Software Update: Audacity 1.3.6 rc1

Audacity is an open source audio editor available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The program can record sound, import and export wav, aiff, ogg and mp3 files and has unlimited undo function. In addition, Audacity has a lot of effects on board, such as fade-in and fade-out, echo, change tempo and noise reduction. More effects can be added easily as the program supports both vst and ladspa plugins. The developers have released the first release candidate of version 1.3.6 in the unstable branch, which is currently only available for Windows systems. The supplied list of changes since the previous entry in the Meuktracker looks like this:

Changes in 1.3.6a6:

Interface:

• Note Track now supports export as a MIDI file
• Linked audio and label tracks: improved support when source and target number of tracks differ and when cross-pasting different track types

Import / Export:

• On-demand now supports project saving during summarising; reverses to stripey background; fixed some crashes due to threading issues
• Exports: Single AAC filter (M4A LC profile) with quality settings slider; removed FFmpeg formats already supported by Audacity; added explicit GSM 6.10 (WAV) filter; current project rate now used for all exports, with check for format-invalid rates; improvements to metadata support

Effects:

• LV2 plug-ins: added support (OS X and Linux only) for using synths as tone generators, scale point labels, grouped controls and i18n translations

Changes in 1.3.6a5:

Interface:

• Note Track now builds on Windows
• Fixes/improvements for linked audio and label tracks (one desynchronization bug remains when pasting audio into a greater number of tracks than were copied); now supports label shifting when changing pitch and tempo
• Added full label pasting support: now possible to paste multiple labels, region labels and labels with audio, and correct label text is now pasted

Import / Export:

• Added full “on-demand” support (now with minimum file length of 30 seconds): clicking moves summary calculation point; supports split and merge of stereo tracks; incompletely summarized tracks resume summary calculation automatically; text-based Status Bar progress indication and animated dummy waveform instead of embedded progress bar

Effects:

• Fixed a bug where previewing Equalization curves more than once previewed the unmodified audio
• Improvements to DTMF generator

miscellaneous:

• Improved support for working with audio in excess of 2^31 samples (about 13.5 hours at 44100 Hz); some accessibility improvements

Changes in 1.3.6a4:

Interface:

• New Preference: Default View Mode, to choose type of waveform, spectrum or pitch view for new tracks
• Note Track: experimental support is now enabled by defining USE_MIDI in config*, but does not build out-of-the-box on Windows
• Bug fixes for linked audio and label tracks; now supports label shifting when changing speed and generating tones

Import / Export:

• Improvements/fixes for AAC exports including new M4A filter for compatibility with iTunes; RealAudio export support removed – FFmpeg does not support this properly
• Improved refresh or on-demand loading; fixed a phantom on-demand progress bar when time-shifting clips

Effects:

• Experimental support for LV2 plug-in architecture on Linux and Mac, but operation may be buggy; no LV2 support yet on Windows, because the required slv2 library currently does not build

Changes in 1.3.6a3:

Import / Export:

• Experimental support for exporting a much wider range of proprietary audio formats via FFmpeg
• “On-demand” immediate loading of imported PCM WAV or AIFF files now has experimental “progress bar” embedded in the waveform until fully loaded

Interface:

• Note Track: experimental support for cut, copy and paste using Edit Toolbar; currently not available for Linux, where EXPERIMENTAL_NOTE_TRACK must be undefined in order to build
• New Transport menu for alternative access to play and record commands and some recording preferences
• Audio tracks are now linked to label tracks by being positioned above a label track, if linkage is enabled in the Tracks menu

Changes in 1.3.6a2:

Import / Export:

• Experimental support for importing a much wider range of audio formats via FFmpeg: support has to be enabled in *config when building and requires FFmpeg libraries
• Experimental support for “on-demand” immediate loading of imported PCM WAV or AIFF files (full waveform continues to load while you play or edit).

Effects:

• Built-in plugins now grouped into related categories

Interface:

• New Debug Log window available in all builds
• Experimental support for linking a label track with any number of audio tracks so that labels shift with cuts and inserts in the audio track
• Default theme now reverted to that of 1.3.5
• Recording channels preference now defaults to stereo

miscellaneous:

• Bug fixes for shortcut availability/tab order in Selection Bar, and for window focus issues when previewing effects
• Improvements in escaping and navigating fields in dialogs, and in stabilty when screen readers are used

Changes in 1.3.6a1:

Interface:

• Further improvements to menu navigation and wordings.
• All file dialogs are now resizable, and support “Places” sidebar on Windows 2000 or later.
• Preferences:
  • New “Theme” preference for modifying interface colors and images, with experimental new default color scheme.
  • New “Smart Recording” preference automatically pauses recordings that fall below a pre-defined input level.

Compilation:

• Simplified modular builds for Windows, removing static-linked configurations.
• New shared configurations on Mac to support modular builds, and all builds are now Unicode.

miscellaneous:

• Default auto save interval reduced to 2 minutes.
• Bug fixes to correct project rate initialization on Linux, and file importing issues on PPC Macs.