Live data from Hacker News

Audacity 3.4

audacityteam.org

51–60 of 122 posts

Re: Audacity 3.4

#51
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Running in a VM is drastic. I'd go for bubblewrap, or a plain container. Can cut network access all right.

Indeed, there are other options, but a VM is the only one in which I feel safe that I do not screw up the configuration somehow. Docker can punch through a firewall, what other “obvious” settings exist in whatever lockdown option I pick?

Barring a VM escape exploit, I know that my private data is not getting exposed.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#52
post #42

Audacity, despite its weaknesses compared to commercial tools, still excels at batch processing due to its Nyquist plugin suite. The macro tool is finicky, but you can still do things that nothing else can in a batch, like trimming leading and trailing silence and then adding an exact amount of silence to the front and end of a file. You would think functions so simple and obvious as this would already exist in Audit…

Sox?

Re: Audacity 3.4

#53
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running in a VM is drastic. I'd go for bubblewrap, or a plain container. Can cut network access all right.

Indeed, there are other options, but a VM is the only one in which I feel safe that I do not screw up the configuration somehow. Docker can punch through a firewall, what other “obvious” settings exist in whatever lockdown option I pick? Barring a VM escape exploit, I know that my private data is not getting exposed.

Ardour's pro-grade, isn't it? Maybe not as easy to start with as Audacity, but surely easier and more useful to set up than Audacity in a VM.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#54
post #42

Audacity, despite its weaknesses compared to commercial tools, still excels at batch processing due to its Nyquist plugin suite. The macro tool is finicky, but you can still do things that nothing else can in a batch, like trimming leading and trailing silence and then adding an exact amount of silence to the front and end of a file. You would think functions so simple and obvious as this would already exist in Audit…

Ffmpeg or sox can do the silence trimming for you on the command line. And it is totally reasonable to just have a script lying around that does that.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#55
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.

Looks like there's also a build flag to disable all networking, which the Debian package sets: https://salsa.debian.org/multimedia-team/audacity/-/commit/1...

As does Arch Linux: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/au...

Distributions and open source maintainers looking out for their users, once again.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#56
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I did some basic digging and this is at best a misrepresentation[1]. The original email appears to indicate they intended to contact CCP authorities. The inference I took is that they believed the developer was in China. Later they stated that violation of law in Canada could result in revocation of visa. So "threated to have someone deported" is maybe a stretch, "tortuted" is pretty untrue. The github issue appears…

[deleted]

Re: Audacity 3.4

#57
post #42

Audacity, despite its weaknesses compared to commercial tools, still excels at batch processing due to its Nyquist plugin suite. The macro tool is finicky, but you can still do things that nothing else can in a batch, like trimming leading and trailing silence and then adding an exact amount of silence to the front and end of a file. You would think functions so simple and obvious as this would already exist in Audit…

I take care of that stuff in Python, it’s pretty straightforward.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#58

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'v…

Typically a noise reduction plugin installed with the DAW by default isn’t going to be amazing. People usually install their own preferred plugins when using a DAW. If you look up noise reduction VSTs you will get lots of results for paid and free plugins compatible with Audactiy. I don’t have a recommendation but googling “reddit cheap noise reduction vst” came up with a lot of viable recommendations.

Re: Audacity 3.4

#59
post #42

Audacity, despite its weaknesses compared to commercial tools, still excels at batch processing due to its Nyquist plugin suite. The macro tool is finicky, but you can still do things that nothing else can in a batch, like trimming leading and trailing silence and then adding an exact amount of silence to the front and end of a file. You would think functions so simple and obvious as this would already exist in Audit…

Sox?

Total OG oldschool swiss army knife for audio processing | playing .. that takes me back.

In the 1990s in a long workroom of sun workstations we rigged a rlogin sox script to play succesive parts of some spooky music as a co worker walked past each one late one night.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/

https://github.com/chirlu/sox

Re: Audacity 3.4

#60
post #22
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…

It’s a consent violation. That always warrants anger. The purpose for violating consent is irrelevant.

Using a user’s computer to spy on them when they don’t want it to is extremely rude, in all cases, even if the surveillance data is thrown away and never used.

Developers who implement such features should be named and highlighted and should have trouble finding new jobs. It’s shady and unethical to make such software, doing so should be a black mark on one’s professional record, just like stealing. It is literally malware.

Your assumption that violating consent is ok as long as it isn’t “nefarious” is the problem.

Post reply on HN