• henfredemars@infosec.pub
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    8 months ago

    I’m a little out of the loop, but I recall Audacity took a massive nose dive a while ago. Have they recovered from this?

    In particular, the cloud features doesn’t pass the smell test for me. Is this one of those apps where you download the old version?

    • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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      8 months ago

      It’s still going but I think a good chunk of the FOSS community avoids it. Distros that still ships it disable the telemetry.

      Definitely feels like the desperate attempts to monetize it, and the enshittification that typically arises next.

      As far as I know it’s still fine to use if your distro disables the telemetry, which is what most people had issues with. It’s still under the same license in the end, which is probably why they’re now pivoting to cloud features: that they can make proprietary. I’m sure cloud-based AI plugins are next.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        8 months ago

        On the one hand they should be paid for there work. On the other hand that’s not the right way to get paid for work.

        They should ask for donations and sell cool merch

        • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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          8 months ago

          that’s not that right way to get paid

          I don’t know a whole lot about what Audacity is up to these days, but the same company owns MuseScore, and it sounds like they’re doing kinda similar things in terms of monetisation. The core software itself is still free, but there are optional cloud services on top of that which you can pay for.

          I don’t see what’s wrong with this. Cloud services provide a convenience. Some people like that convenience and are willing to pay for it. Others might be perfectly ok doing it themselves and won’t pay.

          It helps that the new head of design for both of these products is a guy who really knows his shit. He’s already taken MuseScore from an application that nobody in their right mind would use if they could afford the commercial competitors, to a legitimately great music engraving application, and he’s been on Audacity too since 2021.

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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            8 months ago

            The problem lies in the fact that these services are completely proprietary and are an example of service as a software substitute.

            Foss should encourage privacy and freedom. Cloud storage doesn’t normally do that. What’s worse it it often requires non free libraries to be included which is a no no

          • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            It helps that the new head of design for both of these products is a guy who really knows his shit. He’s already taken MuseScore from an application that nobody in their right mind would use if they could afford the commercial competitors, to a legitimately great music engraving application, and he’s been on Audacity too since 2021.

            I tried Audacity before that and couldn’t migrate from adobe’s aquired CoolEditPro (Au versions before modern redesign). Have it changed much since then? I’m yet to find an alternative (video editing tools just doesn’t make it, although they get recommended) and as I can recall Audacity had an interface that’s not as easy to use.

      • Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        Aww I was just about gush about how awesome they’ve been all these years. Guess I haven’t really kept up to date. I mean it doesn’t sound like it’s gone totally to shit, but just clearly embarking on a path straight in to the shit

        • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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          8 months ago

          Arch is, not sure about the others. I would imagine Debian also is.

          Versions 3.0+ of Audacity are affected. It’s not like it’s malware and unclean but they did add telemetry and crash reporting and stuff.

        • nyan@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          Gentoo specifically switches off the telemetry (-Daudacity_has_sentry_reporting=off,-Daudacity_has_crashreports=off). The cloud saving facility is also off by default, but can be added to the build by enabling the audiocom USE flag.

    • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago

      I might be wrong, but I remember reading that they removed the objectionable content after the fuss that was kicked up.

    • leopold@lemmy.kde.social
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      8 months ago

      They attempted to add opt-in telemetry a few years ago and people lost their shit for some reason. They didn’t merge it, but the FOSS community’s “fork first ask questions later” attitude kicked in anyway and multiple forks popped up while now the original project has permanently been labelled as spyware, which is fun. Fun fact, KDE Plasma actually has opt-in telemetry. Dolphin, Kate and a few kdepim apps also do. Plasma also has opt-in automated crash reporting, which is particularly evil. Y’all better uninstall them right now. I mean, what if you accidentally opted in, or something? Anyway, not a fan of hostile forks unless someone can actually prove the original project has gone to shit.

  • Scott@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Friendship with audacity ended a while ago, nobody needs cloud saving for this at ALL. Go download tenacity instead.

  • FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyz
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    8 months ago

    Unrelated question, but what’s the DE in the screenshot? Looks super clean

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    I’d be happy if I could just “hide” a section of audio without needing to delete it. I’m often trying to shorten musical pieces and having a way to hide/unhide a section would be so much easier than relying on delete/undo.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        The “smart clips?” Not quite… They’re only at the end of a clip to shorten it. I need to make multiple cuts in the middle.

        • pinchcramp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 months ago

          Ah, I think that isn’t possible. You would have to split the track and then use the smart clips feature. Or you use a different tool like someone else mentioned.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        So - lets say I’m taking a long piece of music and making something like a “radio edit”.

        I decide a chorus can go, maybe the another section, perhaps a repeated phrase here or there. But now it’s too short so I want to put that chorus back in. Or change how much of the chorus was removed since I removed too much.

        There isn’t an easy way to undo that delete without ctrl+z’ing my way back through all my deletes. I want something like a “hide column” feature from spreadsheets where I can just skip over that section but not really delete it. And to have a marker so I can undo it and change it later.

        Might be a niche request but it’s something I need to do from time-to-time.

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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    8 months ago

    Does Audacity still only work with ALSA? Wish they’d use at least pulse if not pipewire…

    • circular@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      I’ve been using Audacity with PulseAudio for quite a while now and it works fine for me. I sometimes find myself tweaking volumes in PulseAudio on the side.

        • circular@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          Late reply, but yes. You can mix and match to record from Pulse but playback to ALSA too (or the other way around) but I think using Pulse for both makes more sense.

  • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
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    8 months ago

    Didn’t Audacity already have pitch shifting? Or did they improve the algorithm? If the latter is true, this is very exciting to me