I recently heard a rumor that Audacity 4 may be getting close to a beta release, and it got me thinking about project compatibility.
I have podcast project files dating back to 2014 in the old .AUP format. Audacity 3.7 still opens those projects just fine, although it does encourage updating them to .AUP3.
To be honest, a bit of laziness has kept me from converting my archive over to .AUP3. At the same time, I do occasionally go back and pull older segments to reuse in my podcast, so maintaining access to those projects matters to me.
This raises a question for the Audacity team and community:
Will Audacity 4 continue to read both legacy .AUP and current .AUP3 project files?
I realize new versions often bring new project formats—perhaps even something like .AUP4—but long-term project access is important for those of us with large archives. If support for older formats is changing, I’ll probably keep an Audacity 3.7 installation available for archival work.
Just curious about the plans and hoping for some clarification.
Ron