Listing useful programs other than Audacity

any chance of getting a complete list of all these great programs that you all keep telling us about from time to time ?

There is a list of Other Programs on the Wiki. I think it would be a good idea to add an “Audio Analysis” section to Other Specific Tasks which is already linked to off “Other Programs”. SOX and Sonic Visualiser could go there. For plug-ins, people can look at VST Plug-Ins or Download Nyquist Plug-ins.

Any other useful third-party programs you recall which have been mentioned recently?

I don’t myself think we need these listed on the Forum, but I suppose you could have a sticky in “Audio Processing” and “General Audio Programming”?


Gale

dont care where they are listed
but couple of times a week somebody mentions a special purpose program to solve some problem somebody has that supplements not replaces audacity

and how about putting all the things the developers dont want to include in the distribution in one file so we can get all those extra fx and other goodies, vst nyquist whatever, in one swell foop to install
with the official audacity distribution which appears to be incomplete since the developers chose to omit parts of it so there wouldnt be “too many” items in a drop down list.

how about a couple of new drop down lists to house the extra goodies and then distribute them all at once so audacity is “complete”

went to the link
some good stuff
BUT
most of the recent items mentioned on the forum are not there
is there a way for anyone to update that list or do the honchos have to do it

probably been more add on supplementary programs noted in last few months than are on that list

also
one of the links lists was 404
tried to report it to sourceforge
not sure if i succeeded

Which one?

You could compile a list, either here on the forum or on your own web site and post a link.
Subject to checking that the programs work as advertised and are likely to be useful to people, the lists on the wiki could then be updated.

I think he means “More free software at SourceForge.net” on http://audacityteam.org/about/links . I can fix that easily enough. SF have just changed the web addresses of those search results.

+1. I don’t have time to monitor the Forum thoroughly for “useful programs”, but you could certainly make a list of programs you’ve noticed. If this proves to be useful enough there could he a workflow for moving links periodically to the Wiki.

As regards why the developers chose not to include a lot of effects, It isn’t just a question of overloading the effect or other menus. There is a question of the download size of the Audacity executable. The Beta download size has been edging up remorselessly, even disregarding that the Windows/Mac installers now include a Help folder. Also, Audacity is GPL licensed, so we can only distribute plug-ins in Audacity that have the exact same version of that GPL licence. Most VST plug-ins aren’t GPL, although (on most reasonable interpretations of GPL) it is permitted that non-GPL programs can be added by the user at run time.

Making a download bundle of VST plug-ins would not be practical:

  • There are thousands of VST plug-ins out there
  • Their non-GPL licensing means their authors would have to be asked for permission if we could include them in a download bundle
  • Most VSTs are for Windows, and Linux mostly can’t use them at all

I think there is a case for bundling some Nyquist plug-ins (which work on any operating system) together as an optional download. The late David Sky used to do this for his own Nyquist plug-ins. We need to get more organised on the Wiki Download Nyquist Plug-ins page first, as per the reason we just started a “Nyquist” board on the Forum.

That’s a question of having plug-in categorisation, which we tried and was unpopular, and/or allowing users to have “Favourite” plug-ins for easy access. Categorisation will come back I expect, when there is a way for users to turn it on/off.




Gale

gotten two different reasons for not including everything in audacity that comes from audacity

i do not mean everything on the net by everything
i mean all the things that are extra downloads from audacity for audacity
all the fx that either make the list too big or the download size too big depending on who is makign excuses for leaving the stuff out

for everything else on the net
it would be nice to have the best listed in the wiki or somewhere
that lists all of the ones that get mentioned here
not include all those in a download file

There is already a page that exists on the Wiki for collecting such data, as Gale has already referenced above in this thread - see: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Other_Specific_Tasks

@whomper: if you would like to gather together the notes of additional useful pieces of s/w that relate to Audacity and digital recording - the ones that you have seen refereed to in the many posts that you mention - then please list them in this thread. We can then transfer suitable ones to the Wiki page referenced above.

WC

If you mean effects, then we’re just talking about Nyquist and the LADSPA bundle. Personally I think although that might be a reasonable idea, it can’t be done until Audacity has a reasonable way of handling that quantity of effects. Another way to do so (apart from “categorisation” and “favourites”) might be some kind of “plug-in manager” dialogue where you can choose the ones to display in the menus, and you can browse to add new ones and see which ones require rescan/restart to make them visible.

What else is there - LAME/FFmpeg? I don’t think there is much case for combining those installers into one download. Most people only want LAME and could get confused with FFmpeg. When we can get FFmpeg to be automatically detected as LAME is now, there probably is a case for using the MP3 support in FFmpeg and not offering LAME. That would help the problems we have now with lame_enc.dll being detected. Libmp3lame in FFmpeg would still need going over carefully to make sure metadata and track length compatible for as many OS’es and players as possible was being properly included in the exported MP3.



Gale

+1
I have several plug-in packs installed (Linux) but there are only a few from each pack that I actually use in Audacity, and there are a lot that are not compatible with Audacity, but are still listed. “Categories” and “favourites” would be useful for quick and convenient access to plug-ins that I use regularly, but a plug-in manager would be excellent for removing the ones that I don’t use/aren’t compatible.

I think our objection to The Way Things Are is the impossibility of finding stuff and the assumption that it’s the user’s fault. Go back up this exact thread right now and count the number of different places y’all referenced – without even working at it – where handy tools and plugins are available. I know developers and heavy users are used to this kind of thing, but I’m here to tell you it’s supremely awkward to casual users.

Remember the hoo-ha when the grand wiki index page vanished? Not good news. That was the right-brain search tool.

I have several personal pages where I list things I can never find when I’m looking for them. They’re in no particular order but I know by pattern recognition exactly where everything is. I think I posted somewhere else that whenever somebody runs into a problem, their natural reaction is not “This is a job for C++ code!” It’s more “I need to make the sound louder.” The search is very different.

Developers are universally horrified at the idea of posting the same thing more than once. Let’s surf over to the New York Times and count the number of different places the same article is posted – we assume to make it easier to find.

I’m probably going to go off and do my own thing and see what turns up. I’ve already had several Sessions In The Shower thinking about this (some of my best work).

Koz

A master list has to be categorised. There is no way it can list all useful VST plug-ins, all useful Nyquist plug-ins, all useful audio restoration programs, all useful drum machines, all useful MIDI programs, all useful analysis programs…


Gale

There is a huge list of audio plug-ins on KVR.
This is their catalogue/database page: http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php

Current number of plug-ins listed on KVR = 4282

Narrowing it down a bit, 749 of them are free VST effects plug-ins for Windows.