Update for Audacity: Real competition to commercial audio software

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update for audacity real competition to commercial audio software.jpg
update for audacity real competition to commercial audio software.jpg

Update 3.2 brings real-time effects to the open source tool Audacity. In addition, it now supports Apple’s silicon chips natively.

A minor release brings some major innovations to the audio software Audacity. Version 3.2 of the free open source software introduces real-time effects. In addition, the program now runs natively on Apple’s Silicon Macs.

The introduction of real-time audio effects brings the open-source veteran Audacity a whole lot closer to paid DAWs (digital audio workstations) such as Ableton and Logic in terms of functionality. The press release from the new owners of Audacity, the Muse Group, also formulates the new objective that the update should be understood as a “big step towards transforming Audacity into a DAW”.

However, the effects available in Audacity are not real-time capable. However, the developer lists available free plugins from established providers that have the capability on a wiki page. On the editorial team’s test Mac, the audio plugins preinstalled by Apple in AU format (Audio Unit) worked without any problems in Audacity 3.2 right from the start.

 

In addition to the AU plugins already mentioned and the now outdated VST standard, Audacity 3.2 also supports virtual instruments and effects from the more recent VST3 standard (Virtual Studio Technology).

In addition, almost two years after the initial release of Apple’s M1 chip, Audacity now also runs natively on the manufacturer’s ARM hardware from the Silicon series.

With the changes in the effects area, adjustments to the Audacity GUI are also being made. A new “Effects” button complements the options next to each audio track and allows adding real-time effects in a submenu. Minor adjustments concern the merging of the mixer and the meter display and renewed icons.

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A new “Share Audio” feature also allows users to upload what they’ve recorded directly from Audacity to the audio.com platform. The web platform is a project by Muse Group, which also acquired Audacity in May 2021. Extremely controversial changes to the privacy policy followed, which were withdrawn shortly thereafter, but nevertheless resulted in a large number of forks, including the Tenacity project.

 

The Audacity team lists the entire list of changes in the release notes. Audacity 3.2 is available for download from the open source project’s website for Windows, Mac, and Linux.