This page is an overview of the key new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 2.3.0

• Details of all the major changes since 2.2.2 can be found in Audacity 2.3.0.

Punch and Roll Recording

We have introduced Punch and Roll Recording into Audacity as one of our most popular and long-standing feature requests.

It is Accessed by: Transport > Recording > Punch and Roll Record or more simply using its shortcut Shift + D.

This enables you to correct errors easily during the course of a recording session.

• You can stop, back up over a mistake, and continue recording, resulting in one track that eliminates the errors and is properly timed, without the use of cutting, pasting, and clip-moving commands, or mixing of multiple tracks.

• You can do rough editing as you go, with minimal interruption of your performance and less work left until afterwards.

This is likely to be very useful to voiceover artists and audiobook authors enabling them to make rapid corrections of fluffs as they progress.

Movable pinned Playhead/Recordhead

We have made the pinned playhead/recordhead movable on the Timeline, enabling you to choose whereabouts on the Timeline you want it to be pinned for playback and recording

The default pinned position is the center of the Timeline as before, but you can change this by clicking on the pinned head and dragging it along the Timeline while you are playing or recording. A double-click on the head will restore it to its default position in the center of the Timeline.

You may find that a pinned Playhead/Recordhead position right of center will be more useful during recording, including Punch and Roll recording, but a position back in the middle may be more useful if you are playing, especially if you are scrubbing and seeking.

Scrubbing and Seeking always use un-pinned playhead

By default, scrubbing and seeking will ignore the pinned playhead (if it is turned on) and will play with an unpinned playhead. This will cause the playhead to move with the waveform remaining static.

You can change this by turning "off" the option for "Always scrub unpinned" in Playback preferences. This will cause the playhead to remain static and the waveform will move under it while scrubbing and seeking.

The un-pinned head is probably the easier way to work with scrubbing and seeking.

Play-at-Speed

The Play-at-Speed Toolbar (formerly called the "Transcription Toolbar") now enables you to make dynamic changes to the playback speed as you play audio using the Transcription toolbar to set the required speed. Formerly you had to stop playback and restart it to get the changed speed.

The Play-at-Speed toolbar has also been made resizable, so you can stretch it by dragging the right end rightwards, and so get a longer slider with more precision to it. At the same time as we made this change we also made the Mixer toolbar resizable, to give more precision over the main volume and playback settings if you want it.

Batch Processing

A collection of features added to Audacity for 2.3.0 are related. They come from a project to improve batch processing. Listed here, they are described in more detail in following sections. The project led to improved:

• feature (replaces Chains), for repetitive tasks that can be done without using a scripting language.

• Scripting using a scripting language such as Python running outside Audacity.

• The project led to the new tools menu, and the new submenus with many new commands.

Macros command replaces Chains

The old Chains command (for batch processing and effect automation) has been replaced by an extended command. Macros can do everything that Chains did before, however there are now many more commands it can use - including new commands that have been created specially for batch processing.

We have changed the user interface integrating the functionality so that you now can view, edit and apply your macros from the same single dialog window, simplifying the usage of macros.

• Re-setting the parameters for commands in macros has been simplified. Now double clicking on a command in a displayed chain will pop up the parameter settings dialog for that command.

• The dialog window can be reduced in size and scope by using the Shrink button. This reduced 'Macro Palette' dialog can apply macros to your project, but does not edit them.

• Many more commands are now available to Macros. Previously the commands were mostly effects. Now nearly all menu items are included.

New Tools menu

A new menu item Tools has been created, with customizable tools.

• Chains feature renamed as 'Macros'.

• Extended documentation on using Macros for presets and other tasks.

• Dialogs have help buttons

• Some new prebuilt macros are available in Tools, and you can configure and add your own.

New Save Project menu

We have created a new submenu from the File Menu called Save Project

This replaces the former Save Project and Save Project As commands and these move into the new submenu. The Save Compressed Copy of Project... is also moved to the new submenu (it was in File > Export formerly).

Most importantly we have added a new command to that menu File > Save Project > Save Lossless Copy of Project. This is the now the safe and recommended way to make a safety backup copy of a project as you work on it. This could serve either as a single backup copy of the project, or as one of several incremental copies of the project in the state it had at a particular date and time. Unlike "Save As..." using this command will leave your current project open enabling you to continue working on it.

New Scriptables submenus

New Extra > Scriptables I and Extra > Scriptables II submenus in the Extra menu

• 24 New functions in these menus

  • These are likely to be particularly useful to VI users.

  • Actions that are currently done by mouse that can now be done by keyboard.

Nyquist effects translated

Nyquist effects now support translation, and the ones shipped with Audacity are translated.

Help Buttons

We added help buttons ? to the Macros full and reduced dialogs, to the Export dialogs, to some error message dialogs and to some other dialogs that did not previously have them.

Increased legibility of trackname display

Increased legibility of trackname display. the Track Name overlay now has a background.

Half-wave option for collapsed tracks

For collapsed tracks there is now an option settable in Tracks Preferences to show the upper half of the wave display only in order to show a little more detail.

Sliding Stretch replace Sliding Time Scale / Pitch Shift

The effect that was formerly named "Sliding Time Scale / Pitch Shift" has been renamed to Sliding Stretch for this release.

This is a simple name change, no other changes have been made to the effect. The change has been made mainly to reduce verbosity in the menu along with an attempt to make the command name more meaningful.

Overwriting existing projects

In response to many user requests for this we have changed Audacity so that is now possible to overwrite pre-existing projects with File > Save Project or File > Save Project As....

In doing so you will get the following warning message and please note that for safety reasons this warning cannot be turned off.

Use dialog for the name of new labels

There is a new option in Tracks Behaviors Preferences for: "Use dialog for the name of new label".

This is off by default, but when enabled creating a label will pop up a dialog box for you to enter the label name (rather than the default behavior of opening the new label itself for editing). When the dialog is closed, focus is returned to the track which was the focus before the dialog opened. This functionality is primarily provided to aid Visually Impaired users who use screen readers, but may be useful to normally sighted users too.

Changed shortcuts for clip navigation

The shortcuts for clip navigation have been changed

• Select > Clip Boundaries > Previous Clip is now Alt + , - was Alt + P

• Select > Clip Boundaries > Next Clip is now Alt + . - was Alt + N

Bug Fixes

• Windows: Queen Mary 1.7.1 Vamp plug-ins crash Audacity on opening Plug-in Manager - see

• Inconsistent behavior when recording with a selection defined see

• Ctrl + M does not open label for editing - see

Links

- detailed release notes for this release of Audacity

Audacity 2.3.0 was released on 29 September 2018.

Size and Checksums

Changes and improvements since previous version

Audacity 2.3.0 replaces all previous versions.

• Over 90 bugs fixed since 2.2.2.

  • Includes fixes to Timer Record, and to 'Envelope Points'.

• New feature - "Punch and Roll Recording".

• Toolbars controlling volume and speed can now be resized for greater precision.

Full details of new features in the visual guide to

Supported Platforms

Windows

• Audacity 2.3.0 requires the CPU to support the instruction set which should be available on any Intel hardware produced after 2001 and any AMD hardware produced after 2003.

  • To check what SSE levels your CPU supports, you can install .

  • If your hardware only supports SSE, you may download Audacity 2.0.6 see the page on the Audacity Website.

macOS / Mac OS X

• Audacity 2.3.0 is for Intel Macs running OS X 10.7 and later and macOS.

  • There are legacy versions for older OS X at .

Linux

• Linux support is tested on Ubuntu Linux.

  • Audacity may compile on Gentoo, Debian, Mint.

  • Audacity does not currently compile on SuSE Linux.

Interactive Buglist Page

We probably track more bugs than you are interested in...

On the dynamic buglist page you can select to view:

• Complete list of bugs in 2.2.2 that we have fixed for 2.3.0

• Known bugs on the OS you use Mac, Windows or Linux.

• Known bugs to do with accessibility or localization.

• Workarounds for some bugs.

You can choose various combinations of these. However, there are probably too many minor bugs and too much detail on that for most users.

We do use this detail in our own QA work.

Bug Fixes

Some of the bugs we fixed for Audacity 2.3.0:

• Timer record continues recording and does not stop at the stated time. You may on low powered hardware still see slow updates to the timer, and we haven't fixed that entirely yet.

• QM 1.7.1 plug-in crash, now fixed.

• Envelope curves got badly confused when joining clips.

Highlighted Issues

• Below are listed what we believe are the most common and important issues with 2.3.0 for most users.

Accessibility

• Far less of Audacity is properly accessible to visually impaired users than we would like. Currently the best supported platform for accessibility is Windows. We lost a lot of custom accessibility programming when we had to move to a more recent version of the wxWidgets library.

Internationalization

• Audacity is only partially translated in many languages. We also have some issues, for example, with Right-To-Left Languages.

Selected Bugzilla-Tracked Bugs

This page is an overview of the key new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 2.3.1

• Details of all the major changes since 2.3.0 can be found in Audacity 2.3.1.

64-bit Mac build

The 2.3.1 release of Audacity for macOS is now a 64-bit build and will only run on modern 64-bit Macs, running OSX 10.7 or later.

Scrub Ruler

The Scrub Ruler is now turned "off" by default and is not displayed. The reason we did this was because we found too many users were accidentally clicking in the Scrub Ruler and then finding themselves stuck in Scrubbing mode.

This will only affect you if you opt to reset your preferences settings as part of the 2.3.1 installation, manually reset your preferences or install Audacity for the first time.

If you want/need to turn it back on again use either the and check the Scrub Ruler to be "on". Or right click in the Timeline and select Enable Scrub Ruler.

Advanced Vertical Zooming

We have added a new command to the menu View > Zoom menu for turning Advanced Vertical Zooming "on" or "off".

Advanced Vertical Zooming enables you to use left-click gestures in the Vertical Scale to control zooming (this is in addition to the Simple mode vertical zooming commands available from the right-click context menu in the Vertical Scale).

Micro Fades

Micro fades (introduced in 2.3.0) can reduce the click when playback starts and stops. We've now made this an opt-in feature rather than provide it all the time, this can be set in Playback Preferences.

Regular Interval Labels improvements

We have made some improvements to Regular Interval Labels, accessed by Tools > Regular Interval Labels.

In particular we have made it possible to create range labels and not just point labels with this Tool. You can do this by specifying the label length in the new input field Length of label region (seconds)

Bug Fixes

• Linux: Audacity 2.3.0 was available only for Mac and Windows, and Linux used 2.2.1. Audacity 2.3.1 is available for Linux.

• Windows and Linux: Intermittent truncation of the end of a recording - see

• Can't adjust Time Track envelope when Logarithmic scale selected - see

Links

- detailed release notes for this release of Audacity

Audacity 2.3.1 will be released on 8th March 2019.

Size and Checksums

Changes and improvements since previous version

Audacity 2.3.1 replaces all previous versions.

• Audacity now supports 64-bit Mac.

• Over 20 bugs fixed since 2.3.0, including:

  • A crashing bug on Linux that made Audacity 2.3.0. unsuitable for Linux.

Full details of new features in the visual guide to

Supported Platforms

Windows

• Audacity 2.3.1 requires the CPU to support the instruction set which should be available on any Intel hardware produced after 2001 and any AMD hardware produced after 2003.

  • To check what SSE levels your CPU supports, you can install .

  • If your hardware only supports SSE, you may download Audacity 2.0.6 see the page on the Audacity Website.

macOS / Mac OS X

• Audacity 2.3.1 is for Intel Macs running OS X 10.7 and later and macOS.

  • There are legacy versions for older OS X at .

Linux

• Linux support is tested on Ubuntu Linux.

  • Audacity may compile on Gentoo, Debian, Mint.

  • Audacity does not currently compile on SuSE Linux.

Interactive Buglist Page

We probably track more bugs than you are interested in...

On the dynamic buglist page you can select to view:

• Complete list of bugs in 2.3.0 that we have fixed for 2.3.1

• Known bugs on the OS you use Mac, Windows or Linux.

• Known bugs to do with accessibility or localization.

• Workarounds for some bugs.

You can choose various combinations of these. However, there are probably too many minor bugs and too much detail on that for most users.

We do use this detail in our own QA work.

Highlighted Issues

• Below are listed what we believe are the most common and important issues with 2.3.1 for most users.

Accessibility

• Far less of Audacity is properly accessible to visually impaired users than we would like. Currently the best supported platform for accessibility is Windows. We lost a lot of custom accessibility programming when we had to move to a more recent version of the wxWidgets library.

Internationalization

• Audacity is only partially translated in many languages. We also have some issues, for example, with Right-To-Left Languages.

Selected Bugzilla-Tracked Bugs

• Click on the bug numbers to see work done on these bugs.

Audacity 2.3.2 was released on 15th May 2019.

Size and Checksums

Changes and improvements since previous version

Audacity 2.3.2 replaces all previous versions.

• Audacity now includes the LAME MP3 encoder. Previously, due to now expired patents, you had to download it separately.

• There is a new Select button in the track panel to select the whole track.

• Audacity mod-script-pipe for driving Audacity from Python now comes with Audacity and it can be enabled via preferences.

• Over 20 bugs fixed since 2.3.1. The most serious bug was that Audacity 2.3.1 would crash if append-recording to a collapsed track.

Full details of new features in the visual guide to

Supported Platforms

Windows

• Audacity 2.3.2 requires the CPU to support the instruction set which should be available on any Intel hardware produced after 2001 and any AMD hardware produced after 2003.

  • To check what SSE levels your CPU supports, you can install .

  • If your hardware only supports SSE, you may download Audacity 2.0.6 see the page on the Audacity Website.

macOS / Mac OS X

• Audacity 2.3.2 is for Intel Macs running OS X 10.7 and later and macOS.

  • There are legacy versions for older OS X at .

Linux

• Linux support is tested on Ubuntu Linux.

  • Audacity may compile on Gentoo, Debian, Mint.

  • Audacity does not currently compile on SuSE Linux.

Interactive Buglist Page

We probably track more bugs than you are interested in...

On the dynamic buglist page you can select to view:

• Complete list of bugs in 2.3.1 that we have fixed for 2.3.2

• Known bugs on the OS you use Mac, Windows or Linux.

• Known bugs to do with accessibility or localization.

• Workarounds for some bugs.

You can choose various combinations of these. However, there are probably too many minor bugs and too much detail on that for most users.

We do use this detail in our own QA work.

Highlighted Issues

• Below are listed what we believe are the most common and important issues with 2.3.1 for most users.

Accessibility

• Far less of Audacity is properly accessible to visually impaired users than we would like. Currently the best supported platform for accessibility is Windows. We lost a lot of custom accessibility programming when we had to move to a more recent version of the wxWidgets library.

Internationalization

• Audacity is only partially translated in many languages. We also have some issues, for example, with Right-To-Left Languages.

Selected Bugzilla-Tracked Bugs

• Click on the bug numbers to see work done on these bugs.

This page is an overview of the key new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 2.3.2

• Details of all the major changes since 2.3.1 can be found in Audacity 2.3.2.

LAME is now built-in in Audacity for Windows and Mac

The LAME library, which is needed for exporting MP3 audio files, is now built-in to Audacity on Windows and macOS as a part of the application.

With previous releases it was necessary to download and locate the LAME library as an optional extra.

If you go to Libraries Preferences you will see that the option to locate the library is no longer there and the dialog tells you what version of LAME is built-in.

Select button in Track Control Panel

There is now a Select button in the Track Control Panel.

The whole of an individual track can be selected by clicking this Select button.

Holding Ctrl (or ⌘ + A on a Mac) and clicking on the Select button toggles the selectedness of the track.

Nyquist Plug-in Installer

The new Nyquist Plug-in Installer is itself a Nyquist plug-in. It simplifies the installation of other Nyquist plug-ins. It is installed by default in Audacity and can be found in the Tools Menu. It can be accessed by: Tools > Nyquist Plug-in Installer...

This plug-in installer provides a file browser for selecting the plug-in '.NY' file (Nyquist plug-ins are plain text files that have the '.NY'), and then copies the file to the correct location.

Once the plug-in has been installed, in order to use it it must be enabled using the .

Macros - "cleaned" folder renamed to "macro-output"

The folder that is created by Audacity when running a Macro on files, or when an Export command is used in a Macro that is run on the current project, has been renamed to "macro-output" to give it a more meaningful name.

The created folder used to be called "cleaned" (which was a hangover from functionality that used to be in Audacity, bit was removed many versions ago).

mod-script-pipe provided with Audacity on Windows and Mac

The experimental mod-script-pipe is now available with Audacity for Windows and Mac. You need to enable it in Modules Preferences.

Preference for "Type to create a label"

The default setting for the "Type to create a label" in Tracks Behaviors Preferences has been changed from "on" to "off".

When enabled "on", if there is already a label track that has the yellow focus border, you do not need to use "Add Label at Selection" or its Ctrl + B shortcut to create a new label. Just type your required label text to create a new label at the position of the editing cursor or selection region.

The change was made as some users were confused by: a) shortcuts not working when the label track has focus b) labels not being created when the label track did not have focus.

This will not affect any previous setting that you have, or have made, for this Preference unless you chose to have your preferences reset as part of an upgrade installation.

Size restrictions on WAV and AIFF exports

WAV and AIFF audio files are size limited to a maximum of 4 GB. This is a general restriction and not an Audacity restriction.

In earlier versions of Audacity if you exported a WAV or AIFF file that would exceed those limits the file would be corrupted and truncated and this would happen without warning.

For 2.3.2 we have implemented an error trap to catch this and stop it happening. Now when attempting to export an oversized WAV or AIFF file Audacity will not do this and you will get the following error message:

Clicking on the ? Help button in the message will show the following table in the Manual

Aproximate maximum time durations for WAV and AIFF files

Bug Fixes

Click on the bug number for full details in the bug thread.

• P1 - Append recording into a collapsed track causes a crash

• P2 - Mac: misleading error message when importing M4A without FFmpeg installed

• P2 - Expand function after Append Record to a collapsed track fails

Note Track bugs fixed

• P3 - NoteTrack: Hidden notes on importing MIDI

• P4 - Note Track: Vertical Zoom Reset produces max. zoom out and not a reset

• P4 - Note tracks don't save the pitch height, which may lead to hidden notes

Links

- detailed release notes for this release of Audacity

This page is an overview of the key new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 2.3.3

• Details of all the major changes since 2.3.2 can be found in Audacity 2.3.3.

Maintenance release

2.3.3 is a maintenance release to reorganize the structure of the underlying code. This is so that we can make better changes for the user experience in the future.

There are no new and almost no changed features in this release. However, we have fixed many long standing bugs, at the same time as making the restructuring. We are also taking the opportunity to retire some features which are better done by other approaches.

Earlier we had set ourselves a target of 20% live bugs out of total bugs by August 2019. Two years ago 35% of bugs were live bugs, and the live bugs total was just over 600. We actually met our target early, by 1st June 2019. As at 1st September we were at 16% live bugs with just 356 live bugs. See in the Audacity Wiki.

Two bugs we fixed which noticeably change behavior are:

Quality slider now works for AAC/M4A Export

An important bug-fix for this release is that we have finally made the Quality slider work when exporting AAC/M4A files. Formerly, although you could move the slider, the setting of slider was ignored by Audacity and it used always a constant bit rate (CBR) 196 kbps (stereo) file or 98 kbps (mono) file.

This was - M4A Quality slider has no control of bitrate setting or AAC quality

Leading blank space treated as silence on Export

For this release we have added a feature where by default when exporting audio any leading blank space in the tracks or project to be exported is treated as silence and appropriate leading silence will pad the exported audio.

Previously many users were confused when they had carefully positioned their audio with an initial offset (white/gray space) that when they Exported the track this offset was ignored and the exported file started immediately with the audio with no offset.

This particularly confused multi-track users who export and subsequently re-import tracks and are surprised/puzzled when their tracks no longer line up properly.

This makes for greater consistency in Audacity with regard to pre-existing behaviors:

• leading blank space has always been treated as silence when playing such an offset audio track

• if a track has embedded blank white/gray space between audio clips, upon export those embedded chunks are rendered as silence to preserve the relative positioning of the clips.

• Mix&Render has always preserved leading blank white/gray offsets

There is a new option in Import/Export Preferences where you can turn this off and revert to Audacity's previous behavior with leading blank space ignored on Export.

This was - Audio offset not honored in Export/Export Multiple/Export Selection

Exports are now based on "What you hear is what you get"

From this version onwards when making multi-track exports the export will be based entirely upon the track hear when preview playing the audio in the project prior to Export.

I also means than any grayed-out tracks will not be exported.

Formerly with the Solo Button behavior set to the expert mode "Multi-Track" in Tracks Behaviors" preferences the exports were instead based on the state of the Mute buttons, using the Solo buttons could leave some tracks grayed out and not playable on preview, but still exported on Export.

Users who leave the Solo Button set to its default Simple mode will notice no difference as a result of this change.

This was - When Solo button is "Multi-track" Export is not accurate - can lead to data loss

Equalization effect split

The former Equalization effect has now been split into two separate effects. We did this as part of fixing some bugs with the effect:

Filter Curve - equalization using drawn curves

Graphic EQ - equalization using sliders

End-of-life retired functionality

For this maintenance release we have decided to withdraw some pieces of functionality which are considered to be no longer useful or relevant.

Nyquist Workbench End of Life

The optional module Nyquist Workbench has been declared obsolete for version 2.3.3 onwards.

We plan to replace it later with a modern alternative . A lot of the important functionality is already built into the Nyquist prompt in Audacity.

Vocal Remover End of Life

We have finally decided to no longer ship the legacy effect Vocal Remover with Audacity. It has been superseded for a while now by the newer and more powerful Vocal Reduction and Isolation effect. We upgraded the effect slightly with this release, so that it now can also do exactly what the old effect did.

New users who install 2.3.3 as their first Audacity will not see Vocal Remover in the effect menu. Upgraders from earlier versions of Audacity will still find this legacy effect in their effects list (because it was supplied as a Nyquist plug-in). If you no longer wish to see it in the Effect menu simply mark it as Disabled in the Plug-in Manager.

On-Demand loading of aliased files End of Life

Audacity previously had a feature where Audacity projects could depend on uncompressed audio files (for example WAV and AIFF) that were stored outside the Audacity project and folder. This saved space but was rather dangerous, as the project could become unusable if the files were moved or renamed.

The space saving made some sense back in 1999 when disk storage was more expensive. Nowadays it does not make sense. It causes far more problems than the space saving is worth. Previously we had defaults set to always copy audio into projects, and not try and save space. Now we have removed the option of this ill advised space saving. Audacity will still work with old projects that do this, but for new projects audio will always be copied in.

Normalize on Load feature

Audacity previously had a 'mis-feature' called 'Normalize on Load' which gave the option of always normalizing newly imported audio (an option that was settable in preferences). Normalizing or alternatively compression should usually only be done as one of the last steps in producing audio, for example if one knows the audio is destined to go into an MP3 file or CD.

Bug Fixes

We have fixed many bugs in the course of this maintenance release:

Click on the bug number for full details in the bug thread.

• P1 - Mac - FFmpeg Custom options dialog opens behind Export Audio dialog

• P1 - Crash when opening Equalization settings in a Macro

• P1 - Linux: Incorrect behaviors in "Manage Macro"

Equalization bugs

• P1 - Equalization: EQ control points can disappear if the points are at the same frequency

• P1 - Equalization: presets under the Manage button do not save custom EQ curves

• P1 - Graphic EQ ( and Filter Curve): Manage button does not work

Links

- detailed release notes for this release of Audacity