Audacity 1.2.0 Released 329
mbrubeck writes "After almost two years of development, the free cross-platform sound editor Audacity has released a new stable version for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Audacity 1.2 has major improvements including professional-quality dithering and resampling, and new pitch- and speed-changing effects. Our previous stable release was announced on Slashdot in June 2002. More recently, Audacity was presented at this year's CodeCon in San Francisco."
Hopefully studio costs going down (Score:3, Interesting)
The world of Out Of Phase Stereo (Score:5, Interesting)
Many songs put the vocalist at the center so this is a useful way to remove vocals from a song.
1) Load your favorite
2) one click to split into two tracks (left & right)
3) click on either left or right track, select "Invert" from the Effects menu...this is the key step.
4) click-select both tracks and select "Quick Mix"
5) you are left with a mono recording that has the former "center channel" (usually the vocals) removed!
This won't work on "live" concert recordings and works best with "Pop/Rock" from the 1960s & 1970s
Thomas Dz.
still lack vital ui feature? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hopefully studio costs going down (Score:4, Interesting)
comparing the wrong things (Score:5, Interesting)
!Cool! (Score:4, Interesting)
Just took it for a spin and it looks good. It even have a noise reduction function...
Hey, just checked the undo feature and you can even undo the mp3 import.
The mp3 export function seems a bit lacking, but thats what programs like CDex is for (on windows).
Sweet!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Congrats guys and gals!!!
Most important questions... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hopefully studio costs going down (Score:5, Interesting)
Software is a trivial cost in the grand scheme of things
That really depends on what you are trying to acheive. If you want a respectable home setup, then software is likely a major part of the cost. Most amateur and semi-pro setups now consist largely of direct to disk recorders and editing suites. Effects, synths and samplers implemented in software are increasingly replacing standalone hardware.
a decent vocal microphone such as a Neumann U87 will set you back around $3000
That's not a "decent" vocal mic, it's an exceptional one. For most people recording popular music styles (be it rock or dance stuff) will not need anything more sophisticated than a Shure SM mic which will set them back $100.
Chris
A question for Audacity users.. (Score:4, Interesting)
How might I record from the line in port of my sound card? I generally record vinyls that I own to a digital format to listen to more conveniently, and audacity's GUI option dialog only allows me to record from
I tried changing it to
This is annoying, if I'm recording and GAIM happens to make a noise, or something else does. I know I could just kill every other sound-producing process, but I'd rather work out how to record directly from line-in.
Any clues? Thank you, knowledgeable
Before you ask, I have STFW somewhat on this..
Debian Woody packages? (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried replacing "potato" with "woody" in the apt source URL, but to no avail.
-bill!
(yes, yes, I know about apt-pinning
Re:Whats this? Freshmeat? (Score:3, Interesting)
To be honest, if Linux video editing becomes significantly more feasible suddenly, where one can swap out a Windows or Mac box and use Linux in its place happily, and kino is to credit for this, then I suspect that kino will be on Slashdot before long...
Re:Hopefully studio costs going down (Score:3, Interesting)
I was skimming through some audio forums a while ago when considering getting a nice (well, by my standards) pair of headphones. I was surprised by what a lot of musicians were using for live performances -- relatively inexpensive microphones and headphones. Unless the standard for recording is *far* higher than for live performances, it just seems that musicians are getting overcharged.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure a zillion dollar amp and zillion dollar microphone sound nice...but are they worth the order of magnitude increase over the next-lower grade of audio hardware?
Re:Hopefully studio costs going down (Score:3, Interesting)
Most rock music with any budget would be done with a decent mic such as a U87
Again, it depends on the budget. I have recorded on top flight digital stuff as well as two inch analogue tape, and the difference in quality was not noticable to the human ear. The overall quality of the recording is rarely down to the equipment used, more often it depends on the ability of the engineer / producer.
Chris
Re:Hopefully studio costs going down (Score:3, Interesting)
Another thing that adds to the recording costs of major label artists is that they frequently go into the studio with no completed material. The label demands a new album when the band has just finished touring to support the last one. Enthusiasm and energy are at a low ebb, and the band spend ages knocking new material together. This often gets written off as "pre-production".
Chris
Doing the opposite ? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'd like to know is how you can remove the instrumental background so you only have the vocals.
Would be damn useful for Bjork remixes.
Thomas Miconi
Re:!Cool! (Score:3, Interesting)
Minor nit - stops audio when launched in OS X (Score:3, Interesting)
Rezound (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is better...
Re:Videoediting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good, but not good enough (Score:2, Interesting)
You should check out Ardour [sourceforge.net] for a more professional, multi-track recording environment. It shouldn't have any serious latency issues, at least given that you run a low-latency kernel. It's still under (active) developement but it works quite well already.
Re:Good, but not good enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:1, Interesting)
For Windows Users Only (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hopefully studio costs going down (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Finally (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.dolby.com/cassette/bcsnr/ctype.html
Looks like Audacity doesn't do it yet. Doesn't seem to be an easy way to do a complete Dolby B/C filter digitally - it's not static - the filtering depends on sound output levels. Can do a simplistic one I suppose.
Inkscape is vector graphics software!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Originally based on Sodipodi but it has a much friendlier user interface.
Re:Videoediting (Score:3, Interesting)
After I got used to the interface and the specific methods of inserting transitions and whatnot, I found it pretty simple to add in voice-over tracks and sound/video effects. I was also using it on a Duron 933 w/ 512 MB RAM - not at all a powerhouse video-editing workstation by any stretch of the imagination (check the recommended system on the Cinelerra home page).
I basically just imported clips from a FireWire digicam, spliced in some clips from some anime to illustrate my points, and added effects to clean up the transitions. I didn't get the project done, but I did find that learning the software was a fun experience. I'll probably try it again someday, but this time, I'll be using a better class of system.
I would definitely recommend that people at least *try* Cinelerra when they have some time to spare to learn the interface. Having not tried Kino for some such forgotten reason, I can't compare the two.
--
Nightmare for equipment brokers, wet dream for us (Score:3, Interesting)
Audacity is a case in point -- a small workstation with a few SoundBlaster cards can handle as many tracks as you like and produce sound at least as good as was used to make all that old vinyl, and costs under $1,000. Ultimately, that means anyone who can afford an instrument can probably afford to play at being a sound engineer, with really good postprocessing equipment.
I've been using Audacity for about a year and a half to work my way through my record collection, mp3ifying it. It's great -- I record the records with a SoundBlaster card, depop the recording with some shareware, and noise-gate, adjust levels, and chop up the tracks with Audacity. The results sound better than the original vinyl, since the noise gating gets rid of the surface noise.
My rip of "Layla" off the original Derek and the Dominos vinyl is clear enough that you can hear the master's tape hiss change as each of those famously many mixing tracks gets switched in and out by the recording engineer. I never noticed that when I used to just play the record -- but once the the vinyl surface noise is gated out, it's obvious.
Audacity is good enough that I was able to digitize a friend's old clay '45 of the Clouds singing "Wyatt Earp" in the late 1950s -- even after the record had broken in half! I superglued it back together and played it at 33rpm. Of course, there were two loud "pops" for each revolution of the record, since there's no way I could line the grooves up perfectly. In fact, it wouldn't play at 45 -- the bumps would throw the needle out of the groove. But I was able to go in with Audacity and clip out all the pops, then resample to get a full-speed recording. The resulting MP3 accurately reproduces the sound-and-feel of a 1960s era jukebox :-)
It's Getting Somewhere... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot math... (Score:4, Interesting)
I just wanted to let you know:
I was flipping through a PC Mag at Sydney airport while waiting for a plane and it had a section reviewing sound applications.
So there was SoundForge, CoolEdit, a wholy bunch of expensive proprietary Windows sound applications and... Audacity!
I had to blink to ensure I wasn't hallucinating. It got a good review, too. The reviewer was impressed.
Just thought you'd like to know that you're officially playing with the big boys.
Cheers
Stor