Hello! I am currently trying Audacity 4 and most of it feels great, however there are a few of Audacity 3’s features that seem to be missing and I used often:
• Fit to height (fit the height of all tracks to the vertical size of the screen)
• Setting multi-view (wave + spectrogram) as the default view mode
• Horizontal scroll by holding middle-click and dragging
Also, mousewheel zooming seems to have smaller steps…
There are also a few things I wish for regarding Audacity 4’s new interface:
• Set a default track color order (e.g.: 1st track always blue, 2nd track always red, etc.), rather than have it be random. Of course keep the option to manually change it
• Hide the track’s level monitor.
I have submitted this as a pull request but it did not get merged in time for Audacity 4.0.0. I have added it to Soundscaper, my web port of Audacity 4 though.
I have added this to Soundscaper, too.
There exists a preference for it, but it’s not made visible to the user. I made a PR for it, but it also didn’t get merged. Soundscaper has bigger steps.
Is there a way to adjust playback speed in Audacity 4? I started to try to use it for podcast editing, and couldn’t find a way to play audio more quickly, which is a real time saver when meticulously editing multiple hours of a podcast.
How about restoring the option to export multiple files? As things stand, for those of us who use Audacity to digitise old vinyl records, version 4 is not fit for purpose. In fact, to be blunt, it is absolute rubbish. Sorry to be so blunt, but the developers need to understand what a massive mistake they have made with version 4.
I’m also extensively using the export multiple files option in both ways that are offered by Version 3. (File per track / file per text marker).
Also I’m missing the Legacy Compressor, since I never made the new Compressor in V3 work for me and I just don’t know if the standard compressor of V4 will do the job.
I want to switch to Audacity 4 as fast as possible, to stay on top of the development, and I like very much the new features of time streching/compressing, but with the above mentioned features missing, I have to stay with Audacity 3.
It’s not yet implemented in Audacity 4 and will come later. It already is available in Soundscaper, my Audacity 4 port to the web, though (the dropdown next to the play button).
Also not implemented yet in Audacity 4, but available to some degree in Soundscaper (dropdown next to the record button)
Also coming in 4.1 (probably), and also already available in Soundscaper.
I’m not sure whether this will get ported to Audacity 4 at all. I have added it to Soundscaper anyway.
Loving Audacity 4! But after playing a little, I am missing the J and K shortcuts to jump my cursor to the start or end of my track. I see that Shift-J and Shift-K select to the start or end, but leave the cursor stationary. Possible to reinstate the J and K shortcuts in some future update?
I don’t use this for making tracks Mono but to split it this way into 2 separate mono left and right channels is the correct way to phase correct a dodgy tape’s stereo panning as well so after you clicked on make stereo track again after phase correcting the 2 standalone mono tracks volumes the panning of the stereo when you make stereo track again is actually track correct.
You can’t really restore a cassette tape correctly with no split track to mono to take out the phase drift before putting the tracks back into your stereo track again.
Until all the fountain is in it I can’t go Audacity 4 I can’t even get rid of mic noise yet because noise suppression the proper one for voice might be unavailable as OpenVinus is not being retained anymore to have a 4.0 version.
This is 4.0 though no excuse for the debut version not to start having it’s own built in full noise suppression 3 from openvinu which combines with the take noise sample button so it becomes not just for voice anymore making it better than being under the OpenVinu settings it being in noise reduction as a mode for speech and potentially with the button music 1 touch removal without the loss.
The 666 noise reduction is out of date. Audio Cleaning Lab gave us it’s own direct clone of dolby nr since 2004 and isotope has become a standard for noise removal after that and goldwave I think even had an edge on noise reduction when people were using that for free naughty with a nag screen but we didn’t care we used it for free but audacity took that over for all the other features so we all made the switch.
We had a taste of single touch noise reduction for speech in openvinu and stem splitting for more precise having to do less noise reduction per channel removal Audacity 4 should have had them without a need for openvinu which isn’t being updated anymore.
Noise reduction 3 I need for my hissy mic without it I have to stick on audacity 3 anyway until it’s built in updater forces me on audacity 4 soon.
But noise reduction 3 combined with the take sample button should be able to make the better one touch noise removal be able to work with music as well whilst on openvinu it doesn’t have the chance to work with music because there is no take sample button in openvinu menus to try it to see if it can work on music but it’s perfect no loss on my speech.
I’m loving the colorful interface and the the changes to the clip gain/envelope tool, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get group clips to work on Windows. I can select multiple clips on different tracks, but Ctrl-G doesn’t work and the option is always greyed out in the menu. Maybe that’s just a bug? Would also be nice if I could just lock the tracks and move them rather than selecting the clips in the tracks. Thanks devs!
I never said anything about cassette tapes. I almost never mess with them. I mix stereo tracks down to mono mostly when dealing with mono records. It cancels out a lot of the noise and distortion.
I have used Audacity on Apple for 10 years. I edit about 50 concerts every year. And V4 looks promising BUT it’s a donkey – incomplete.
Firstly, why survey what we want included, before we get to look at it?
BUT:
For a symphony orchestra, I often have 16 channels – I need track colours for editing. The track colours don’t work.
I record outside Audacity and import mono left, and mono Right, so I want to mix-down. Now there is no mix-down. Oh yes, the ‘manual’ tells me what mix-down is, but not how to access it. I don’t need to know what it is, I wouldn’t be looking it up if I didn’t know what it is. How do I access it?
The time input facility is marvelous, but almost unreadable – If the numerals can’t be higher, at least they should be wider. For heavens sake, look at the same facility in Pro Tools and in Logic Pro. The same counts for ‘Selection’ and for ‘Duration’ – why are they now on the right hand side? I read from the left.
What! No proper manual? The various ‘Help’ items I have looked up have descriptions, but no how-to use.
I’m getting many crashes to desktop. I started to make a list of the triggers, but it became apparent that it seems completely random. I’m on Windows 11 Home, fully up to date. Here is my feedback, although I have to go back to version 3 as version 4 is just about unusable for me with all the CTDs and issues mentioned below.
Other things I noticed are:
High degree of latency when playing audio. i.e., what you hear does not sync visually with play head.
Not saving some custom shortcuts when re-opening a saved project.
Creating a custom shortcut with “Alt + S” for fade-out opens the Select menu.
Creating a custom shortcut with “Alt + A” for fade-in opens the Analyze menu.
Can’t find the "Keep tracks Synchronized (sync-lock)’ option.
No option to select multiple individual tracks. Only option is “Select All Tracks”.
Do not see Render tracks option.
Can’t find option to specify custom output directories.
Items 3 and 4 worked okay in version 3. I can’t locate the shortcuts for Alt+S or A to edit or remove.
Wish list
Ability to change color of all tracks to one color. i.e. All tracks to specific color.
Ability to remove track color completely. I’m not a fan of the colored tracks at all.
Bring back vertical guide that extends thru all tracks when hovering over play back timeline.
When making a selection, start playback at beginning of selection and end at end of selection.
Bring back the “X” on track to delete.
Things I like
The new modern UI
The new stretch and tempo adjustment. It’s much faster to use for me, since I don’t need precise adjustments.
I just downloaded and installed Audacity 4. I’ll admit the new UI is nice and modern, however, there’s one UI feature that’s just plain annoying… The pan knob. I get it, knobs are more like an actual mixer. However, the knob is clunky. There seems to be no way to just pan all the way to the left or right. In Audacity 3 it’s so easy. Just slide the slider all the way to the left or right. The numbers seems to randomly increase or decrease as you’re clicking and trying to turn the knob. The knob line or marker seems to not turn in correlation with the change in the numbers. It would be nice to have the option to choose between slider or knob. At the very least give users the ability to enter a number value to pan all the way to the left or right..
.At this point, Audacity 4 is useless to me. For what I do, I cannot get anything done with the pan knob being so clunky. For now I’ll stick with Audaicty 3.
Ctrl + Scroll Wheel while cursor is hovering over the vertical ruler used to zoom in on the waveform amplitude, now it does only the same as the horizontal time-based zoom (a regression)
Holding Shift and clicking the top button to send the cursor to the start/end of the track didn’t select everything from the original cursor position to the new position (a regression)
It was weird to get to the transport controls to get the window to follow the cursor, but I figured it out eventually.
Aside from that, I love the increased horizontal resolution for the waveform - the old UI was very limited in this regard on large or high-dpi, scaled resolution displays, so thanks for that! It will take some getting used to the new theme and places for everything, but I’m not that much of a curmudgeon, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I do like the dark mode - much easier on the eyes.