opposite: that scrum makes such things harder to achieve. That doesn’t match my experience. I think you can make a polished product, or a mess, using any of a variety of coordination technuqies. If anything, the planning technique is orthogonal to the cohesion of the product (although IMO if you do Scrum well, you’ll probably find it easier to coordinate towards a high cohesion product). But Scrum (or any well run system) is not the only factor. At a minimum you need a team who want a high cohesion product; you need some people who can help steer production towards a high-cohesion product; you need to have people on the team willing to have their opinions challenged from time to time; and, if you’ll indulge a little axe-grinding, you need the younger team members to trust the more experienced ones.

Re: Audacity 4.0

#243

Post by simonask »

wrs wrote: post #196
somat wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem in music notation is that it was designed for an 8 note system and we use a 12 note system. It's.. fine I guess, they got those extra four notes in there and millions of people read music with no problems. But it does create a lot of confusion for novice readers who now think those 8 notes are somehow more important than the other 4 or that the sharps and flats are somehow half notes(they are…

A lot of Chesterton’s Fence going on here… I remember thinking this way when I still had a pretty low-level understanding of music (like, “I’m reading arbitrary pitches and pushing the matching keys on the piano”), but once I started understanding bigger musical concepts/chunks, the reason for the notation became clearer, and now I see why it’s a pretty good local maximum for readability. The majority of music uses a…

Totally agree with your comment, but I just wanted to add that the major scales aren’t what’s prioritized - every major scale has a parallel minor scale with the same key signature.

In fact, this is true for all diatonic scales, which are the foundation of Western music and have been for centuries. The major scale is just the ionic, the minor is the aeolian. There’s also dorian, phrygian, lydian, etc., and all of these are in active use in popular music.

(Shout-out to our often overlooked friend, the lochrian scale. IYKYK. Practically unheard outside of Gregorian chants and metal.)

Re: Audacity 4.0

#244

Post by wlonkly »

somat wrote: post #154
korzinka wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notation is cool and just right, the more I learned the more I appreciated how great contemporary notation is. Yes it's challenging to read sometines but the subject is challenging too, surely you could try to simplify it for certain applications but you'd lose a lot of flexibility. Fighting notation is like fighting piano keyboard which is also extremely convenient thing to play compared to other stuff, even to grid…

The fundamental problem in music notation is that it was designed for an 8 note system and we use a 12 note system. It's.. fine I guess, they got those extra four notes in there and millions of people read music with no problems. But it does create a lot of confusion for novice readers who now think those 8 notes are somehow more important than the other 4 or that the sharps and flats are somehow half notes(they are…

> a fifth? a fifth of what?

Fifth (ordinal), not fifth (fraction).

That's why a whole tone is called a "second", not a "half".

Re: Audacity 4.0

#245

Post by beepbooptheory »

sublinear wrote: post #197
niek_pas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find conventional Western notation works quite well for communicating notes, rhythms, and basic expression, but it breaks down pretty quickly once you move beyond that. E.g. a lot of the common techniques on electric guitar (bends, palm muting, tremolo/whammy bar stuff, pick slides, slap/thumping, pinch harmonics, raking) don't really have a convenient notational shorthand. That's without even mentioning synthesize…

What?! I'm surprised those are the things you complain about regarding guitar sheet music. The only real problem is guitar always has several different ways to play the same notes all over the neck and instrument tuning isn't always specified either. Standard tuning may not work and tabs sometimes aren't there alongside the staff. If you're trying to sight read, you'll guess alright for a while until you are suddenly…

I guess I am maybe not coming from the same place you are here, but, fwiw, scores for classical guitar will often mark bare positions (basically, what fret your 1 finger is around) at certain points with Roman numerals, which then communicates, or at least implies, which string you are playing which note (for that part, until you see a new roman numeral). Also common to see simply a number on a specific note indicating a finger, as you do for a note+finger combo with piano scores, which then implies how to play the rest of the notes in that phrase or whatever. I don't think you need much more than that and it seems elegant enough to me!

But also, really, I was always taught that unless the composer specifies something specific, you are free to figure it on your own. Like there are only so many contexts where the timbral differences between two unison, fretted notes is going to matter probably, right? Also, how you play some part might be informed by where you are after the preceding part etc.

Tuning point though is kinda interesting and not all my wheel house. But they do call the default one standard for a reason!

Re: Audacity 4.0

#246

Post by nosioptar »

jcmontx wrote: post #117

I remember using this software when I was 13 y.o. (I'm 31 now). I would turn songs I liked backwards to try to find satanic messages. Good memories haha.

I've only found one genuine satanic message.

A weird al song from either polka party or in 3d has a section along the lines of "Satan loves cheese wiz" when played backward.

Re: Audacity 4.0

#247

Post by sublinear »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #245
sublinear wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?! I'm surprised those are the things you complain about regarding guitar sheet music. The only real problem is guitar always has several different ways to play the same notes all over the neck and instrument tuning isn't always specified either. Standard tuning may not work and tabs sometimes aren't there alongside the staff. If you're trying to sight read, you'll guess alright for a while until you are suddenly…

I guess I am maybe not coming from the same place you are here, but, fwiw, scores for classical guitar will often mark bare positions (basically, what fret your 1 finger is around) at certain points with Roman numerals, which then communicates, or at least implies, which string you are playing which note (for that part, until you see a new roman numeral). Also common to see simply a number on a specific note indicati…

Yes. I am thinking about rock, jazz, and fingerstyle playing. They're hardly edge cases and haven't been for decades. They're so popular and modern enough to prove the original point.

With regards to tuning, fingerstyle will often feature an arbitrary tuning unique to only a handful of songs. Timbre absolutely matters because you're playing multiple parts on one fretboard simultaneously.

Here's an example of all three genres in one performance! Kent Nishimura covering Steely Dan's "Peg" in fingerstyle. He does have a book available. It combines ordinary sheet music with tablature.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=x4sadPd661s

Re: Audacity 4.0

#248

Post by okanat »

kvemkon wrote: post #148
majewsky wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because GTK2 is so difficult to upgrade to new versions, whereas Qt4 to Qt5 usually only involved replacing a few identifiers (cannot speak to Qt6 since I don't do Qt anymore). That's why distros need to drag GTK2 along even though we are already at GTK4.

> so difficult to upgrade to new versions Perhaps, because GTK developers insist, that GTK2, GTK3, GTK4 are different toolkits. > Qt4 to Qt5 usually only involved ... I'd start with Qt3 to Qt4.

Yeah let's start on a specific version that they overhauled the API since computers are getting new hardware features, god forbid a different DPI. And use that as a leverage point against a library that kept their API quite stable for the last 20 years!

Especially when comparing Qt against a library who couldn't keep its shit together for 5 years and is infamous for breaking all sorts of API and removing features.

Re: Audacity 4.0

#249

Post by germandiago »

MrDOS wrote: post #97
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people that have never maintained >=Qt5 projects assume free wxWidgets native cross platform OS interface support is less hassle. Refactoring the application core means their team should have forked the project to audacity-qt rather than inject long term Qt library and license dependency issues into the original package. Qt on occasion has proven to cause problems with license term changes, GL library bugs on Li…

My understanding is that the Qt 6 build system is vastly easier to work with. Also, Audacity is not the first major FOSS project to successfully migrate from wxWidgets to Qt: Dolphin, the GameCube/Wii emulator, made a similar migration several years ago[0][1][2][3]. [0]: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/06/03/dolphin-progress-rep... [1]: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2018/02/03/dolphin-progress-rep... [2]: https://do…

I recall (could be wrong, talk from the top of my head), VLC also did it years ago.

Re: Audacity 4.0

#250

Post by Joel_Mckay »

jcelerier wrote: post #239
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could also look at https://quasar.dev/ if you do rapid release cycles. =3

imagine picking some Vue framework over Qt when talking about "the stable road future kids walk down to become professionals". There's software written today in Qt that traces back all the way to the mid 90s and are still top-of-the-line for their business. The project I'm working on has been based on Qt since Qt 4 era, has been through people vouching for JavaFx, Angular, JUCE, React, Electron, and a dozen other fra…

Structurally, Qt is sometimes worse given the compatibility issues. There are desktops where Qt5/Qt6 software runs fine if you can get it to compile, but the GL interface has been broken on many platforms for over a decade.

If folks don't plan on maintaining things after a release cycle it no longer matters how one ports disposable code. On mobile the App life cycles are short. Quasar does exactly what Qt has been doing for years, but just abstracts the compilation pipeline for each MacOS/Win11/Android/iOS/Linux platform. For simple stuff it works fine, and generates solutions in under an hour.

>How many Vue software will still be written in Vue 20 years from now ?

Probably all of them in their bloated glory, as the build artifacts do not rely on a single unstable external fragile framework library heavily coupled to the operating system releases.

Personally I prefer wxWidgets for desktop, but it is not appropriate for every project. =3

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