this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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Good video, very much worth watching despite the length. New UI will look something like this:

with an option for a more classic look.

Looks like an enourmous UX improvement too, and a rewrite to QT and eliminating a lot of technical debt will make development faster.

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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 5 points 3 hours ago

He made a comment in the video that people have been running versions of audacity that have not been updated in 10 years. I went and had a look at the version I had installed. Yep.

I actually assumed it did have an auto update feature and they're just wasn't any updates.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

I've long been hoping for a FOSS alternative to Garage Band. I think LMMS is the closest but it lacks live music recording, its UI is miserable, and the last release was 2020. It would be great if someone could merge Audacity and LMMS.

This is pretty high on my list of coding projects that I would support if I didn't need to spend most of my time serving capital.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 hours ago

i literally just found out i want something like this too.

[–] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I wonder what happened to it's forks, Tenacity & Audacium

[–] buttnugget@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

I remember that there was an issue with mainline audicity, like they put malware in it or something? And that’s why it was forked?

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 28 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

It's looking freaking gorgeous. Tentacrul is the bomb. His work on MuseScore is arguably the best UX/UI in the FOSS world. It even beats most if not all of the proprietary alternatives in the same category.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

I wish he would bring his skills to freecad 😂😂 it is needed!

[–] j5906@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago

I actually like FreeCAD and its UI a lot and the recent improvements are huge! Yes it has its quirks but for a tool as versatile as FreeCAD they are acceptable.

[–] stellargmite@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

He also did a great tribute video to Tim Smith / Cardiacs. Was already in my good books, went beyond with that one.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I’ve actually switched to Ocenaudio for what little I do and have been happy.

[–] nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago

It's not open source, sadly...

[–] Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (3 children)

Now when will Gimp get the same treatment... I know some people like it but I just can't. I'd rather use Affinity Photo via ~~proton~~ a custom wine version (ElementalWarriorWine)

[–] P13@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, didn’t know it worked with Proton!

I have an Affinity license that’s just been collecting dust while I use the Photopea web app.

[–] Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

It does! Works pretty well even. I followed this guide: https://github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux

[–] TruePe4rl@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I usually go with Krita. Not because of the UI, i just learnt to use it first and like it. Or Inkscape for vector graphics.

[–] unexpected@forum.guncadindex.com 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Agreed. Krita is a better program for print design. The fact that it has a full range of color models built in is powerful stuff. Not just CMYK, but LAB and many others. But GIMP has its advantages for some tasks if you never leave the realm of RGB.

[–] Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 day ago

Krita I tried for while, but I've been spoiled by Affinity Photo's selection tool. Can't use path tool or magic wand anymore

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Gimp is a misbegotten, irredeemable piece of UI trash. The fact that it's been around this long and gets egregiously worse with each iteration is baffling to me.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I mean, it in a very literal way the parent project of GTK, and therefore indirectly responsible for GNOME, so that kind of checks out. I use it quite often though, and you can learn it to do what you wanna do.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Hey I don't want to come off the wrong way, couple decades ago gimp was very useful to me, when I was trapped in a company that wouldn't pay a penny for any kind of software, and on the FOSS side of things choices for imaging applications were sparse at best. Gimp was a lifesaver at times.

But it always been an interface disaster. I spent decades doing UI/X alongside other development, and gimp has always been a piece of shit designed by a programmer with the toxic "what it works" mentally.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That logo is fucking terrible. Cult minimalism produced a red sperm and a disconnected semicircle. It reads as nothing.

The 'classic look' in dark mode still puts 90% of the interface in light mode.

No other complaints.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In the video, Tantacrul shows how it matches with the aesthetic of the rest of Muse's icons...but it kind of doesn't.

He (correctly) insisted on keeping the headphone iconography, but the rest of Muse's icons are letters. UltimateGuitar's imp ears plus arrow makes a G one, then the others are abstract geometric T for Tonebridge, a weird S for MuseScore, a really bad circle/diagonal line for an A for audio.com and two verticle lines and a circle for an H for MuseHub, whatever the hell that is. And then Audacity's headphones. Going for stylistic resemblance...for the logos of websites, phone apps and desktop apps that probably won't be seen together. Plus in a lot of places MuseScore's Mu with fermata mark is still in use.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Honestly, the comparison with the rest of those icons was the only part I respected. It's a suite of cult minimalist bullshit. Which still doesn't explain how nobody went, "that's a sperm."

Or at least, "why isn't it blue or yellow?"

Doesn't look like a sperm to me, it looks like broken headphones.

The magenta is also...it's like, if the Firefox logo was suddenly green. That's not Audacity's color.

[–] morto@piefed.social 129 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Full UI overhaul?! I can't believe they had the audacity to do this!

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[–] NickwithaC@lemmy.world 83 points 2 days ago

I'm so glad Audacity is getting some much needed love!

[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

Holy shit yes. Also while we’re at it please guys add an option to put the timeline in just seconds instead of minutes:seconds

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 33 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Tenacity has replaced this years ago. Fuck around, find out!

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 40 points 1 day ago (3 children)

they backtracked on the privacy policy and said they had really overzealous lawyers that they somehow mistrusted lawyers doing so "out of an abundance of caution" so i'm still giving them one final chance here since that issue was resolved rather quickly (within two weeks, which is why i'm not absolving them and giving them a chance, but it's been uneventful since 2021 so i think that strike's gonna expire in a year)

and i don't think the telemetry was every an issue since it was always going to be opt-in

tenacity does not have the rally useful beats and measures feature for some reason

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

if the concern is just about telemetry, I seriously wonder why Tenacity isn’t just a soft fork of Audacity, like VSCodium is to VS code, or Librewolf to Firefox.

that way you get the best of both worlds, the amazing new features in Audacity, without the worry of corporate control

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Because then you're just describing Audacity. The concerning feature has to be intentionally activated by the user. And if you download and build it yourself then that part of the code isn't even accessible. You have to modify the code to activate it before you build it. I'm actually glad with the way they handled it. They listen to the user base and if you follow tantacrul he regularly consults changes with the users.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 4 points 1 day ago

telemetry and a reverted privacy policy change that lost some goodwill, but i agree

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[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

And what exactly does Tenacity bring to the table other than a name replace across the code-base?

The non-destructive editing and realtime effects alone are a huge jump in capability between the current and old versions of Audacity, and that's before we even discuss UI improvements

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

From what I could tell when I looked into it after a comment someone left on !nebula@lemmy.world, some people were very upset at the privacy implications of Audacity adding an update detection mechanism (which can be turned off, and which is not included at all in the default build if you build it yourself).

[–] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Are people are actually upset about an auto update feature? A feature that has been pretty standard in programs for a very long time?

I understood some of the upset when they added telemetry, but auto-update?

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 25 points 1 day ago

Not even auto-update. Just auto detect updates. Then you go and download it yourself manually.

Auto-update-detection meant that the software was calling out to a remote server, so they updated the TOS to reflect that, and people got upset.

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[–] markz@suppo.fi 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Watched last weekend. Not a huge fan of the rebrand, but the changes that actually count look great.

[–] clb92@feddit.dk 32 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Yeah, the branding is definitely 'meh' at best, but even worse, in my opinion, is the tight integration with the whole Muse ecosystem and MuseHub thing (and the default download on the website being the MuseHub-based installer too) and built-in cloud storage crap. It just feels wrong to have an open source application integrated so tightly into all their proprietary services all the way through. Just installed the latest version 3.7.5, and I was surprised at how much nagging there was, on both the website and in the application itself.

But other than the whole Muse stuff, Audacity 4.0 looks really awesome in terms of UI and UX. And at least there is a non-MuseHub installer and you can choose not to use their other stuff, and say no to the telemetry...

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Frankly, since it's still open source, I'm ok with it since it also means developpement is much faster, and you can avoid it. At least for me when I installed it on linux through the app store, I didn't notice any of your complaints.

As someone with no attachement to the previous branding I quite like the new branding though, fits the new vibe of the app quite well.

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