Software Update: Audacity 1.2.4 / 1.3.0

Audacity is an open source audio editor and available on various platforms such as Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. The program can record sound via an external input, import and export wav, aiff, ogg and mp3 files and includes an unlimited undo function. In addition, it has a lot of effects on board, such as fade in and out, echo, tempo change and noise removal. More effects can be easily added as the program supports both VST and LADSPA plug-ins. The developers have released version 1.2.4 in the stable branch and version 1.3.0 in the unstable branch with the following announcement:

Audacity 1.2.4 is a new stable version of Audacity. It includes a couple of bug fixes and minor improvements and is recommended for all users. Audacity 1.3.0 is a beta release that contains hundreds of new features, but this version is unfinished and unstable, and is recommended primarily for advanced users. You can install both Audacity 1.2 and 1.3 simultaneously.

Version 1.2.4:

• The File menu now includes a list of recent files.
• The “Generate Silence” effect now prompts for a length.
• Audacity is now built with Vorbis 1.1, which features better encoding quality and file compression.
• Dragging sound files into the Audacity window now works on Mac OS X and Linux, as well as Windows. (Before, it worked only on Windows.)
• Better support for certain audio devices on Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”
• The “View History” window can now discard old undo levels to save disk space on Windows. (This previously worked only on Linux and Mac.)
• “Preferences” command is now in Edit menu.
• “Plot Spectrum” command is now in Analyze menu.
• Opening a project file saved by a later version of Audacity displays an intelligent error message. Also, trying to import a project file (instead of opening it) displays an intelligent error message.
• Audacity now compiles into Visual C++ .NET 2003.
• Other minor bug fixes.
• New or updated translations: Arabic (ar), Czech (cs), Finnish (fi), Hungarian (hu), Japanese (ja), Norwegian (nb), Slovenian (sl), Simplified Chinese (zh_CN), Traditional Chinese (zh_TW ).

[break]The following downloads are ready:
Audacity 1.2.4 – Mac OS X
Audacity 1.2.4 – Windows
Audacity 1.2.4 – Source
Audacity 1.3.0 – Mac OS X
Audacity 1.3.0 – Windows
Audacity 1.3.0 – Source