this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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Good video, very much worth watching despite the length. New UI will look something like this:

with an option for a more classic look.

Looks like an enourmous UX improvement too, and a rewrite to QT and eliminating a lot of technical debt will make development faster.

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[–] morto@piefed.social 136 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Full UI overhaul?! I can't believe they had the audacity to do this!

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

i mean they were using the rather old wxwidgets

[–] morto@piefed.social 39 points 2 weeks ago

I'm not criticising. I just wanted to play with the word audacity

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[–] NickwithaC@lemmy.world 87 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm so glad Audacity is getting some much needed love!

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[–] Olap@lemmy.world 35 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Tenacity has replaced this years ago. Fuck around, find out!

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 42 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

they backtracked on the privacy policy and said they had really overzealous lawyers that they somehow mistrusted lawyers doing so "out of an abundance of caution" so i'm still giving them one final chance here since that issue was resolved rather quickly (within two weeks, which is why i'm not absolving them and giving them a chance, but it's been uneventful since 2021 so i think that strike's gonna expire in a year)

and i don't think the telemetry was every an issue since it was always going to be opt-in

tenacity does not have the rally useful beats and measures feature for some reason

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

if the concern is just about telemetry, I seriously wonder why Tenacity isn’t just a soft fork of Audacity, like VSCodium is to VS code, or Librewolf to Firefox.

that way you get the best of both worlds, the amazing new features in Audacity, without the worry of corporate control

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Because then you're just describing Audacity. The concerning feature has to be intentionally activated by the user. And if you download and build it yourself then that part of the code isn't even accessible. You have to modify the code to activate it before you build it. I'm actually glad with the way they handled it. They listen to the user base and if you follow tantacrul he regularly consults changes with the users.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

telemetry and a reverted privacy policy change that lost some goodwill, but i agree

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[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 27 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

And what exactly does Tenacity bring to the table other than a name replace across the code-base?

The non-destructive editing and realtime effects alone are a huge jump in capability between the current and old versions of Audacity, and that's before we even discuss UI improvements

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

From what I could tell when I looked into it after a comment someone left on !nebula@lemmy.world, some people were very upset at the privacy implications of Audacity adding an update detection mechanism (which can be turned off, and which is not included at all in the default build if you build it yourself).

[–] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Are people are actually upset about an auto update feature? A feature that has been pretty standard in programs for a very long time?

I understood some of the upset when they added telemetry, but auto-update?

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 25 points 2 weeks ago

Not even auto-update. Just auto detect updates. Then you go and download it yourself manually.

Auto-update-detection meant that the software was calling out to a remote server, so they updated the TOS to reflect that, and people got upset.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

afaik most distros and flathub package it without that for obvious reasons

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 2 weeks ago

(for package management, not weird concerns like “they’re adding an entire http library to audacity for this so they must be in the process of using it for something else”)

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[–] Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 33 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Now when will Gimp get the same treatment... I know some people like it but I just can't. I'd rather use Affinity Photo via ~~proton~~ a custom wine version (ElementalWarriorWine)

[–] TruePe4rl@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I usually go with Krita. Not because of the UI, i just learnt to use it first and like it. Or Inkscape for vector graphics.

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[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Gimp is a misbegotten, irredeemable piece of UI trash. The fact that it's been around this long and gets egregiously worse with each iteration is baffling to me.

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[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago (4 children)

It's looking freaking gorgeous. Tentacrul is the bomb. His work on MuseScore is arguably the best UX/UI in the FOSS world. It even beats most if not all of the proprietary alternatives in the same category.

[–] stellargmite@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

He also did a great tribute video to Tim Smith / Cardiacs. Was already in my good books, went beyond with that one.

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[–] markz@suppo.fi 27 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Watched last weekend. Not a huge fan of the rebrand, but the changes that actually count look great.

[–] clb92@feddit.dk 32 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Yeah, the branding is definitely 'meh' at best, but even worse, in my opinion, is the tight integration with the whole Muse ecosystem and MuseHub thing (and the default download on the website being the MuseHub-based installer too) and built-in cloud storage crap. It just feels wrong to have an open source application integrated so tightly into all their proprietary services all the way through. Just installed the latest version 3.7.5, and I was surprised at how much nagging there was, on both the website and in the application itself.

But other than the whole Muse stuff, Audacity 4.0 looks really awesome in terms of UI and UX. And at least there is a non-MuseHub installer and you can choose not to use their other stuff, and say no to the telemetry...

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Frankly, since it's still open source, I'm ok with it since it also means developpement is much faster, and you can avoid it. At least for me when I installed it on linux through the app store, I didn't notice any of your complaints.

As someone with no attachement to the previous branding I quite like the new branding though, fits the new vibe of the app quite well.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

i've never had noticeable lag in audacity besides a niche crash that got fixed. though the cloud storage thing never ever worked for me. it's nice though and you still save locally instead of to cloud by default. plusi think the musehub thing is kinda explainable with the proprietary effects marketplace they added to musehub, and it's not like audacity plugins were always foss anyways

[–] clb92@feddit.dk 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

i've never had noticeable lag

I think you misread 'nagging' as 'lagging' in my comment

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[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That logo is fucking terrible. Cult minimalism produced a red sperm and a disconnected semicircle. It reads as nothing.

The 'classic look' in dark mode still puts 90% of the interface in light mode.

No other complaints.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In the video, Tantacrul shows how it matches with the aesthetic of the rest of Muse's icons...but it kind of doesn't.

He (correctly) insisted on keeping the headphone iconography, but the rest of Muse's icons are letters. UltimateGuitar's imp ears plus arrow makes a G one, then the others are abstract geometric T for Tonebridge, a weird S for MuseScore, a really bad circle/diagonal line for an A for audio.com and two verticle lines and a circle for an H for MuseHub, whatever the hell that is. And then Audacity's headphones. Going for stylistic resemblance...for the logos of websites, phone apps and desktop apps that probably won't be seen together. Plus in a lot of places MuseScore's Mu with fermata mark is still in use.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Honestly, the comparison with the rest of those icons was the only part I respected. It's a suite of cult minimalist bullshit. Which still doesn't explain how nobody went, "that's a sperm."

Or at least, "why isn't it blue or yellow?"

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[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 19 points 2 weeks ago

Holy shit yes. Also while we’re at it please guys add an option to put the timeline in just seconds instead of minutes:seconds

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 13 points 1 week ago

He made a comment in the video that people have been running versions of audacity that have not been updated in 10 years. I went and had a look at the version I had installed. Yep.

I actually assumed it did have an auto update feature and they're just wasn't any updates.

[–] miked@piefed.social 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

OMG! I read that as Full AI Overhaul.

[–] NewOldGuard@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

They are adding “AI” features in a collaboration with Intel, but luckily they’re minor additions like ML based noise reduction

[–] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 30 points 2 weeks ago

In other words tasks that "AI" is actually good for, not attempting to generate your music or apply some kind of "magic filter".

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 weeks ago

Also subtitling with whisper, which is awesome

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[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hope the new UI fixes the FFT view lagging.

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[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I've long been hoping for a FOSS alternative to Garage Band. I think LMMS is the closest but it lacks live music recording, its UI is miserable, and the last release was 2020. It would be great if someone could merge Audacity and LMMS.

This is pretty high on my list of coding projects that I would support if I didn't need to spend most of my time serving capital.

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[–] Marshezezz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 weeks ago

Damn that looks clean.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 weeks ago

All the changes seem awesome, looking forward to trying out version 4

[–] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I wonder what happened to it's forks, Tenacity & Audacium

[–] buttnugget@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I remember that there was an issue with mainline audicity, like they put malware in it or something? And that’s why it was forked?

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[–] whiskers165@hexbear.net 6 points 2 weeks ago

Audacity UI has looked basically the same since the first time I used the app in 2006

[–] fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

(Based on the screenshot only) Where's the menu gone?

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Screenshot from macos, so I assume in the top bar

[–] fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk 3 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks. I tend to worry with redesigns these days.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’ve actually switched to Ocenaudio for what little I do and have been happy.

[–] nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago

It's not open source, sadly...

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