Audacity

Audacity is an open source, freely distributed, cross-platform and easy-to-use software project designed from the offset to act as an audio editor and recorder for personal computers running any GNU/Linux distribution or the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Audacity is a very powerful software, it is used by many professional musicians who want a free software alternative for analyzing, editing and recording audio tracks.

Features at a glance

With Audacity, users can record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files, cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together, as well as to change the speed or pitch of a recording. In addition, the software contains many plugins and effects, among which we can mention Echo, Paulstretch (extreme stretch), Phaser, Reverb, Reverse, Truncate Silence and Wahwah.

Offers a powerful plugin architecture

Audacity comes by default with a vast amount of features, but the most important one is the powerful plugin architecture, which allows users to extend its default functionality through add-ons that can be written by users.

Under the hood and availability

The application is written entirely in the C++ programming language and uses the GTK+ GUI toolkit for its graphical user interface under GNU/Linux and BSD systems, where it is available for download only as a sources archive, requiring users to configure and compile the app prior to installation, but it can be easily installed from the default software repositories of many Linux distributions.

Supported OSes and architectures

The software has been successfully tested under several GNU/Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Debian, Linux Mint, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, openSUSE or Mageia, various BSD flavors like FreeBSD, as well as on the commercial Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. At the moment, it runs perfect on both 32-bit and 64-bit instruction set architectures.

What is new in this release:

• Bug Fixes:
• Bug #1767 - Opening a second project from Mac's Finder produces a second inaccessible instance of Audacity
• Bug #1770 - Crash applying certain chain files
• Bug #1783 - Preview fails when selection extends before zero
• Bug #1787 - Auto-scroll stopped working in 2.2.0
• Bug #1765 - Using File > Open to import audio gives wrong zoom level and no scroll bar slider

What is new in version 2.2.0:

• Improvements
• Four Selectable themes provided, with new 'Light' theme as default, plus option to customize
• Many menu changes:
• Menus Reorganized
• Extended menu bar provided
• New keyboard commands for working with clips
• Help buttons ? in Preferences, Effects, Generators and Analyzers - and other places
• Non-Greying out of effects when no selection (and explanatory dialog with help button)
• Playback of MIDI (and Allegro) files imported into Note Tracks is now available.
• 'Center' option in Selection Toolbar
• Stem plots
• Major overhaul to documentation/manual including many new images and streamlined text on landing pages for in-program help.
• Other Changes
• Append-record is now the default (use Shift + Record for old behavior, to record on a new track)
• The Esc key now cancels all click-and-drag actions. It also chooses among overlapping mouse click targets, which is especially useful in the Multi-Tool.
• Sync-Lock button removed (use menu item or keyboard shortcut instead)
• New preferences and preference pages
• Overhaul of much code:
• Overhaul of envelope handling code to deal with some anomalies
• Overhaul of exception handling for greater safety
• New Logo
• Bug Fixes
• Major work on bug fixing. 198 bugs that were in 2.1.3 fixed for 2.2.0.
• The most serious bug fixed this time round was bug 437 which was about what happens when Audacity is recording and runs out of storage.
• The problems of incomplete support for macOs Sierra have been resolved (including bug 290, bug 1567, bug 1702, and bug 1703).
• Most of the bugs fixed were more minor, such as bug 463 which was about a case in which the numbering on the timeline could display incorrect times.
• For those who really have to know, the list of bugs fixed in 2.2.0 is here.
• Supported Platforms
• Audacity is for Windows, Mac and Linux desktop machines. There is no version of Audacity for Android or iPhone.
• Windows
• Audacity 2.2.0 requires the CPU to support the SSE2 instruction set which should be available on any Intel hardware produced after 2001 and any AMD hardware produced after 2003. To check what SSE levels your CPU supports, you can install CPU-Z. If your hardware only supports SSE, you may download Audacity 2.0.6 (ZIP, not installer) by clicking this link.
• 2.2.0 does not officially support Windows XP.
• macOS / Mac OS X
• Audacity 2.2.0 is for Intel Macs running OS X 10.6 and later and macOS. There are legacy versions for older OS X at http://audacityteam.org/download/legacy-mac/.
• Linux
• Linux support is tested on Ubuntu Linux.
• Audacity may compile on Gentoo, Debian, Mint.
• Audacity does not currently compile on SuSE Linux.
• Issues
• See our list of issues for much more detail of issues with Audacity 2.2.0.
• Below are listed what we believe are the most common and important issues with 2.2.0 for most users.
• File > Open
• If you use the File > Open to "open" an audio file (WAV file or MP3 file say) the file will import properly but only the first few seconds of it will be shown (the default zoom level), but more importantly the horizontal scroll slider will be missing from the scroll bar, meaning you can't access the remaining audio.
• All you need to do do is press the Play button or any of the Zoom buttons in the Edit toolbar and the horizontal scroll slider will be restored.
• The best way to avoid this happening is to use the File > Import command to import the file into an Audacity project. All that the File > Open does with an audio file is to Import the audio into an open empty project, or if you already have an active project it will open a new project and import the file into that project.
• Timer Record
• Timer Record may not reliably stop the recording on some machines. The Elapsed and Remaining Time counters may stop counting. In this case it will be necessary to force quit Audacity.
• On a few affected machines, the problem can be avoided if you leave focus on Audacity or ensure it has focus when recording is due to end.
• (Linux) PULSE Audio
• PulseAudio is not reliable when used with Audacity on Linux. Playback or recording may freeze, recording dropouts or fast playback may occur when using PulseAudio.
• Freezes may be caused by repeatedly starting and stopping playback or recording in quick succession (or by holding down the Play or Record button).
• Workarounds: Try launching Audacity from the terminal with the pulse latency set to 30 ms in an environment variable:
• env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 audacity
• If you get underruns noted in the terminal, try a higher number in the PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC command. If the problem is unchanged, try a lower number.
• Alternatively, bypass pulseaudio by setting the playback and recording device to an ALSA (hw) choice in Device Toolbar. More help with this can be found here.
• (Linux) MIDI
• The timing of notes during MIDI playback may sound erratic on some machines. Optimizing the system for low latency MIDI playback can help to reduce the inaccuracies.
• (Mac) Launch from Finder or AUP file
• With Sierra 10.12 and High Sierra 10.13 opening a second project from Mac's Finder produces a second inaccessible instance of Audacity. If you already have an Audacity project open, and attempt to open a second .AUP from within the Finder window (whether by double clicking, right-clicking for Open on the pop-up menu, or typing Cmd-O) or by right-clicking on the .AUP file and using Open With, the second project attempts to open in a new instance of Audacity, visible in Apple's Dock bar at the bottom of the screen. This second instance of Audacity will not be accessible and you will need to Force Quit it.
• Workaround: Use Audacity's File > Open command to open the second and successive projects.
• Accessibility
• Far less of Audacity is properly accessible to visually impaired users than we would like. Currently the best supported platform for accessibility is Windows. We lost a lot of custom accessibility programming when we had to move to a more recent version of the wxWidgets library.

What is new in version 2.1.2:

• Improvements:
• Effects:
• Noise Reduction defaults changed.
• Interface:
• We've made several improvements to the spectrogram view of tracks which are particularly valuable for vocal work.
• New option ‘Spectral Reassignment'. This algorithm deduces a ‘finer' spectrogram for vocal work.
• Four new Spectrogram scales.
• Improvement to the Pitch (EAC) algorithm - cleaner (sharper) display.
• Spectrogram Settings are now available per-track.
• Other Changes:
• Upgraded from wxWidgets 2.8.12 to wxWidgets 3.0.2.
• Restructuring of the Preferences Menu
• Restructuring of the Track Dropdown Menu (for the Spectrograms)
• The Noise Reduction "Frequency smoothing" default has been increased to 3 to help avoid metallic artifacts. Resetting Preferences or deleting audacity.cfg will set the new default.
• (Windows) The location of Audacity's work-in-progress folder has been changed, to avoid problems where certain disk cleaners treated them as deletable temporary files.
• Bug Fixes:
• Crashes:
• Crashes on reading very large .wav and .mp2 files have been fixed.

What is new in version 2.1.1:

• The most visible new feature is scrubbing and seeking , including backwards play. Updates to Quick-Play also help with finding a precise position in the audio.
• You can now install plug-ins without restarting Audacity or add and remove any effect or generator from the menus.
• Over 50 bugs have been addressed with this release. Edits are now processed much faster in longer projects of a few hours duration.
• Effects now have presets. A new Limiter replaces the Hard Limiter effect. There's a new version of Vocal Removal, a cross-fade effect for combining clips on the same track and 'classic filters' available as an opt-in effect.

What is new in version 2.1.0:

• Changes and Improvements:
• Effects:
• LADSPA, VST and Audio Unit (OS X) effects now support real-time preview, save/load of user presets and saving effect settings across sessions. Note: Real-time preview does not yet support latency compensation.
• VST effects now support import/export of FXB preset banks.
• Shell VST effects that host multiple plugins are now supported.
• All Effect Menu items (built-in or plugin) can now be used in a Chain.
• Items in the Effect, Generate or Analyze Menus can be sorted or grouped by name, publisher or class of effect.
• Noise Removal is improved and renamed to "Noise Reduction".
• Change Speed has new time controls for current and new length. You can now enter the speed change as a multiplier e.g. "2" is twice as fast.
• New "Crossfade Tracks" effect can be used for crossfading two tracks. This replaces Cross Fade In and Cross Fade Out.
• Nyquist Prompt and most shipped Nyquist effects now have Preview button.
• Interface:
• Redesigned Meter Toolbars: The default shows separate Record and Playback Meters, half-height so they can be wider while docked, in gradient style.
• A frequency selection can now be made (and spectral edit effects applied to those frequencies) when in a spectrogram view. You can also create or adjust frequency selections in a new "Spectral Selection Toolbar" (available at View > Toolbars).
• Transcription Toolbar (Play-at-speed) can now loop play and cut-preview.
• Timer Record now saves recordings automatically into an existing project.
• New Armenian translation.
• Operating system and sound device support:
• (Windows) Audacity 2.1.0 requires Windows XP SP3 (32-bit) or XP SP2 (64-bit), Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 or 8.1.
• (Windows) Audacity is now compiled using Visual Studio 2013.
• (Windows) Recording with WASAPI host now includes experimental support for physical inputs (up to 24-bit depth) as well as loopback recording.
• (OS X) 10.10 (Yosemite) is now supported including Apple Audio Units.
• Please report any issues with WASAPI recording/playback or Yosemite to http://audacity.sourceforge.net/contact/#feedback .
• (Linux Ubuntu) Under Unity, keyboard shortcuts are not visible in the Audacity menus. Keyboard shortcuts are visible if you install the classic GNOME Flashback interface or under Unity if you open Audacity with the UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 environment variable. Audacity compiled from source will ship with src/audacity.desktop.in set to UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 but it will remain up to distributions to use this desktop file.
• Bug fixes:
• Interface:
• Typing "j" or "k" in a label track activated the "move cursor" shortcut.
• Spectrogram log (f) view displayed incorrectly until vertically zoomed.
• Fixed crash after zooming out on vertical scale beyond +/-1.0.
• Selections made with Selection Toolbar were not restored after Undo.
• Undo could fail silently if a selection included/touched a clip boundary.
• Imports and Exports
• If there were invalid FFmpeg libs in system PATH this prevented Audacity recognising the installed FFmpeg or the FFmpeg specified in audacity.cfg.
• Mac OS X:
• Fix uninitialized buffer - this should correct playback buzz or crackle where the upper of multiple tracks started with or contained white space.
• Device names were corrupted when using system language other than English.
• Fixed crashes using (external program).
• Waves v9 Audio Units should now work correctly.
• GNU/Linux:
• Fix "Audacity already running" error when using the command-line or context menu to open multiple or further files.
• Fix segfault exporting an FFmpeg format to an unwritable folder.
• Fix silent failure exporting FFmpeg, MP2 or OGG to an unwritable folder.
• Fix ENTER activated an effect when OK button was greyed out.
• Addendum:
• The previous Audacity 2.0.6 version fixed an issue that projects did not reopen correctly if they contained tracks having 2^31 samples or greater of audio (just over 13.5 hours at 44100 Hz).

What is new in version 2.0.6:

• (OS X) Crashes when importing audio files are fixed.
• (OS X) Files can now be opened using Finder "Open with", and by double-click or dragging to the Audacity icon.
• (OS X) Audio Unit plug-ins are not loaded until used. This makes Audacity start faster and avoids startup crashes due to incompatible plug-ins.
• (Windows) On a very few machines, the Windows WDM-KS low latency host caused Audacity 2.0.4 to hang or the computer to crash. WDM-KS has been removed from Audacity 2.0.5 while we work on safely enabling this host. WDM-KS will still be available for testing in the Windows alpha development builds.
• (Windows) Fixed a bug where Audacity would not record until the current input was reselected.
• (Linux) You can now navigate through an effect or other dialog using keyboard TAB.

What is new in version 2.0.5 RC1:

• Changes and Improvements:
• Tracks Menu:
• The separate commands that aligned track start or end with the cursor or with selection start are combined into "Cursor/Selection Start" commands.
• "Align and Move Cursor" renamed to "Move Selection when Aligning".
• Label Tracks:
• Labels Editor now allows empty labels to be saved on closing the editor.
• TAB and SHIFT+TAB when the label track has focus now always move forwards or backwards respectively to the nearest label.
• (Windows) On a very few machines, the Windows WDM-KS low latency audio host introduced in Audacity 2.0.4 caused Audacity to hang or the computer to crash. WDM-KS has been removed from 2.0.5 until it can be safely enabled.
• (Windows and OS X) Screen reader improvements for Install VST Effects dialog.
• (OS X) Audio Unit plug-ins detected by Audacity on launch are now not loaded until chosen from the Effect menu. This should speed up launch and avoid crashes at launch due to misbehaving Audio Units.
• (Linux) Update to PortAudio r1910 fixes memory and other bugs under ALSA.
• (Linux) Applied fix for wxGTK 2.8.12 bug which resulted in loss of Audacity's menu bar (or visual corruption under Unity) on Debian-based systems.
• Bug fixes for:
• Shaped dither was corrupted and too loud on all stereo exports except FLAC.
• Keyboard Preferences: some Edit and Align commands for different sub-menus showed the same name.
• Recordings stopped with "Stop and Set Cursor" shortcut could not be undone.
• In locales that use comma for decimal separator:
• Text boxes with slider in Nyquist effects only produced whole numbers when using comma to enter a fractional number. Text boxes without slider still have this problem.
• Built-in generators produced silence after running a Nyquist effect.
• (Windows) When first changing to Windows WASAPI host, the input volume slider in Mixer Toolbar was enabled when it should have been permanently disabled.
• (Windows) On some machines, launching Audacity then recording from the current Device Toolbar input would not record until the input was reselected.
• (OS X) Frequent crashes occurred on importing audio files on some machines.
• (OS X) Files did not open using Finder "Open with", double-clicking the file or dragging the file to the Audacity icon.
• (Linux 64-bit) Fixed a crash when using Equalization.
• (Linux) It was not possible to open an effect or other dialog then navigate through the dialog using TAB.
• (Linux) The Play shortcut did not play a read-directly WAV, AIFF or FLAC import if the warning for importing uncompressed files appeared.

What is new in version 2.0.4:

• New Effect > Reverb (based on Freeverb), that replaces GVerb.
• New View > Go to Selection Start and Go to Selection End commands.
• New Tracks > Align End to End command to append selected tracks.
• WAV files import/export now supports "Album Title", "Track Number" and "Genre" LIST INFO tags and ID3 tags.
• (Windows) New support for Windows WDM/KS host which can provide very low latencies if you reduce "Audio to Buffer" in Recording Preferences.
• (Windows Vista and later) You can now record computer playback by choosing the new Windows WASAPI host in Device Toolbar , then a "loopback" input.
• Bugs have been fixed, involving Keyboard Preferences, Equalization curves, and Effect > Change Pitch, and several more.

What is new in version 2.0.4 RC1:

• Changes and Improvements:
• New "Reverb" effect to replace GVerb, based on the original "Freeverb".
• New View > Go to Selection Start and Go to Selection End commands.
• New "Align End to End" command to append existing tracks to each other.
• Change Tempo now supports fractional BPM.
• Plot Spectrum now supports FFT sizes up to 65536.
• WAV files now support "Album Title", "Track Number" and "Genre" LIST INFO tags and also support ID3 tags.
• Handle a bug in older iPods or some OS X applications that cause them to refuse AIFF files whose metadata contains an uneven number of characters,
• (Windows) Added support for "Windows WDM-KS" host which can provide very low latencies if you reduce "Audio to Buffer" in Recording Preferences.
• (Windows Vista and later) You can now record computer playback by choosing the new "Windows WASAPI" host in Device Toolbar then a "loopback" input.
• (Windows and Mac OS X): VST scanning dialog now replaced with a dialog for choosing which VST effects to load.
• (Linux) CTRL + ALT can now be used to smooth samples in Draw Tool.
• Modules Preferences replaced with a dialog on launch of Audacity enabling you to choose which modules to load.
• Bug fixes for:
• Keyboard Preferences: Shortcuts for Generators, Effects and Analyzers were not exported. All imported shortcut changes were discarded.
• Equalization curves were corrupted in Graphic EQ mode after switching to/from Draw Curves or after running the effect then reopening it.
• Change Pitch displayed corrupted values when reducing pitch or editing "from" Frequency. Detection was very inaccurate at high sample rates.
• Bass Boost no longer clips if the track contains 32-bit audio.
• Auto Duck was excessively slow on older machines.
• (Windows) Exported MP3 comments tags were not seen by Windows programs.
• (Windows and OS X) Audacity crashed if you used system quit before file import was complete.
• (Linux) Equalization crashed Audacity if the XML file was corrupted.
• (Linux) When configuring effect parameters in "Edit Chains", "Preview" (not intended to be functional) caused a crash.
• (Linux) LICENSE.txt and README.txt were wrongly installed in /usr/local/share/doc instead of /usr/local/share/doc/audacity/ .
• Accessibility: ENTER did not toggle selectedness of a label track unless a label was selected.
• Numerous other interface fixes.

What is new in version 2.0.3 RC1:

• Bug fixes for:
• Crash using Undo whilst time-shifting a track.
• Crash using Repair if the selection extended into an empty track.
• Export Multiple didn't prevent export if there was no audio or all audio was muted. This allowed export of small invalid files.
• Time Track:
• Loop Play of a speeded-up track inserted silence.
• Playback and rendering was significantly inaccurate, creating audible and visual glitches.
• Accessibility:
• The mnemonics character "&" was read out by screen readers in most of the Preferences choices.
• NVDA did not read static text in most dialogs. Text can now be read by using INSERT + B.
• JAWS and Window-eyes misread the "Duration" control in Silence Generator.
• Toolbar buttons could not be pressed by ENTER
• Other interface bug fixes.
• Changes and Improvements:
• The SoX Resampler library (libsoxr) has replaced libresample in Audacity releases, offering both higher quality and greater speed. .
• Time Tracks new features:
• "Set Range" now changes only the range of the Time Track, preserving the pitch/speed set by any existing warp points.
• Vertical scale added with options for linear and logarithmic display and interpolation.
• Upper and lower speed limits will now be remembered when saving and reopening a project in 2.0.3. Warp points in projects saved by previous Audacity versions will be correctly restored in 2.0.3.
• Warp points saved in a 2.0.3 project will be preserved if opened in previous versions but playback and display will be incorrect.
• New effects:
• Studio Fade Out (uses a filtered "S" curve).
• Adjustable Fade (accessible effect for creating partial fades and adjustable fade shapes).
• Bass and Treble (replaces Bass Boost).
• Real sample rates up to 384000 Hz are now supported for playback and recording in high resolution devices (the maximum is up to 192000 Hz for Windows DirectSound host).
• Labeled Regions in Edit Menu is renamed to "Labeled Audio" and now allows splits to be placed at point labels. Labeled audio regions that touch without overlapping are treated as separate regions. Overlapping labeled audio regions are treated as a single region.
• Compilation: cmake is required in order to build libsoxr.
• New Croatian translation of Audacity.

What is new in version 2.0.1 RC1:

• Bug fixes for:
• Interface:
• Selection Toolbar: a value for the previous whole second displayed if the value was close to a whole second.
• Finding zero crossings could cause the selection to expand into white space at either side of the clip.
• Clips did not drag to another track if mouse was over a selection.
• Mixer Board: Rendering four tracks resulted in a redundant Track Strip followed by a crash.
• Imports and Exports:
• Exporting to WAV or AIFF led to a "Libsndfile says" error or corrupted output due to order of metadata in imported files.
• (Mac) Fixed crashes importing MP3 files on PPC machines.
• Effects and Analysis:
• Normalize: Fixed issues where normalization could be to wrong value if applied with DC offset correction, or if applied to "read-directly" WAV and AIFF files before On-Demand completed.
• Sliding Time Scale: fixed an audible discontinuity at the beginning of the processed selection; fixed a serious quality problem on Linux 64-bit.
• Other miscellaneous bug fixes, including fix to prevent zooming with mouse wheel or ball scrolling the content off-screen,
• Changes and Improvements:
• Shortcuts can now be added in Keyboard Preferences to items in the Generate, Effect or Analyze menus, including user-added plug-ins.
• Nyquist Effect plug-ins can now be added to Chains.
• New "Paulstretch" effect for extreme slowdown without pitch change.
• New "Sample Data Export" Analyze effect for exporting a file containing amplitude values for each sample in the selection.
• New Preference to import files On-Demand (without seeking ability) when using the optional FFmpeg library.
• (Windows installer) New option to reset Preferences on next launch.
• (Mac) Audacity now has excellent compatibility with the VoiceOver screen reader. For details, please see: http://manual.audacityteam.org/help/manual/man/accessibility.html#mac .
• CleanSpeech Mode (no longer supported) will not now be enabled even if it was enabled by an earlier version of Audacity.
• Added Serbian (Latin and Cyrillic) translations.

What is new in version 1.3.11 Beta:

• Imports and Exports:
• Bug when exporting partial selections caused too much audio to be exported is fixed
• Fix corrupt files exported through FFmpeg when metadata included (metadata is now exported correctly in M4A files)
• Prevent saving a new Audacity Project over an existing one as this could corrupt both projects
• Improved help for files that cannot be imported because the relevant optional library is missing
• Effects:
• Allow effects which change the length of the audio they work on to also be applied to selected label tracks, thus keeping them synchronized
• Fixed inability in Nyquist plug-ins to add labels to an existing label track
• (Mac) Equalization window was corrupted after Preview
• (Linux 64-bit) Fixed crash Generating Click Track
• Audio Devices:
• Fixed bug causing recording to stop short when the recording sample rate is not supported by the sound device and libsamplerate is used for resampling
• Fix crash when opening Preferences on a machine where there are no available audio devices
• Fixes for bugs using Timer Record and Sound Activated Recording
• User Interface:
• Sizes of some dialogs adjusted to ensure they fit on the screen
• Fix for supposedly "hidden" items appearing on screen with large monitors
• Various keyboard shortcut and translation fixes
• Other bug fixes:
• Several timing-dependent crashes and minor incorrect behaviours have been fixed
• Windows installer now installs correctly over previous versions of Audacity
• Changes and improvements:
• (Windows) Better icon file with higher resolution and transparency
• New SoundFinder plug-in to label regions of audio between silences, so allowing silences between tracks to be excluded when exporting multiple

What is new in version 1.3.9:

• Various bugfixes and feature enhancements were made.

What is new in version 1.3.9 Beta:

• Bugs fixed:
• Crash, slow launch or excessive CPU/memory use arising from automatic VST support
• Default View Mode now works
• Chains now always apply their stored parameters rather than those last used in Effect menu
• Non-MP3 files imported via drag or Recent Files caused crash if filter in file open window set to MP3
• AAC exports (using the optional FFmpeg library) silenced
• Generating audio always fitted the project in the window; fit now done only if generating in new track
• View menu items/shortcuts incorrectly disabled when playing or recording
• DTMF generator defaulted to zero duration on open
• Unwanted interactions between linked audio and label tracks
• Various other interface bugs
• Improvements:
• Compressor: new option to compress based on peaks, improved attack and decay time support
• Mixer Board: improved design, more responsive meters and now interacts fully with Track Panel in main window