
Audacity 2.2.0 Released - conductor
http://www.audacityteam.org/audacity-2-2-0-released/
======
ukyrgf
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 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. I ended up just sticking with
Reaper, and hoping something comes along someday to mix the industry up.
Proprietary dongles and tiered versions of the exact same software with gimped
features doesn't cut it for me.

~~~
tomc1985
> 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 we'd have to manage???" Well, that is kind of _the
point_ )

Have you ever produced music with any of these tools? For one, their goals are
different -- FLStudio, for example, tries to be "the fastest path from your
brain to your speakers", and the interface seems as such and is loved for it.
Ableton intentionally crams everything into one screen because it is used as a
performance tool -- if you've seen any recent photos of Daft Punk et al
performing, you'll see it running right there on a laptop, usually above the
mixer or the CDJs. Cubase has kept an interface very similar to its original
Atari 2600 (I think?) version, because people have been using that app for 30+
years now.

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 what we do.

~~~
alsetmusic
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 what we do.

Absolutely. Also worth mentioning is that many of these tools borrow elements
from physical recording studios. If you haven’t worked in a professionally
wired studio, some of the abstractions seem dated and unnecessary. Replacing /
reimagining them is not practical, as DAWs still need to run in these
environments. But try explaining that to someone who is just starting out
chopping loops in their bedroom.

~~~
bbx
> 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?

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

------
pastelsky
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.

~~~
gsich
(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.

~~~
Sylos
Well, most design people also have side projects, be it a Tumblr page or an
endless supply of drawings that they just do to improve their drawing skills.

But that's different from helping an (OSS) application look good. For that,
you have to make tons of mockups, iterate again and again, until you have
something that looks good and consistent across the entire application.
Ideally, you'd also want at least one other person to bounce ideas back and
forth, and have an opinion about what you're doing.

This is real work, which requires a lot of commitment upfront. The equivalent
of requiring a programmer to lay out the entire architecture before they write
a single line of code. That's also something that mainly happens in a
corporate environment, whereas for hobby projects it tends to lead to
frustration.

~~~
pmontra
I agree this is a big job. Overhauling an existing application means a ton of
work for both the designer and the developer. However the primary goal of
designers should be making users work effectively. Building something that
also looks good is a secondary goal. Great designers achieve both goals. If
skills or budget are not great, go for the primary.

In the case of Audacity, I remember that I have to google how to silence a
selection every time I get back to it after a break of several months. I guess
this means that the primary goal is somewhat missed.

------
bfuller
I recently switched my workflow to all linux compatible free as in beer
software. I like being able to produce music on pretty much any hardware no
matter where I am.

I love audacity and want to say thanks to the team!

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

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

~~~
dec0dedab0de
technically Ardour is free as in free speech, but not as in free beer. They do
not have official binary downloads for free. If I remember correcyly its more
involved than ./configure && make && make install Though Ubuntu Studio has a
version ready to go.

~~~
Joeboy
Lots of software that's considered free-as-in-speech-and-beer doesn't have
official binary downloads at all. Ardour _additionally_ provides the option of
paying to download an official binary. Building from source is pretty much the
same as anything else, although there are quite a lot of dependencies. If
you're used to installing from source there's no reason Ardour should give you
any great difficulty (unless you're unlucky and your distro doesn't supply the
required dependencies or something).

------
clebio
I've used Audacity off and on for years. Love that it is still around and
pretty much _just works_. It does just what I need, as infrequently as I need
it, and doesn't require an idiotic (and steep) subscription fee to use
(glaring at you Adobe CS).

~~~
bastawhiz
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.

~~~
pishpash
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.

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

------
wohlergehen
I know I've come across a debugging story that ultimately ended up with the
author loading binary data into audacity and hearing/seeing a pattern.

Does anyone know what I mean, and has a link, since I can't seem to find
it...?

~~~
mattkevan
It’s fun loading images into Audacity. The audio effects look surprisingly
like they sound.

~~~
adrianN
Reference
[https://questionsomething.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/databendi...](https://questionsomething.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/databending-
using-audacity-effects/)

------
tomc1985
I am so glad for Audacity but the UI always feels more convoluted than it
needs to be. I wish they would copy Sound Forge's controls

~~~
microcolonel
That's a thought! I think that Reaper is the one to beat these days though, is
there an essay or review of Sound Forge which would capture (comprehensively)
what is to love about it?

It'd be nice to decouple the UI from all the major open source sequencer and
audio software, just leave some sort of pure data + Core Audio style innards
and reconnect the UIs on top. I've taken a few cracks at this in private, but
embarrassingly have a hard time getting much done on this particular project
without anyone watching.

~~~
tomc1985
I am not at home with my audio software but, off the top of my head, zooming
and navigating a waveform in Sound Forge is SUPER efficient and intuitive, as
mouse-wheel zooms and middle-click scrolls, and click-drag to edit individual
samples. You can quickly zoom into your work at a level of individual samples
and them zoom out and see the whole waveform in only a few movements.

My other favorite features are how editing doesn't rely on "modes' like
Audacity (I hate having to hit a button before I make a selection then another
to do something else), and Sound Forge's selection logic itself:

\- the playback cursor will intelligently snap and loop on your selections (or
not, depending on how you set the toggle), -

\- the editing scrolls to follow your cursor as you are zoomed in, but not if
you're currently editing something. A lot of programs do this but I find their
logic is terrible and I have to control automatic scrolling myself. This is
very helpful for working on seamlessly looping material, as you can leave
playback on loop and continue working at the very end of your selection
without the UI losing your place

\- load and save in native formats without having to use some proprietary
intermediary format (AUP)

------
armitron
Still looks like crap on OSX and Windows due to using GTK. I wish projects
with aspirations of being cross-platform would stop using that shitty library
and switch to QT.

~~~
gh02t
It looks like crap on Linux too, they deliberately chose a widget theme to
make it look that way. This version at least includes revamped theme support,
so maybe someone will give it a decent coat of paint.

------
SnowingXIV
Woah, this is still around? Years and years ago when I poorly attempted that
"band" life. My friends and I would use this as our recording software and it
was great. Glad to see them keep at it!

------
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.

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

~~~
tandav
Ableton 10 now supports export to mp3

------
hellbanner
"

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 Audacity LADSPA plugins for Windows - installer - 1.44 MB | version:
0.4.15 | SHA256 signature

Download Audacity Mac OS X 2.1.1 - DMG (screen reader accessible) - 38.61 MB |
version: 2.1.1 | SHA256 signature

Download Audacity Mac OS X 2.1.1 - ZIP (screen reader accessible) - 16.50 MB |
version: 2.1.1 | SHA256 signature "

How can I trust the website to tell me the correct SHA256 signature?

Shouldn't this be linked to a repository, or ideally something my client can
verify the commits are correct?

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
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.

------
app4soft
Sadly, there no yet ready-to-use Audacity 2.2.0 packages[1] for most popular
distributives or at least AppImage[2], that could be run without installing.
Also, its look like all daily/nightly builds on Launchpad[3] and on Travis
CI[4] failed...

[1]
[https://repology.org/metapackage/audacity/versions](https://repology.org/metapackage/audacity/versions)

[2]
[https://bintray.com/probono/AppImages/Audacity](https://bintray.com/probono/AppImages/Audacity)

[3] [https://launchpad.net/~audacity-
team/+archive/ubuntu/daily](https://launchpad.net/~audacity-
team/+archive/ubuntu/daily)

[4] [https://travis-ci.org/audacity/audacity](https://travis-
ci.org/audacity/audacity)

------
tpabla
I recorded my first songs on audacity, I love this piece of software!

~~~
xellisx
Back in my day, we had Windows Recorder and Cool Edit.

~~~
laumars
I don't think anyone used Windows Sound Recorder for anything serious. It had
a built in maximum record length for starters (I think to prevent piracy?).

Sound Forge was my preferred editor for years before Audacity matured. Cool
Edit was ok, but I seem to recall it had a bizarrely over-designed UI that
made the thing feel more like a toy than a serious tool. Particularly when
compared to the much older and more feature rich (at that time) Sound Forge.
It took a while before Cool Edit really became competitive and by that point I
was already using Audacity.

I do still miss some features of Sound Forge even now. Though I don't tend to
do too much with audio editors these days compared to the stuff I was doing in
the 90s and 00s.

~~~
whatever_dude
> It had a built in maximum record length for starters (I think to prevent
> piracy?).

It was somewhat related to the memory the computer had. I think it tried to
store audio all uncompressed in memory. At the very least it varied a lot
between different machines. I remember trying it in a super low spec machine
and it could record up to about 5s max.

------
Cyphase
Can the link be changed to HTTPS? Unfortunately the site isn't doing it
automatically, even though it does support HTTPS connections.

------
qwertybn
Modern interface design is all smoke and mirrors, and not about empowering the
user. Interfaces in the 90’s and 00’s were much more useful. Given a choice,
most power users would downgrade back to more features if they had that
option.

------
omission
Strange that OGG/Opus has been omitted from yet another release. I don't mind
using ffmpeg but it would be nice to export from the same interface.

------
esaym
Looks like still no native pulse audio support.. dang.

------
gspetr
Scrolled quickly through the comments and I want to ask one question: How good
is this tool compared to commercial software?

~~~
pishpash
At least a few versions ago it was okay for basic stuff but quite far behind
feature-wise to commercial software, which benefit from more integration, more
polished UX, and a large bundle of plugins.

Having said that a tool is a tool and in capable hands Audacity is as good a
tool as anything.

------
unicornporn
Can you apply real-time effects to tracks in multi-track mode these days? A
big limitation if you still can't.

------
futurix
Complete support for macOS Sierra after the follow up is already released.

------
blt
MIDI support seems like feature bloat to me...

~~~
reaperducer
bt and hundreds of thousands of other musicians would disagree.

(Actually, let's hope that bt can afford something better than Audacity, but
the point remains that MIDI is still a hugely popular protocol.)

~~~
tomc1985
It's not that. MIDI != PCM or any kind of audio data really

Midi looks like (imagine someone playing two notes: a C then a D):

C4 127 On C4 127 Off D4 127 On D4 127 Off

(not literally, but that is the essence of MIDI)

MIDI support means synthesizer support, which means VST support, which means
now you need some sort of MIDI data editor, which means now you've got to work
out all the weird timing shit with MIDI, and by this point you are better off
with LMMS or FLStudio or Pro Tools or what-have-you. Use the tool most fit for
purpose

------
unsatchmo
Full support for 10.12

