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Audacity 4.0 is finally out! (www.audacityteam.org)

TL;DR this is a huge overhaul of the popular open-source audio editing app. The UI specifically has been the biggest overhaul, making it a lot more modern and friendly to use.

Hopefully, one day, GIMP will get some kind of update like this.

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[-] redshift@lemmy.zip 26 points 1 day ago

I'll stick with 3.x, since they started using AI in 4.0 - or use Tenacity, of course.

[-] Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org 8 points 1 day ago

Yeah, the AI integration sent it stright to the bin.

[-] Unleaded8163@fedia.io 75 points 1 day ago

Does anyone actually like websites that mess with scrolling like that?

[-] chunes@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

I automatically assume their 'ui update' is bad based on their website alone.

[-] Joelk111@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago

I don't like it on desktop but goddamn, it sucks even more on mobile. I was swiping to scroll through the stupid horizontal menu and then when I got to the bottom of it, turns out I was scrolling so fast I basically teleported to the bottom of the page.

[-] DrCake@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Hate it on desktop, especially with a mouse. On mobile/trackpad it can be ‘ok’, I thought this worked well enough (not laggy or buggy) for me on mobile. But yeah, I do wish this “design” would end, just let me scroll at my own paste god damn it

[-] robber@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago

I guess some people consider it cool. I'm not one of them.

[-] berty@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

Page up/down works just fine.

[-] FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 1 day ago
[-] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago
[-] nephew@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 day ago

An Audacity fork without telemetry

[-] ace_garp@lemmy.world 12 points 23 hours ago

Also -->

"For discussions regarding all things Tenacity, you can head on over to our Lemmy community."

https://programming.dev/c/tenacity

PS. Glad to find this post, my first time hearing about tenacity fork!

[-] nyan@lemmy.cafe 8 points 23 hours ago

Also, their website actually works.

[-] Lexam@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago

Is audacity still bad and sending information to Russian servers or something?

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 66 points 1 day ago
[-] Sparrow_1029@programming.dev 3 points 21 hours ago

Dang, clicked into the ToU changes in this MR:

Merge pull request 'Proposal Assembly 2026: ToU extension to prohibit LLM-extrusions' (#1253) from gedankenstuecke/org:20260629-llm-proposal into main

Like that stance I think

[-] warm@kbin.earth 17 points 1 day ago

This is the way.

[-] palordrolap@fedia.io 34 points 1 day ago

Surprisingly, the Internet seems to look mostly favourably on Audacity these days. I never really kept up with it at the time, but apparently all the allegedly heinous (mis)features were opt-in. (Further verification of this may be required.)

I can't tell if that's the result of a really good scrubbing of bad search results or whether they genuinely cleaned up their act.

Either way, Tenacity, the fork that came about as a result of the controversy, still exists, and apparently has themes to change the look just like Audacity is claiming to have done now, so if you're uncertain, that's always an option.

[-] MetaStatistical@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 day ago

I got tired of Tenacity staying stagnant for months, and still having documentation link issues. Meanwhile, Audacity was actually making meaningful improvements.

After diving deeper in the nontroversy, and seeing their in-depth video explaining their design decisions, I concluded that they genuinely want to improve the software and aren't trying to fuck over the OSS community. So, I switched back when I dumped Windows and switched to Linux.

There's an extreme black and white view of these kinds of issues that crop up in the community that just pisses me off, and shoddy tech reporting doesn't help matters. This wasn't a "Oracle buys MySQL" situation, and the response didn't deserve a fork. But, hey, it's free software, and people can fork whatever they want.

[-] Rose@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 day ago

It wasn't about "shoddy tech reporting". Why would a FOSS audio editing app need to know your country, any personal "Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests (if any)", share it with a wide network of people and potential buyers, as well as their "main office in Russia"? There should be no telemetry of any sort. Any logs kept should be strictly local, which would allow users to send them to the support team voluntarily.

[-] Zagorath@quokk.au 3 points 20 hours ago

It was to support the auto-update mechanism IIRC. It has to reach out to a server to do that, and the rest of the terms are just legal CYA for what could be possible based on that.

[-] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 18 hours ago

I remember when audacity was pure destructive editing, the mspaint of daws, like not quite notepad and sound recorder, but maybe wordpad. I think I still have a version of that old audacity installer somewhere....

I always kept/keep a full licensed daw for real projects, and then audacity for when I wanted to do a quick edit or recording and didn't want to boot up the big stuff.

Is it worth getting anymore? Or is it trying to compete with real daws? And if so, is it competitive on the same level?

[-] palordrolap@fedia.io 1 points 18 hours ago

Is it worth getting?

Maybe someone else will have a better answer. I used it once in a blue moon to naively hack at some audio, and will install it or Tenacity to do the same in future as and when the need arises. In fact, I'll probably end up going for Audacity and a wary eye for telemetry opt-ins because Debian seems to have a native package for it. Tenacity seems to be Flatpak-only.

[-] popcar2@piefed.ca 30 points 1 day ago

When you start the app for the first time it asks if you want to enable anonymous telemetry, but otherwise I don't think it sends anything.

[-] Rose@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 day ago

GIMP already had a significant update not too long ago. There were UI improvements and things like effects for layers.

[-] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 23 hours ago

Maybe I'm being rohrschached but the first thing the new logo reminds me of is cock and balls. In an abstract way.

[-] bilb@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago

I don't quite see it if I'm being honest. I spend a lot of time looking at cocks, so maybe I'm calibrated differently.

[-] BromSwolligans@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

lol they've had the same basic interface since I was in high school 20 years ago. This is outstanding. Good for them. I almost never use Audacity anymore but I absolutely would use this if I had a reason to.

[-] Mwa@thelemmy.club 1 points 18 hours ago

I kinda don't like that logo

[-] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 1 points 19 hours ago

About time! I was using an Adobe suite program for podcast editing years ago (Adobe didn’t get my money :P) and switched to Audacity.

I’d used Audacity fairly regularly for about 15 years and let me tell you; it was jarring how bad it was compared to modern software. I already see some UI/UX improvements that should make it much more user friendly.

[-] Psythik@lemmy.world 0 points 18 hours ago

Don't use that spyware-riddled crap. Use Tenacity instead.

[-] nyan@lemmy.cafe 6 points 1 day ago

[Hits "Zap style sheets" bookmarklet to make it possible to get at least a minimal amount of information out of the page]

Ugh, they still actually think the cloud shite is a feature.

[-] _NetNomad@fedia.io 8 points 1 day ago

Looks like they took some cues from Dark Audacity. A dark theme is nice, but when Audacity first started adding telemetry shit I took Dark Audacity for a spin and hated more or less every UI "improvement." Lots of extra menu diving to access important, heavily used features DA decided was "clutter." Tenacity has some bugs but it's served me very well since otherwise

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

yeah, I feel like a poser not being able to get tenacity to work properly on my computer

[-] daychilde@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I guess you don't have enough..... :puts on sunglasses:....... Tenacity

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

*the who starts playing backwards*

EDIT : more like puts on sunglasses over existing sunglasses.

EDIT2 : Gotta post that comic on !antiquememesroadshow@lemmy.world

EDIT 3 :

https://lemmy.world/post/51501419
https://www.biggercheese.com/index.php?comic=701

[-] xSikes@feddit.online 3 points 1 day ago

……holy shit, this is massively different from the last time I used this. This would be bigger for those who have iPads for podcasts

[-] veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Hmmm new major version sounds interesting but I hear this one is slopified?

[-] Crit@lemmy.wtf 4 points 1 day ago
[-] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 19 hours ago

Honestly, it's more likely to be true than not. So at this point, for your doubt, you gotta look for proof that it isn't.

[-] Crit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 17 hours ago

That's not how it works, innocent until proven guilty and all that. Also I've followed Tantacrul for a while and he made a video on the product design of the app - don't recall any mentions of AI.

this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2026
298 points (97.2% liked)

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