I updated Audacity this morning to 3.3.0
Upon doing so, I quickly realized that the Project Sample Rate that is normally in the bottom left has disappeared. I reset the toolbars to no avail. I’d appreciate some help.
To see / change the Project sample rate, you now have to click on:
“Audio Setup button > Audio Settings”.
Thank you. That’s more involved now.
Please restore the ability:
- to view the project sample rate in the bottom bar when audio isn’t playing (why only show it when audio is playing?); and
- ideally restore the ability to change the project sample rate from the bottom bar.
I take all sorts of clips of audio from all sorts of places (and thus sample rates), but the output always needs to be 44.1kHz. Now, not only have you made it more difficult to change the project sample rate, you’ve made it very easy to miss the fact that any audio I export will be at the wrong rate.
Even better would be to have an option that allowed the project rate to be set to the default rate whenever an audio file is opened in Audacity and a new project created as a result.
Thanks.
Nigel
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Thanks for the feedback @nigeld. The importer and exporter currently are getting overhauled, as part of which importing shouldn’t change project rate anymore and exporting should have just an option to select whatever sample rate you want, just like you can with bit rate. This probably will happen for 3.4.
In older versions of Audacity, the reason that Audacity automatically changed the project rate to match the imported file was that many people use Audacity to edit a single file, and those people will invariably want to export with the same sample rate as the imported file.
Personally, I always thought that was a week argument because:
- It was so easy to change the project rate
- A “default” should be “default” (not change unless explicitly changed)
- Although possibly a slight benefit (less clicks) for one subset of users, it was an inconvenience for other users.
However, now that the project rate is hidden, I think that old argument becomes much stronger.
- You can’t know what the project rate is unless you already know to click on a specific button and then select a specific option.
- Audacity now has both a default and non-default settings for the project rate in Preferences.
- It is now equally inconvenient for everyone.
I don’t understand why it was released “half done”. Wouldn’t it have been better to overhaul it, get it working, and check that it works as intended before releasing it?
I don’t understand why it was released “half done”. Wouldn’t it have been better to overhaul it, get it working, and check that it works as intended before releasing it?
The intention initially was to include these changes in this release, but it ended up getting delayed and missing this launch window.
As an end-user of Audacity, I find it extremely frustrating that this keeps happening. Perhaps “work in progress” new features could be released as beta versions, so that users that rely on Audacity for actual audio work can stick with stable release versions. (I’m still using Audacity 2.4.2 for my audio work because there hasn’t been a release since then that doesn’t have serious issues.)
All of Audacity is work in progress as things are getting refactored and made UI independent. It also is generally stable and doesn’t cause data losses, so I don’t see a reason to slap an eternal “beta” sticker on it for the next few years.
The new features aren’t necessarily fully polished yet and don’t handle some edge cases particularly well, sure. But they already enable workflows which are simply impossible in 2.4. If you don’t need these features because you’re content with your existing workflow, it’s totally fine to continue using 2.4.
Neither do I, and not at all what I was suggesting.
Agreed. Messing around with the toolbars etc. has been a massive time suck. I resorted to coming here after wasting an hour trying to work out how to change the sample rate for export.
My workflow is regulary.
- Record side of a vinyl album to flac, sample rate 9600 (external to Audacity)
- Import saved Flac file in audacity, add labeles, noise reduction, etc.
- change sample rate to 4800
- Export multiple to MP3 based on labels
- Tag files with mp3 tag
- Record other side of album
- goto step 2.
with 3.3 I get an error “project sample rate not supported by MP3 file format” and the only thing I can do is set the sample rate per track as each track export returns an error. Please put back the old sample rate setting, just like the cut/copy/paste toolbar.
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Thanks for the YUUUUUUUGE pain in the ass. Where do I get my half hour back?
Anyway, Thanks for a great program. But these guys are right… Don’t issue a half-baked update. Please.
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Same here, seeing project sample rate at all times in main window was a good thing (and reassuring), easy to check whether or not i’m gonna export it the right way in the future.
Don’t see why it had to be removed, because it takes so little space.
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And this says it all!
I concur regarding the “vanished” project sample rate from the very bottom left side.
I regularly record vinyl recordings by using an external application at 96kHz - 16Bit, when I covert them to mp3 format I choose 48kHz to get the best possible result (320kbps). Often I just need a 30 sec. audio clip, which select by copy and past from the original file into a new one by using the short cut + . The next step was, until the update to version 3.1.0, to set the project sample rate to my favorite rate. Suddenly I have to change my workflow which I used many many years. Annoying, really.
Now I have to scroll up to the top left corner next to the audio file and click on the little converted black triangle to select the project sample rate I want.
On top of that, a window pops up forcing me to choose whether to copy the whole project or just the selected part. What good is that?
As if these problems weren’t enough, I found that the converted mp3 files would play at an extremely slow speed! When I had this problem 3 times in a row, I reinstalled the previous version (3.0.5) and everything went fine.
I am using MS Windows 11 Pro
Why has this not been re-added yet? In audio settings>quality you can find the exact same drop-down menu that used to be easily accessible in the bottom left corner, so it’s not like it’s obsolete. If the import/export overhaul hasn’t been finished yet there is no reason to remove the toolbar for it.
I decided to check the github and found the feature request that caused this.
So it was a deliberate design choice. No real reason is specified and nobody in the issue’s replies bothered to question it either. In my opinion this change should be reverted and the project rate toolbar should be turned into its own view>toolbars option.
Unacceptable change. It’s a deal breaker for me. One of my mostly used features is gone. I’m reverting back to the previous version or stop using Adacity and consider other relevant software.
Stick with 3.3.0 - wait for the developers to complete this set of changes. Software development for long standing systems is always hard, almost ever change breaks something or some user interaction.
They put back the cut-paste toolbar, in this case they are re-designing a new feature that needs UI space. Let see what they finally do with the project rate and how it can be accessed.
There are lots of other recording tools, they often break things as well.
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