* Many effects significantly improved, especially Equalization, Noise Removal and Normalize. Vocal Remover now included plus GVerb on Windows and Mac. VAMP analysis plug-ins now supported.
* Improved label tracks with Sync-Lock Tracks feature in the Tracks Menu. Multiple clips per track. Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard. Many more keyboard shortcuts.
* New Device Toolbar to manage inputs and outputs. Timer Record feature. New Mixer Board view with per-track VU meters.
* Automatic Crash Recovery in the event of abnormal program termination.
* Fast "On-Demand" import of WAV/AIFF files if read directly from source. FLAC now fully supported. Added support for optional FFmpeg library for import/export of AC3/M4A/WMA and import of audio from video files.
This hardly seems to justify a leap from 1.3. That and the fact that selection and playback still work in the most counter-intuitive way imaginable.
So when Audacity 1.0 was released, new feature development moved to the 1.1 branch, while the 1.0 branch received only bug fixes. When the 1.1 branch was considered "finished" it became the new stable version 1.2.0, and the 1.0 branch was abandoned. Then new feature development moved to the 1.3 branch, which has now been released as the new stable version Audacity 2.0.
If I remember right, many of the major changes between the 1.1/1.2 series and the 1.3/2.0 series were under the hood, such as support for new versions of Portaudio and wxWidgets (which added compatibility for newer hardware and operating systems), improvements to the file format, and enhancements to the importers.
Since there's no "right" answer for version numbers, it's hard to answer questions like this. If the developers feel that 2.0 is a good number for their new release, then who are we to argue with them? (And why should we care in the first place about what number appears in an about box somewhere..?)
It's been eight years since Audacity 1.2 was released (and at least six years since 1.3 development began), and the code has seen pretty major changes in that time even though they happened gradually and not all are obvious from looking at the UI. I think it's fair to call 2.0 a major upgrade from 1.0 and 1.2.
Or to look at it another way: If you haven't changed the major version number after ten years of development, then you'll probably never change it. And if you're never going to change that number, it's redundant and you might as well drop it. (This is roughly what the Linux kernel did when it switched from 2.6.x.y to 3.x.y after fifteen years of 2.x releases.)
* Many effects significantly improved, especially Equalization, Noise Removal and Normalize. Vocal Remover now included plus GVerb on Windows and Mac. VAMP analysis plug-ins now supported.
* Improved label tracks with Sync-Lock Tracks feature in the Tracks Menu. Multiple clips per track. Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard. Many more keyboard shortcuts.
* New Device Toolbar to manage inputs and outputs. Timer Record feature. New Mixer Board view with per-track VU meters.
* Automatic Crash Recovery in the event of abnormal program termination.
* Fast "On-Demand" import of WAV/AIFF files if read directly from source. FLAC now fully supported. Added support for optional FFmpeg library for import/export of AC3/M4A/WMA and import of audio from video files.
This hardly seems to justify a leap from 1.3. That and the fact that selection and playback still work in the most counter-intuitive way imaginable.