496 pointsby ClydeN4 hours ago39 comments
  • Lautzi3 hours ago
    I highly recommend this video [1] by the Head of Software at Muse who had a big part in the development of Audacity 4.0. Some great insights and really fun to watch!

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38

    • Lio33 minutes ago
      Indirectly related his video on music notation itself, "Notation Must Die: The Battle For How We Read Music"[1], is really good IMHO.

      > Many people feel that western notation makes it unnecessarily hard to read music. If we want to sight read, learn music theory or just practice an instrument, surely there's a better way? Right? This has been a hot topic for almost 1000 years... AND I PUT IT TO BED RIGHT HERE!

      1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4

      • korzinka8 minutes ago
        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 controllers.

    • stevoski2 hours ago
      This video is simply excellent. Really shows the challenges involved.

      His other videos are awesome too. He is an expert in making great software AND a great video creator.

      • fishfasell37 minutes ago
        He also hit the nail on the head- reaction videos are just low effort click bait.
    • mikae1an hour ago
      So, they've realized podcasters and vloggers are a large part of their target audience. Then I believe they have to implement some models for speech restoration.

      These days most people just Adobe Podcast Enhance and forget and, from what I've seen there isn't an open source GUI based tool for automated voice processing out there.

      Must add that it's so awesome to have an open source Qt based audio editor on KDE Plasma that does not look like shit!

    • vintermann2 hours ago
      Yes, Tantacrul. Pretty weird story, a composer and programmer who absolutely roasted the UIs of well known sheet music dinosaurs Finale and Sibelius in hilarious diss videos on YouTube. Then he conceded a bit reluctantly that Musescore was the better of the lot, but still had plenty of opinions on how it could be better.

      So the guitar tabs website which had then recently acquired Musescore offered him a job. Not just a job, but basically to be boss of the whole thing. Then they bought audacity, staffpad and Hal Leonard too. Then they bought out their private equity backer.

      I can't think of any other time something good has come out of a private equity roll-up. They haven't enshittified it (from my perspective as a user anyway). It seems in the end these people just loved music more than they loved money.

      • gabeidx29 minutes ago
        He, unfortunately, left recently. https://x.com/Tantacrul/status/2092817784782598440
      • bluGill2 hours ago
        > I can't think of any other time something good has come out of a private equity roll-up.

        Just remember bad news sells. I'm reasonably sure there are a number of other cases where this happens, likely most. However they are not big news and not memorable so I can't cite them.

        • awesan2 hours ago
          If it happens all the time and it's positive, you shouldn't need a news story to confirm it. People should just be able to think of examples.

          Certainly I'm able to think of plenty of terrible results from private equity take-overs from my own personal experience as an employee or as a customer.

          • jcranmeran hour ago
            Private equity gets a bad rap in large part because the stories they're most famous for are the "PE buys a failing company, and the company subsequently finally fails," with the "failing" word conspicuously absent in most retellings. I'm not sure I've heard one of those stories where the company failed after being acquired by PE where it wasn't already failing before the PE takeover...
            • abuani33 minutes ago
              For me, private equity gets a bad rep because they've bought up all of the local mom and pop shops for just about any service I need thats face to face. All of the plumbers, electricians, general contractors, vets, grocery chains, coffee shops, and other shit were bought and had every ounce of revenue squeezed out of them. The result? All of the things I need locally cost 3-5x they did and the service is far worse.

              And as a quick edit: none of these examples I have were of failing businesses. Each of the owners had their reasons, but none was due to it being necessary for survival. PE on hackernews tends to focus on software/bigger purchases, but so much of the damage in my opinion is on the local and smaller scale.

          • philipallstaran hour ago
            Well, many things may be going wrong before PE gets involved, or the owners may be retiring and it just will never be the same again even if PE didn't buy. So it's more likely to feel like bad news even if it was still a reasonable outcome.

            As a public, well-known example, Dell being taken private in 2013 seemed to work out.

          • inanutshellusan hour ago
            I'd guess the majority of those success stories are invisible to the end user.

            e.g. simply keeping the company afloat via PE cash.

            If I recall correctly, this is what happened to Hilton Hotels. They were collapsing during the housing crisis.

            A slightly different scenario but Hertz is a PE success story. It was owned by Ford and bought by a private equity firm. Now it's a standalone company making mint.

            • vintermannan hour ago
              Were those roll-ups though? I see a poster below says the private equity fund was only involved for the last acquisition, but no one can deny Muse Group/Ultimate Guitar went on a shopping spree. They looked like they were trying to gain control over a whole segment and start squeezing (well, except for that open source projects aren't that easy to squeeze). No wonder people freaked out over the telemetry, it was reasonable to fear the worst. But everything went better than expected.
          • bryanrasmussen43 minutes ago
            >If it happens all the time and it's positive, you shouldn't need a news story to confirm it. People should just be able to think of examples.

            Most enshittification I am familiar with is because I read it in the news, therefore if non-shittification does happen it is likely I do not hear about it. I suppose the same holds true for other people.

            If you were correct and people just had to hear about it then people wouldn't go around worrying about violent crime, because of always seeing on the news, despite it having fallen to historic lows. Instead people should be just walking around talking about how safe and non-violent the streets are nowadays.

      • niwtsol26 minutes ago
        I remember using Audacity back in 2006-ish, I just needed some basic mp3 editing and I was so happy with it. Has been my go to audio editor for, goodness feels weird to say, decades now, awesome to hear them staying alive and improving. Hooray opensource / PE not killing something good!
      • whstlan hour ago
        AFAIK, Francisco Partners was only involved in the Hal Leonard acquisition.

        It was more of a partnership regarding Hal Leonard than ownership of Muse.

        It seems after the Native Instruments fiasco, they (Francisco Partners) just decided to quit music altogether.

        EDIT: I know a lot of people from Muse and Native Instruments and that's the impression a lot seem to have.

      • Jtariian hour ago
        >conceded a bit reluctantly that Musescore was the better of the lot

        Well he said that Sibelius was the best for serious musicians, it just had a horrible UI.

    • chrysoprace3 hours ago
      Beat me to it, I was just about to post this. It's a really cool breakdown of what goes into supporting and modernising such old open source software.
    • Subdivide8452an hour ago
      Damn this guy is well versed on the topic at hand. Really clear and nice video.
    • 2 hours ago
      undefined
  • dbcooper3 hours ago
    Release video looking at the new UI (Qt6 based):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTQymidLYIM

    • iLoveOncall8 minutes ago
      It should be illegal to announce a UI update and not include at least screenshots, so thanks for sharing.
    • skrebbel3 hours ago
      I usually hate product announce videos but this one is so concise and fast and to the point, I'm very impressed. Also wow the new UI looks delicious!
      • Ajedi3243 minutes ago
        Best thing is it's not just a new coat of paint; there seem to be some very significant usability improvements in here.
      • wilkystyle41 minutes ago
        Delicious really is a great word! It looks gorgeous and so pleasant to use.
      • Aldipower2 hours ago
        Yeah, it is a hand-made video! Someone put actual work into it. :-) Results are speaking.
    • lovedaddy2 hours ago
      Lost me at QT.
      • dieortin2 hours ago
        Why do you care so much about the UI framework used?
        • LtWorfan hour ago
          He sells RAM so he only likes extremely bloated and slow electron apps.
          • rauli_37 minutes ago
            Or he just prefers GTK. I sure like it better than QT.
            • LtWorf3 minutes ago
              No person who has written software with both prefers GTK :D
  • pelagicAustral2 hours ago
    Whatever happened with the post-telemetry fork debacle projects? Tenacity, Sneedacity, or something...
  • ancientstraits3 hours ago
    I have been using Audacity 3 for making music with samples for a few years. And it sort of worked, but there were a lot of things that were inconvenient, like the project sometimes not saving, or getting a "clicking" noise across clips that I had to remove by manually fading in/out each end of the clip.

    I tried the Audacity 4 beta a while ago, and it seemed super clean and like it fixed a lot of stuff. I am pretty concerned about the encroaching audio.com things (even though they are completely optional), but I still think this Audacity version has promise. I especially like how you can drag clips to time-stretch them.

    • embedding-shape2 hours ago
      > or getting a "clicking" noise across clips that I had to remove by manually fading in/out each end of the clip

      Are you sure this isn't just the typical "clip/crop a sample at the wrong moment, in the middle of a soundwave, and you'll get a pop/click"? This problem happens all across DAWs and hardware samplers and such, usually there is a way to "align to zero-crossings" when you wanna avoid it, or called something similar. I'd be surprised if Audacity didn't have that optionally since before, or that they didn't have it before but now with Audacity 4 it would suddenly be used automatically, that'd be somewhat strange too.

      • dwringeran hour ago
        At least with Reaper, if you cut an audio clip it will, by default, automatically apply small adjustable fade in/out envelopes to the ends so you specifically don't have to manually do it.
      • folkravan hour ago
        Yep that was my thought as well. Most DAWs default to a very quick cross fade when joining two clips for this very reason.
      • ancientstraitsan hour ago
        I think you're right. Audacity does have a "zero-crossings" thing, but when I tried using it a long time ago, it didn't seem to work, and I just learned to do fade-in/out for everything. Maybe I did something incorrectly.
  • 2b3a5132 minutes ago
    Downloaded the AppImage, chmod +x and ran it from my user space on Debian Trixie under Gnome. I went for light, colourful and modern UI, skipped the login/cloud invite, disabled the telemetry and started it up.

    Quite chatty when running it from the terminal, but seems to be working well on my Thinkpad X250 landfill laptop. Looks 'flat' and all in the modern style, but adapts to the 1366x768 letterbox that is my screen nicely.

  • Sophira2 hours ago
    How's the telemetry situation nowadays? I haven't been updating my copy for a while.
    • _def2 hours ago
      I just started the appimage - it asks you to login to the "cloud" but also offers a prominent skip button, and then asks if you want a telemetry UUID or not.
      • junon2 hours ago
        So even after the intense backlash Tantacrul saw on the GH threads, they went ahead and stuffed it full of telemetry anyway. Incredible.
        • sunaookamian hour ago
          He is pro age-verification with government IDs, what do you expect?
          • accrualan hour ago
            Did he state this in a video somewhere? I checked a couple biography pages but didn't see this specifically called out.
          • echelon21 minutes ago
            Please cite this if it's true.

            As far as I can tell they're updating the much dated UX from being stuck in the 90's and are making great strides on the app.

            I'm fine with them making money as they're investing into a utility I use.

  • elevationan hour ago
    Is the team funded off audacity merch sales? What's the most effective way for me to support the continuity of their work?
  • Gravityloss29 minutes ago
    For some reason, almost all audio apps have very odd scroll and zooming behaviour (and home/end keys also do weird things). Also doing basic things like starting playback or recording from start or from cursor tends to be quite complex in many of them. It would be interesting to know why that is so. Maybe it is so that you don't accidentally trigger it? If you're just doing editing and never recording, you never want to trigger recording with r, only with some complex modifier combo. But if you're a musician, that's about all you do, hit record and stop and playback and stop.
  • AbuAssar3 hours ago
    in the age of 500MB apps (thanks to electron); it is refreshing to see a sub-50MB app again.
    • mystifyingpoi2 hours ago
      Reaper install is 13 megs. I have no idea how is this possible today.
      • butlike20 minutes ago
        Because they're good
    • Mashimo2 hours ago
      Now that I look at it, why is the arm64 that much smaller then x86_64?

      36 vs 47MB

      • tosti2 hours ago
        Just an educated guess, but perhaps there are optional dependencies missing in the arm64 version. Some programs are still broken or perform badly on arm64.
    • LinguaBrowsean hour ago
      [dead]
  • monegatoran hour ago
    As always, abandoning GTK (or libadwaita. ew.) for Qt is a welcome change. Good for them.
    • cpreciosoan hour ago
      It was using wxWidgets, not GTK directly IIRC
      • sphan hour ago
        Ah, the dream of "one UI toolkit to rule them all" was very much alive when wxWidgets got popular around the turn of the millennium
      • Joel_Mckayan hour ago
        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 Linux window managers no one ever fixes, and a chain of legacy build issues.

        Microsoft people tend to design around entertainment eye candy rather than functional long-term reliability. A interface use-case context pop-up isn't a design choice, but rather just chaotic depending on who is using the seat.

        The Audacity 3 interface certainly needed a lot of work, but nuking it for v4 re-write is simply packaging a different program as the original.

        Hopefully the remake works out. The odds are not in their favor though... =3

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

  • jcmontx17 minutes ago
    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.
  • engfan33 minutes ago
    The video on their audio editor would have been much more interesting and widely useful if they instead showed how they made their beautiful video. There is much more combined video and audio editing going on than audio-editing alone and doing this well is difficult and time-consuming.
  • engfan34 minutes ago
    There video on their audio editor would have been much more interesting and widely useful if they instead showed how they made their beautiful video. There is much more combined video and audio editing going on than audio-editing alone and doing this well is difficult and time-consuming.
  • a1o3 hours ago
    Looks great. I remember a company sort of bought it but afaict they didn’t monetize it. I don’t remember the strategy, or why it was acquired, does anyone recall it?
    • odo12422 hours ago
      It’s the same company that bought MuseScore, they basically plan on monetizing it through plugins, audio samples, or optional cloud services (like MuseScore)
    • tomkarho3 hours ago
      They must have abandoned such plans (if they had any) when they got some backlash after they added telemetry features and half a dozen forks popped up overnight.
  • oidar2 hours ago
    >> The following Audacity 3 features are not available in Audacity 4.0, but we're working on adding them in future releases.

    Time Tracks Note/MIDI tracks Mixer Macro Manager and the scripting pipe VAMP and LADSPA plugin hosting Play-at-speed Sync-Lock and the old tool modes were replaced by the workflows described above.

    >>Additionally, Audacity 4 ships with some missing exporting and rendering features, analyzers, and effects.

    • kragen2 hours ago
      LADSPA sounds pretty critical; did they really ship with that missing?
      • marmarama14 minutes ago
        LADSPA v1 is ancient and fundamentally quite broken, and that's what they dropped. Audacity 4 ships with LV2 (i.e. LADSPA v2) support.

        FWIW I don't think I've used a v1 LADSPA plugin for a decade.

      • vrighteran hour ago
        the release date is decided before the work even starts. Whatever's done gets released, and marketing gets to claim a new major version. When it's still a work in progress. All software works like this nowadays (I'm sure it doesn't really.... but it sure looks that way). A lot of software I use have missing features in their latest major version
        • kuekacangan hour ago
          Should watch the pre release video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38 If what they're saying is true, this project is very much a pile of tech debt. They need to migrate whatever they can early before continuing work on the audio engine.
      • an hour ago
        undefined
  • bgribble25 minutes ago
    The direction Audacity has been heading now is ok, but it's not for me. I really miss the days when it was just an editor for audio files. I have a DAW already, thanks, but I do still need to just quickly pop open a sample file to trim, normalize, maybe stretch it. I don't want to create a "project" or save really anything other than the edited audio.
    • archerx13 minutes ago
      I feel you and that’s why I use tenacity, the spiritual continuation of the original audacity.
  • wconrm2 hours ago
    Love to see a winamp-era software evolving to this beauty. Enveloppes and UI colors looks like ableton in a good way.
  • ramon1563 hours ago
    Love what Audacity has become, especially the new UI that does not look like it was forced through some scrum pipeline
    • the_other2 hours ago
      Eh? It looks exactly like it was put through a scrum pipeline.
      • Mashimo2 hours ago
        What does that mean?
        • butlike14 minutes ago
          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.
      • _def2 hours ago
        While I agree tbf it could be much worse
  • ch_fran hour ago
    I have used old audacity and musescore-owned audacity, and I have to say it's a massive glow-up.

    I use REAPER for most things, but audacity has found a nice little niche when it comes to recording voice clips because it just does it with less hassle.

    It's in good hands.

  • luckilydiscrete2 hours ago
    Whoa what a glow up!
  • saltysaltan hour ago
    I hope aup4 is smaller than aup3, because my number one headache with Audacity is file size bloat. Otherwise I love it!
  • fedeb952 hours ago
    I've always loved audacity, but have always found its editing workflow to be hard to use. This seems an improvement.

    P.S.: I don't care for looks, but UX seems better. I will try it.

  • pluc3 hours ago
    Audacity and Avidemux have allowed me to look much more skilled in media editing than I have any right to claim
  • KolmogorovCompan hour ago
    Looks like most of the timeline editing feature could be successfully ported to Kdenlive (FOSS for video-editing)
  • _def2 hours ago
    Hopefully there will be a selfhostable implementation of their cloud counterpart someday? Maybe only a weekend of vibecoding away.
    • Mashimo2 hours ago
      What features do you need? Cloud saving?
    • VCFundedGenYeran hour ago
      I don't understand what you're talking about.

      If you want a local cloud, save things to your computer or NAS. You do know how to do that, right?

      No need to mindlessly slop code something.

      • butlike13 minutes ago
        But how will I get my dopamine hits without vibe coding?
    • Joel_Mckayan hour ago
      just use a modern 'rclone gui' web interface to setup your cloud or sshfs shares. =3
  • algoth1an hour ago
    So many 2002 Cool Edit Pro 2.0 vibes!
  • countryhabib6 minutes ago
    But where is the AI pfft
  • shevy-java2 hours ago
    Wasn't audacity taken over by a company sniffing for user data, some years ago?

    I noted this down into a local .yml file back in 2021, when Muse Group took over and wanted to telemetry-sniff people. I didn't pay attention to audacity past that point.

    Also, many accounts on hackernews act very suspiciously, with just raw promo as it if comes from an advertising account. I am noticing this increasingly, where people comment regular news with "this is great!!!!!". That makes no sense.

    • drdexebtjlan hour ago
      Yes, but they apparently hired a competent team and listened to user feedback. I don’t think this is astroturfing. Around a year ago they announced their plans for Audacity 4 in an hour-long video and it went somewhat viral, so this is a highly anticipated release.
    • Mashimoan hour ago
      AFAIK it was just regular usage telemetry. Audacity asks you on start if you want take part now.
    • nosioptaran hour ago
      Anyone who's dealt with ultimate guitar will tell you they're bottom feeding scumbags. At least, 100% of the people I know who've dealt with UG feel that way.

      I wouldn't be shocked at all if suspicious comments were bogus. Hell, I'd be shocked if UG wasn't doing something untoward.

      They also fucked musescore as well. Evil pigfuckers.

  • sapiogram2 hours ago
    I hope app startup times have been improved, at some this regressed massively, from 0.5s to like 2s.
  • emursebrian2 hours ago
    The new editing features will be pretty useful for sound design.
  • Forgeties79an hour ago
    2 reminders that I find always need to be mentioned in audacity threads:

    1) Audacity is not a DAW. I love it, it’s an incredibly robust tool. But I would not use it like a fully fledged DAW.

    2) Reaper isn’t free. They have an incredibly generous “try before you buy” license, and you should reward them by paying $40 if you use it and decide it is a tool you want to continue to use!

    • MrDOS37 minutes ago
      For those who haven't made the connection, Cockos, the company who make REAPER, is run by Justin Frankel, previously the founder of Nullsoft, the company who made Winamp. REAPER very much carries the Winamp torch of robust, resource-efficient software, and in the 15 or so years I've used it as a hobbyist, I don't think I've ever lost any work due to the software's fault.
  • SMAAART3 hours ago
    I am sure that Suno would love to buy Audacity.
    • thuuuomas2 hours ago
      Why do you think that is?
    • basisword2 hours ago
      I imagine the backlash would kill it.
      • bigfishrunning31 minutes ago
        It's GPL; it would be forked immediately and business as usual.
  • apercu2 hours ago
    I used Audacity decades ago (2006-2010) but when I stopped buying PCs I always found there was noise on a Mac so I switched to logic.

    I always thought audacity was great, and still prefer its workflow to slow tools or logic. I haven’t ever tried Reaper however.

    • Joel_Mckayan hour ago
      Most pro audio recorders come with a free desktop Steinberg Cubase license card.

      On MacOS it is probably one of the better options for lossless workflows. =3

  • sphan hour ago
    I can now admit I have always hated using Audacity before, and these updates, just looking at the release videos, have finally won me over. Incredible makeover of a free software application. Good job all!
  • thinkingtoilet2 hours ago
    If anyone here has contributed to Audacity I just want to say thank you. I'm not a power user. I'm not in audio. However, over the years I have installed Audacity to do some audio things here and there. It has always been so useful.
  • drcongo2 hours ago
    Finally looks great!
  • basisword2 hours ago
    It's been many years since I used Audacity but the interface looks vastly improved.
  • colincowardlyan hour ago
    [dead]
  • GaryBluto2 hours ago
    Very disappointed to see a program I remembered fondly for its native-feeling interface and functional, wholegrain feeling turned into whatever this is. It’s akin to a nutrient-rich home cooked meal being replaced with McDonald’s. I should’ve known it was doomed from the moment I saw an advertisement for their Discord chat room in the readme.
    • JosephRedfern2 hours ago
      This doesn't feel like very constructive feedback. Have you actually tried 4.0 yet, or were you too put off by the Discord link to proceed?

      IMO Audacity has never been particularly native-feeling, and I don't buy the McDonalds analogy - this release is still lightweight. It'd be a fair comment if they'd e.g. move to Electron, but Qt 6 is hardly that.

      • Joel_Mckay41 minutes ago
        wxWidgets uses the native OS interfaces. They have a valid point about Qt sometimes breaking things, and should be packaged as an audacity-qt6 fork.

        Your perspective is also valid, in that it could be phrased a little kinder. =3

    • sunaookami2 hours ago
      Yeah, it's sad to see how such a great program was ruined by yet another company. Opened it the other day and was greeted with a welcome screen that advertised some online service, then I had to turn off telemetry and there is some cloud integration now?
    • butlike12 minutes ago
      > Very disappointed to see a program I remembered fondly for its native-feeling interface and functional

      But it used wxWidgets, so by definition, NOT native interface

    • Mashimo2 hours ago
      What about the new design do you think is not functional any more compared to version 3?
      • Joel_Mckay30 minutes ago
        Many will discover >=Qt5 GL sometimes breaks in non-repairable ways on some linux desktops.

        On windows 11, Qt is usually fine if the license is still compatible... The old wxWidgets supports native OS interface targeting being truly cross-platform.

        Like all eye-candy interfaces at Microsoft, it will work until it doesn't. =3

    • drdexebtjlan hour ago
      Audacity users are not programmers.

      Discord is the right platform to get feedback from normies.

    • tontonius2 hours ago
      open source apps can be insanely powerful (and free!) but a thing that keeps a lot of them from 'mainstream' adoption is simply the F-tier user experience

      gimp had the same issue and i wouldnt be surprised if you also miss the old GTK UI?

      making audacity feel like a modern app instead of a dusty relic isnt making it into McDonalds..

      I for one applaud this upgrade -- its the polish it should have had years ago

      • GaryBlutoan hour ago
        I’ve long despised GTK and GIMP in general so I don’t think I’d like any form of its UI.
    • sisosksjjs2 hours ago
      [dead]
    • jamius192 hours ago
      Ah yes, the native looking interface that doesn't even properly scale on a 4k monitor! Good times!

      God forbid someone actually improves a software!