Slashdot Mirror
Audacity 1.2.0 Released
mbrubeck writes "After almost two years of development, the free cross-platform sound editor Audacity has released a new stable version for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Audacity 1.2 has major improvements including professional-quality dithering and resampling, and new pitch- and speed-changing effects. Our previous stable release was announced on Slashdot in June 2002. More recently, Audacity was presented at this year's CodeCon in San Francisco."
Programs like this are a big step forward for the dream of "Linux on the Desktop"
Software is a trivial cost in the grand scheme of things. Mixing desks, monitors, amps, sound proofing, mics, and of course rent & engineer fees are far more.
For example, you can get a top of the line recording package such as Logic Audio for around $1000. However, a decent vocal microphone such as a Neumann U87 will set you back around $3000.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
I know that it depends on what you want to use it for, but I don't think Audacity is actually useful for "live recording" i.e. listening to something and concurrently recording alongside it.
I do have to admit that it is a great piece of software with loads of features but when I do some multitrack recording with my full duplex, 24-bit, DMX 6Fire soundcard: I expect good results. I don't expect a latency of about half a second. That's the bottom line - until that problem is addressed I can't swap Audacity for CoolEdit Pro, or Cakewalk. As a user and supporter of GPL stuff, that's what I really want to do.
I guess sometimes there really is a reason why software *can* rightly cost hundreds of thousands of $$$s.
Hyperbole like this only helps to underscore either a)the closed mindedness of OSS developers or b)the ignorance of the person who said it.
Software development is not a war or a contest. A rival piece of software rarely (EXTREMELY RARELY) ever obliterates the market for its competitors. Most of the time, though, the decline/loss of a viable program is due to the developer being lost in a merger or acquisition or by the advertising money spent by a rival to achieve massive market penetration. Mergers, buyouts, and marketing blitzes aren't something for which most OSS projects have the $, time, or inclination.
The GIMP is not going to "topple" PaintShop Pro. Most people aren't OSS savvy but they can buy PSPro off of the shelf at BestBuy--so they'll get what they can acquire. If GIMP shows any detectable difference to Photoshop it will probably only be in the lessening of Photoshop piracy since there is an adequate free tool some people to use. Even then, though, the warez-monkeys will still download Photoshop because it's available to them.
I use cooledit for most of my audio editing, and your post blows me away. My first thought using the program was "wow, they finally made it run on my mac. Badass!". However, my second thought was, "hrm, it's -like- cooledit, but without any of the effects or features".
This program looks like it's off to a good start, but it's not gonna replace cooledit for me. Namely, it lacks a lot of basic plugins (ADSR, amplification envelopes, fade ins/outs that don't suck, spectrum analysis, etc). Hopefully, the VST enabler project will take care of most of this.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Audacity is also pretty darn useful on Windows. It fills a niche between Windows' built-in sound recorder program (that will only record one minute) and more advanced non-free (in any sense of the word) apps. I am not aware of another free sound editor for Windows with the features of Audacity.
where there's fish, there's cats
Now, in most cases, OSS projects aren't conciously attempting to re-create an existing product - but they're attempting to solve a certain set of problems, and where theres a particular app or set of apps that dominate that space they will inevitably be compared to that product. Photoshop is successfull because it accurately addresses the needs of graphics professionals. Anything else that accurately addresses those needs will neccesarily be very similiar to Photoshop, and anything that doesn't will be derided as "not suitable for professionals", and rightly so.
I'm a huge fan of open source tools, but there's just no software out there to compete with the big boys. Audacity is great as a learning tool, but you'll never find it in a professional recording studio. Steinberg's Cubase and Nuendo, and Digi's Pro Tools, and Apple's Logic division are not worrying about the free competition yet.
And OK I'm not trolling here, but Audacity is just not that great. I tried using it to record a simple demo, and I just didn't find it useful. I'm glad its open source and it'll surely improve, but the simple free program that came with my Mac to record audio is better. Seriously. Ultimately maybe Audacity will kick Pro Tools' ass, but I just don't see it coming yet.
Like many plugins for audacity, the tool exists, but it is either non-functional or useless. The main reason I use cooledit's frequency analysis is for resampling instrumunts, a task at which audacity cannot currently do.
Say you resample someone's bassline, and you want to use this sample within another program such as reason or buzz as a machine. So you grab your sample from a file, isolate it, etc. After clipping the wav, you're good to go.
However, when you take this note into reason, you can't just go off and start programming notes into it... even though reason will happily make a melody for you, the notes that you program into the machine are only relative to the sample that you give it. That is, they do not actually reflect the sample you put in.
For instance, say the bass note you grab is an F#. However, when you feed this into another machine, it will assume it is tuned to a C. So when you tell it to play something like "C, C#, D", you would actually be hearing "F# G G#". So, everything is off-tune and sounds like ass.
In cooledit (I'm on a mac atm, so sadly, I cannot tell you specifically where to find this tool), you can whip out ce's analysis program, which will tell you the exact tuning of a given sound. So, you can figure out that the note is actually an F# rather than a C, and either work around it in buzz or reason, or you could change the pitch of the sample to adjust it to a C. In case you're curious, audacity's analysis doesn't support this. It'll run a freq analysis, but not actually tell you anything useful out of it.
I only bring this lengthy example up because it is one of the things that really pisses me off about the open source community. It's as if everyone is really excited about this program just because it's finally -somewhat- useable, and it's OSS. It's kind of like praising the retarded kid in elementary school when he spells "dog" correctly in the spelling bee. =) My point is, I'm optimistic for audacity, but it lacks a lot of -basic- functionality for composing or editing music.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
This software is used to record a voice, lay it in over a track from a CD, and then possibly, at the most technically advanced, compress the time on the voice a bit. In other words, make ads, which is what radio stations do all day. In many stations, even today, you then dump it to a cart... basically an eight-track. For the rest, you load it up into a system that stores all the ads.
This is perfect for that use, and as a result, this is a useful piece of software. I'd also say that it's good for throwing up while rehearsing or jamming to nab stuff in case you hear something really nice.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
and Peak and SoundEdit 16 don't support LADSPA plugins. Audacity does.
kudos, Dominic et al! along with Samba, LADSPA, and Ardour, your software has been critical in all the recording I've done recently.