Audacity (audio editor)

Audacity is a free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application software, available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems.<ref name=homePage/><ref name=aboutPage>Template:Cite web</ref>

As of December 6, 2022, Audacity is the most popular download at FossHub,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> with over 114.2 million downloads since March 2015. It was previously served by Google Code and SourceForge, where it was downloaded over 200 million times. It has been part of Muse Group since 2021.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":5">Template:Cite web</ref>

It is licensed under GPL-2.0 or later. Executables with VST3 support are licensed GPL-3-only to maintain license compatibility.<ref name="license" /><ref name="README.txt" />

History

The project was started in the fall of 1999 by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg at Carnegie Mellon University, initially under the name CMU Visual Audio.<ref name=":3">Template:Citation</ref> On May 28, 2000, Audacity was released as Audacity 0.8 to the public.<ref>"Version 0.8: May 28, 2000" in README.txt of audacity-win-0.8.zip</ref><ref name="irelease">Template:Cite web</ref>

Mazzoni eventually left CMU to pursue software development and in particular development of Audacity, with Dannenberg remaining at CMU and continuing development of Nyquist, a scripting language which Audacity uses for some effects.<ref name=":3" />

Over the years, additional volunteer contributors emerged, including James Crook who started the fork DarkAudacity to experiment with a new look and other UX changes.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Most of its changes were eventually incorporated into the mainline version and the fork ended.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In April 2021, it was announced that Muse Group (owners of MuseScore and Ultimate Guitar) would acquire the Audacity trademark and continue to develop the application, which remains free and open source.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=":5" />

Features and use

In addition to recording audio from multiple sources, Audacity can be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including effects such as normalization, trimming, and fading in and out.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It has been used to record and mix entire albums, such as by Tune-Yards.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> It is currentlyTemplate:When? used in the Sound Creation unit of the UK OCR National Level 2 ICT course.Template:Cn

Recording

Audacity can record multiple tracks at once, provided the sound card supports it. In addition to a normal mode,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> recordings can be scheduled ("Timer Record"),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> or used in a Punch in and roll fashion.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Non-destructive editing

Historically, Audacity is a destructive editor, meaning all changes are directly applied to the waveform. This comes with certain benefits but means that any change made cannot be tweaked later on without undoing all changes in-between. For a long time, non-destructive editing was exclusive to volume envelopes<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and playback rates, but since version 3, this has been extended to clip trimming<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and effects.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Importing, exporting, and conversions

Audacity natively imports and exports WAV, AIFF, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and all file formats supported by the libsndfile library. An additional library, FFmpeg, is necessary to import and export proprietary formats such as M4A (AAC) and WMA.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Due to patent licensing concerns, FFmpeg is not bundled with Audacity, but rather has to be downloaded separately.<ref name="faqinstall">Template:Cite web</ref>

In conjunction with batch processing features, Audacity can be used to convert files from one format to another, or to digitize records, tapes, or MiniDiscs.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Customizability and extensibility

Audacity supports LADSPA, LV2, VST, VST3, Audio Units, Vamp and Nyquist plugins, which allows it to load most audio effect plugins.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It additionally features a console for Nyquist, a Lisp dialect, in which users can script their own plugins<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and support for external Python scripting.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

Audacity is somewhat customizable and supports arbitrary arrangements of its toolbars, custom themes and enabling and disabling of several features.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite web</ref>

In January 2024, Intel introduced some AI-powered capabilities for Audacity as part of its OpenVINO plugin suite.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Audio analysis

Screenshot of Audacity on Windows showing spectrograms of an audio clip with portamento (upper panel) and the same clip after applying pitch correction, showing frequencies clamped to discrete values (lower panel)

Audacity has several features to allow for spectrum analysis using the Fourier transform algorithm<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and spectrograms. As with effects, additional analysis plugins can be added, such as ones that check audiobooks for ACX compatibility.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Limitations

While Audacity has some features found in digital audio workstations, it should not be considered as such yet. In its current form, it is an audio editor and recorder. In particular, MIDI editing, piano rolls, virtual instruments, parameter automation and channel routings are not yet implemented.

Due to the use of wxWidgets, which do not have full iOS or Android support,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Audacity cannot run on mobile platforms.

Other features

Audacity can make precise adjustments to speed (tempo) while maintaining pitch, to synchronize audio with video or for precise running time.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It also has a large array of digital effects and plug-ins,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> including: noise reduction based on sampling the noise to be minimized,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> vocal reduction and isolation for creation of karaoke tracks and isolated vocal tracks,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> pitch adjustment maintaining speed, and speed adjustment maintaining pitch.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Audacity also has support for multi-channel modes with sampling rates up to 96 kHz with 32 bits per sample.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It can also detect dropout errors made while recording with an overburdened CPU.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Language support

In addition to English, Audacity is available in Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Corsican, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Marathi, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Welsh.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The documentation, the Audacity Manual, is available only in English.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Audacity Forum offers technical support in English.

Architecture

Software architecture of Audacity showing how the software is built in layers

The diagram illustrates Audacity's layers and modules. Note the three important classes within wxWidgets, each of which has a reflection in Audacity.

Higher-level abstractions result from related lower-level ones. For example, the BlockFile system is a reflection of and is built on wxWidgets' wxFiles. Lower down in the diagram is a narrow strip for platform-specific implementation layers.

Both wxWidgets and PortAudio are OS abstraction layers, containing conditional code that chooses different implementations depending on the target platform.

Reception

As free and open-source software, Audacity is very popular in education, encouraging its developers to make the user interface easier for students and teachers.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Audacity won the SourceForge 2007 and 2009 Community Choice Award for Best Project for Multimedia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Jamie Lendino of PC Magazine recently rated it 4/5 stars Excellent and said: "If you're looking to get started in podcasting or recording music, it's tough to go wrong with Audacity. A powerful, free, open-source audio editor that's been available for years, Audacity is still the go-to choice for quick-and-dirty audio work."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

CNET rated Audacity 5/5 stars, calling it "feature-rich and flexible".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Preston Gralla of PC World said: "If you're interested in creating, editing, and mixing you'll want Audacity."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Jack Wallen of Tech Republic praised its features and ease-of-use.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In The Art of Unix Programming (2003), open-source software advocate Eric S. Raymond wrote of Audacity: "The central virtue of this program is that it has a superbly transparent and natural user interface, one that erects as few barriers between the user and the sound file as possible."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Some reviewers and users have criticized Audacity for its inconvenient UX design, unsightly GUI and comparative lack of features compared with Adobe Audition. Matthew McLean wrote: "Audacity looks a bit more dated and basic, but this will be appealing to many folks who're just starting out".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In May 2021, after the project was acquired by Muse Group,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> there was a draft proposal to add opt-in telemetry to the code to record application usage. Some users responded negatively, with accusations of turning Audacity into spyware.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The company reversed course, falling back to error/crash reporting and optional update checking instead.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Another controversy in July 2021<ref name=":1">Template:Cite web</ref> resulted from a change to the privacy policy which said that although personal data was stored on servers in the European Economic Area, the program would "occasionally [be] required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> That July, the Audacity team apologized for the changes to the privacy policy and removed mention of the data storage provision which was added "out of an abundance of caution".<ref name=":1" />

Version history

This table shows the major and minor releases of Audacity. Patches are omitted. Template:Table alignment

Version	Date	Major changes and notes
3.7	October 30, 2024	Fixes bugs.
3.6	July 16, 2024	Adds master effects, new compressor and limiter, new themes, and increased performance.
3.5	April 22, 2024	Adds Cloud saving, automatic tempo detection and non-destructive pitch shifting.
3.4	November 2, 2023	Adds a musical view, time stretching and a new exporter.
3.3	April 24, 2023	Mostly focused on refactoring. A preview of a beats and measures feature is added.
3.2	September 22, 2022	Added real-time effects, VST3 support and a streamlined interface. A cloud audio sharing integration with audio.com is added.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
3.1	October 28, 2021	Introduced clip handles, smart clips and playback looping.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In April 2022, an official Audacity app was added to the Microsoft Store.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
3.0	March 17, 2021	Introduced a new project file format, .aup3, using an SQLite database to store each project in a single database file.<ref name="Spadafora">Template:Cite web</ref>
2.4	May 15, 2020	Adds Loudness, Noise Gate and Spectral Delete effects and adds Side-by-side view of waveforms and spectrograms.
2.3	September 29, 2018	Adds Punch-and-Roll recording and upgrades to Macros, Play-at-Speed, Toolbars. From 2.3.2 on, a mod-script-pipe for driving Audacity from Python (can be enabled in Preferences).<ref name=":0" />
2.2	November 2, 2017	Ports changes from Dark Audacity to Audacity, adding themes.<ref name=":2" /> Additionally, MIDI playback is added.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Four user-selectable colorways for waveform display in audio tracks (version 2.2.1 on).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2.1	March 29, 2015	Adds Real-Time preview of some effects. Saving and loading user presets for effect settings across sessions (version 2.1.0 on)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Scrubbing (audio) (version 2.1.1 and later).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2.0	March 13, 2012	Adds a Device Toolbar to manage inputs and outputs, Timer Record and a Mixer Board view with per-track VU meters. Compared to the last 1.3.x release it is not a big improvement; the major version increment was chosen to signify a new stable version after many years of only beta releases.
1.3	November 28, 2005	Introduces clips and adds performance improvements for large projects. Version 1.3.2 and later supported Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Version 1.3.6 and later also supported additional formats such as WMA, AAC, AMR and AC3 via the optional FFmpeg library.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> All of the 1.3.x releases were considered "beta".
1.2	March 3, 2004	Adds many new effects and tools.
1.0	June 11, 2002	1.0 release. 1.1 was released on the same day.
0.8	May 28, 2000	Initial test version.

See also

• Comparison of free software for audio
• List of Linux audio software
• Multitrack recording

References

Notes

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Sources

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External links

• Template:Official website
• Audacity platform and operating system version compatibility