Let’s be honest, version 3.4 of Audacity is an awful release and highlights three major mistakes made by the project.
It can’t possibly have been tested properly. It crashes, it records noise instead of audio, it doesn’t appear to get along with Windows 11 at all. Setups that worked on previous releases no longer do so. Some users have lost valuable pieces of their hard work just by ‘upgrading’ from previous releases.
Features have been added and removed and loyal, long-time users have been forced into workflows that don’t suit them. The success of any product depends on how well it meets its consumers needs. Those that don’t do that die! Look at Kodak, once a giant and synonymous with photography - now gone! It thought it knew best and was wrong. Don’t impose stuff on people without consultation, that is crazy.
Knowing all the issues that have arisen with version 3.4, it’s not been withdrawn and is still touted as the latest release. In doing so, you are knowingly creating pain for your users. Shame on you for that. My guess is that you are letting your users act as unofficial testers because your actual testers didn’t do a good enough job. The Audacity homepage should have a apology and disclaimer admitting you messed up.
On the plus side, the forum staff appear to be doing a great job fielding the queries that they shouldn’t be getting because of point 1 above.
I have been an avid user of Audacity for well over a decade but this episode has rocked my confidence in the project and I feel certain I’m not alone in that sentiment.
Runs fine for me on w10 without crashing - and it records fine still.
I can’t test right now as my W11 PC is 1,000miles away in Zurich. But when I was there a couple of weeks ago the 3.4.0 alpha test builds ran just fine on W11.
The only thing that’s been removed is the left mouse button click to join 2 adjacent clips.
The other thing that’s changed but with nothing removed really is to consolidate the audio export - which I personally think is a big improvement (it does have a couple of issues that Muse are working on for the upcoming 3.4.1 maintenance release)
Hahaha … Kodak’s photography business was killed not by them but by the advent of digital photography. I used an awful lot of Kodachrome in my time , but not for may years now. I also worked for Digital Equipment Corp. a once-great giant that got killed by the advent of the PC …
3.4.0 is the latest release - Muse are working hard on a 3.4.1 maintenance release to fix the known issues.
You can always revert to an earlier release if you wish.
Thanks, much appreciated - but all of the Forum elves are pro bono volunteers (there is only one Muse staffer who is regularly on the Forum)
BTW @evilmrb if you really want Muse to see your issues you would need to log them is issues or discussions on their GitHub log (I would suggest a Discussion for this multi- issue conversation):
Or for specific single issues this is the Issue Log:
You need a GitHub account for that, but those are free.
Accessing Muse’s GitHub is useful as not only can you see the issues and discussions - but you can also see the Actions log with all the developer branch-builds and test-builds:
This means you can test alpha development builds and log issues that you may find (as I do) well ahead of any release.
It’s not necessary to re-post this rant in Github, I’ve seen it.
Re: Recordíng noise, this will be fixed in 3.4.1. It only happens when recording in the non-default 24-bit setting.
How are you crashing the program? Are you doing anything before? Does it also happen if you do a fresh install and remove your preferences folder first?
It’s insulting to refer to my post as a rant. It was a genuine comment and I feel strongly enough about it to want it to go to Muse.
As for the crash, it was importing an aup file which you yourself responded to. If your response to that is that you cannot be expected to remember all fault reports, it rather proves my point that you have too much to deal with due to the flaky nature of 3.4.
I know that because a fix was found within a matter of hours. The fact that it happened was very impressive indeed. My point is, and I know you are smart enough to get it, that nobody knows when 3.4.1 is due and, in the meantime, we either have to revert to 3.3.3. (which I have) or struggle with the issues brought about by 3.4.
I think the team has a moral obligation to warn people of impending trouble.
Reminds me of the British motorcycle industry. The good news is that Triumph turned that around (they triumphed) and now market a great range of fantastic motorcycles, including state of the art sports bikes, and “modern classics”.
That seems to be an all too common practice when there are commercial interests involved. Thorough testing is expensive, and often seen as “unproductive” by those at the financial end of the business. The term “agile development” is frequently misinterpreted as “release soon, patch later”.
Personally I’d love to see alpha/beta pre-releases with active community engagement to gather usability feedback, but that can be a significant challenge, particulary when the development team wants to make rapid progress in a new direction.
I’m personally much less involved in this community forum than previously, but I agree that it’s great to see the forum continue to provide a useful community resource. I’m glad to see that muse group continue to support it.
I used to recommend routinely upgrading to the latest version of Audacity, but always with the caution; “but not while you’re part way through an important project”. I would revise that advice a little at this time, and recommend trying out the latest releases as they become available, but ensure that the new version meets your requirements before undertaking important work with it.
Ummm, Kodak actually invented digital photography.
The analogy to 3.4.0 (and now also 3.4.1) would be if using Kodak film (trusted for soooo many years) became so bad that all the wedding pictures you thought you captured were trash, and maybe even broke your camera.
I thought I read something along those lines somewhere but wasn’t certain. And other classic monumental (or just mental) errors of judgement include Bill Gates’s belief that 640k was enough RAM for anyone and Ken Olsen of DEC saying people wouldn’t want a computer in their home.
