v1.26 or v1.3.12 beta for Windows 7?

[digiday]

Hi Audacity experts,

I'm wondering, in spite of the instructions on the Audacity website, cnet.com shows that Audacity 1.2.6 is compatible with Windows 7... based on reviews and some other info, there seems to be a few issues with the 1.3.12 beta.

On cnet.com, there were 12,917 downloads of Audacity 1.26 last week, and only 512 last week for Audacity 1.3.12 beta... I'm wondering if it is okay to install the 1.26 version on a Windows 7 ULT machine to avoid some of the pitfalls of the 1.3.12 beta version.

I did read the Audacity website information and its recommendation for the 1.3.12 beta version with Windows 7, but there must be a reason why over 25 times more people have downloaded the v1.26 stable version than the 1.3.12 beta version.

Does anyone have some advice on this issue?... I figure that out of 12,917 people that have chosen to use the 1.26 stable version just in the last week, that many of them must be Windows 7 users, so there must be a reason for that.

And there must be a reason why cnet lists v1.26 as compatible with Windows 7 as well.

Thanks for any input,

digiday

[steve]

there seems to be a few issues with the 1.3.12 beta.

Yes there are still a few issues with Audacity 1.3.12 beta. When they are finally resolved it will become Audacity 2.0.
There's a lot more issues with Audacity 1.2.6 and they are not being fixed because all development work on the 1.2.x series ended some years ago.

On cnet.com, there were 12,917 downloads of Audacity 1.26 last week, and only 512 last week for Audacity 1.3.12 beta.

That's quite disturbing and is possibly one of the contributing factors as to why we see so many Vista/Windows 7 users on this forum that are having problems due to using the old 1.2.6 version.

Does anyone have some advice on this issue?

Yes. Forget Audacity 1.2.6 and install Audacity 1.3.12.
You can also subscribe your e-mail address to be notified when the next version is released (bottom of this page: http://audacityteam.org/ )

but there must be a reason why over 25 times more people have downloaded the v1.26 stable version than the 1.3.12 beta version.

It's probably due to the word "stable". Unfortunately that word is misleading. For the majority of users, upgrading to Audacity 1.3.12 solves a lot of problems.

And there must be a reason why cnet lists v1.26 as compatible with Windows 7 as well.

It depends what they mean "compatible".
Audacity 1.2.6 should work on Windows 7, but that does not mean that it will work well. There are a lot of known problems with Audacity 1.2.6 on Windows 7, and a great many undefined stability issues.

The official download page for Audacity is here on the Audacity web site: http://audacityteam.org/download/
The host for the download changed a while back from sourceforge.net to http://code.google.com
Since the Audacity software has been hosted on Google Code, there have been 3,857,915 downloads of Audacity 1.3.12 for Windows and 243,480 downloads of Audacity 1.2.6 for Windows. I expect that many of the people that downloaded the 1.2.6 version have since upgraded (at least I hope so).

[Hank52]

CNET isn't the only one that is distributing Audacity. http://www.majorgeeks.com is another major distributor of Software. I just went to that Site and the 1.3.12-beta is is listed as having over 57357 downloads.

No matter what is said, the 1.3.12-beta is the most "Stable" version. For the love of me, I don't know why they don't change that on the Audacity Website.

Anyway. The best practice for downloading "Any" Software is to get it at the Author's Website. That way you can be sure that you're not getting a Bogus Program.

Audacity

http://audacityteam.org/download/

Ken:

[waxcylinder]

No matter what is said, the 1.3.12-beta is the most "Stable" version. For the love of me, I don't know why they don't change that on the Audacity Website.

It's a long story, a very long story ...

We have made efforts to get the labelling and descriptions changed - and they have been somewhat, and this has seen a bigger uptake of 1.3

The basic problem is that the developers will not allow 1.3.x as a Beta version to be described as "stable" or the "official" version. That is because there are still a couple of P2bugs (Priority-2) that exist that can't be fixed. So while they are there in the code that prevents making a Release Candidate for Version 2.0 of Audacity.

Notwithstanding that, you are correct. IMHO 1.3.12 is the best Audacity yet I (and all of the other elves on the forum) use it as our standard production version.

WC

[digiday]

Thanks Steve, Hank (or Ken) and wax,

I'm not sure why cnet.com would have the audacity to have this information on their website about Audacity.

Many people rely on independent website information to try to decide whether some software is problematic by reading individual user reviews and the reviews of outside software experts... it's like going to Consumer reports to decide what kind of photo paper to buy instead of listening to ads for Kodak paper that say, "only ask for genuine Kodak paper"... what would be Kodak's motive?, for example... or reading movie reviews to figure out if a movie is worth going to see as opposed to going to the movie website and reading the canned reviews about what a profound experience watching "The Walking Dead of Buffalo" was.

Cnet has the information that is provided to them by the software manufacturers and they have pages and reviews for both versions of Audacity.

There is a link on this forums website right at the top of the "Windows" page that leads to a post titled, "1.3.7 MP3 Export requires the latest LAME installer" by Gale Andrews, at this URL... http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=9175 .

At first, one might think that this is a prank-post since Gale is talking about the "LAME" installer, but it is apparently not a joke. In this article Gale talks about needing to download and install a separate encoder just to make the beta version of Audacity able to export to MP3 format or the app will give error messages or crash... this is right on the top of major page on this site.

But Gale is talking about a beta version of Audacity that isn't the current v1.3.12, but is numerically lower than the v1.3.12 that is currently available... but nevertheless, immediately needing to download and install something else just to make v1.-whatever beta export to MP3 seems to be a major glitch.

With respect to "majorgeeks.com", I've never heard of it and one would normally trust cnet over something that has the cliche, "geeks" in their URL... what is "best practice" defined as in the shady world of the internet anyway?

I'll give v1.3.12 beta a try... but what is v1.3.7 that Gale Andrews refers to?

Thanks,

digiday

[waxcylinder]

I'll give v1.3.12 beta a try... but what is v1.3.7 that Gale Andrews refers to?

1.3.7 is five versions before 1.3.12 - that post of Gale's is a very old one now (written when 1.3.7 was "new"). 1.3.12 is thae latest and current Beta. It has proved to be a very stable relaese in real world use - as I said there are still a few bugs (all software has bugs - it just does) but you are unlikely to encounter them in day to day use.

There is also a 1.3.13 which is the Alpha release, it usually changes nightly - but I would't recommend using that until it goes to Beta release. Until then its not just leading edge, it's bleeding edge.

WC

[digiday]

Thanks WC,

I noticed the old date on Gale's post, yet it is still featured at the very top of the "Windows" page... and the version numbers are deceptively deceptive when it comes to "this-dot-that-dot-frip-dot-frap"... whatever happened to 1.0 and 2.0, etc.?

digi

[waxcylinder]

Gale's left that there as a sticky as the advice is still current - it might help if he updated it with the latest version number to avoid confusion

Version numbering by software developers (on most software, not just Audacity) tends to follow a few conventions:

1) The major number, the left-most is normally only changed when a major release occurs with big changes. So to go from the allegedly "current" 1.2.6 to the planned 2.0 is a big step in terms of extra functionality.
2) the second number in: even numbers tend to be used for "stable" releases and odds tend to be used for Beta (and Alpha) releases (at one stge what is now going to be 2.0 was planned to be 1.4 - a very long time ago).
3) the third number denotes the release version of that number - so we have now had 12 versions of the 1.3 release issued

WC

[digiday]

Thanks again WC... that's very retentive of you to give me a three point explanation about software version numbering.

Since I've been checking out "Audacity", I've found that they have the audacity of having two versions available at the same time and people on their website are very audastic about which one to use... looks like the consensus so far is v1.3.12 beta, but I wouldn't beta-gainst it.

digi

[digiday]

Well, I finally got the albóndigas to install Audacity v1.3.12 beta on this computer... it does seem very nice and I have a sound file in it now ready for editing... all I have to do now is figure out how to use it... I'll try all of your online help and stuff before I come back to ask any questions.

Thanks for your recommendations and information everyone.

digi