New features in this release

This page is an overview of the key new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 2.2.0

• Details of all the major changes since 2.1.3 can be found in Release Notes 2.2.0.

Contents

1. New Logo
2. Themes
3. Menu reorganization
4. The Extended Menu Bar
5. Default Append Record
6. Help buttons
7. Standard and Full shortcut sets
8. Selection Toolbar improvements
9. Stem Plots
10. New commands for using clips via the keyboard
11. Possible MIDI Playback
12. Exception safety
13. Additional new features

New Logo

The logo has been given a refresh, and now uses a sans-serif font and a flatter style.

New logo

Old logo

Themes

Peter 23Jun17: James, in the images, I think it may have been better if you had selected all the time between "Track 1" and "Track 2" (i.e. effectively selecting "Track 1") maybe with the "Track-1" label not so far over to the left (we do want to see what non-selected looks like here too).

Audacity now comes supplied with four pre-configured, user-selectable, themes. This enables you to choose the look and feel you prefer for Audacity's interface. see the Themes page for details.

• Light theme: this is a light theme loosely based on the look and feel of earlier Audacity versions, but given a modern twist with more modern-looking buttons and icons.
• Dark theme: created by the Dark Audacity project. This is similar to the Light theme, with the same buttons and icons, but given a dark twist.
• Classic theme: The one you know and loved. This theme is a re-creation of the look and feel of earlier Audacity versions.
• High Contrast theme: some users with poor eyesight benefit from a high contrast that is 'eye-popping' for most people.

	Light theme		Dark theme

	Classic theme		High Contrast theme

The theme to use can be chosen at Edit > Preferences > Interface.

• In addition to the four pre-configured themes there is also a Custom theme.

By default the custom theme looks the same as Classic theme - but, if you have the right programming skills and tools, you can use this template to create your own theme. Instructions for how to do this may be found in the Audacity Wiki.

Should those how-to instructions be in the manual?

• James 22May17: I think yes. Otherwise how many are going to find out how to do it?

Menu reorganization

We have made the Menus shorter and clearer than in previous Audacity versions. The menus have been simplified without losing functionality. The most commonly used functions are found in the top levels of the menus. The functions moved down into lower submenus are better organized.

This is not just a rearrangement. We also added new menu items to make the layout more logical. There are new menu items for exporting as MP3 or WAV. Previously you had to export audio, and then choose the format. You still can do that, but these new items are there for convenience.

One of the long standing bug-bears with Audacity is the distinction between ‘Save’ and ‘Export’. People expect to be able to open a WAV audio file, edit it in Audacity and then click save. That is not how Audacity works. Audacity needs audio in its own unique format to work on it. So Audacity converts when you 'Open' a WAV file and converts back when you 'Save'. In an attempt to make this clearer Audacity uses the word 'Import' for opening a file like WAV and 'Export' for converting and saving in a format like WAV. Open and Save are reserved for Audacity's own project format.

Now the ‘Export’ options are under the ‘Save Other’ menu item, where people trying to save audio as an MP3 or WAV file are more likely to find them.

See below for an example of new and old for the Edit menu:

Edit menus

Peter 01Jul17:ToDo-1If we continue with this example then the new image needs updating for recent Edit menu changes. Or consider a different example from the Talk page.

New Edit menu		Old Edit menu

The Extended Menu bar

There are two new additional menus that are hidden by default. They can be turned on at View > Extra Menus (on/off) or the Interface pane of Edit > Preferences.

These extra menus have many extra less frequently used commands. They are particularly useful to VI users, but normally-sighted users may find them useful too.

Image of the Extended Menu bar as it appears on Windows

Click, or hover, on either of the Ext- items at the end of the image to read about those menu entries.

Menu	What you'll find there
Ext-Bar	The Ext-Bar menu provides access to Toolbar operations that are not available in the default Audacity menus. These will be of most interest to visually impaired users or those who have difficulty using the mouse. Shortcuts can be assigned to these commands if required.
Ext-Command	The Ext-Command menu provides access to extra commands for track focus and movement of the editing or playback cursor that are not available in the default Audacity menus. These will be of most interest to visually impaired users or those who have difficulty using the mouse. Shortcuts can be assigned to these commands if required.

If you only require regular access to a small set of these commands you can set shortcuts for them and leave the extra menus hidden.

Appended recording on the same track in now the default

From Audacity 2.2.0 onward the default recording mode has changed so that when you click the Record button on Transport Toolbar, or use the R, Audacity will record at the end of the currently selected (or only) track.

To record on a new track

If you hold the Shift button down the Record button in Transport Toolbar will temporarily change to . Then clicking on this modified Record button, or using the shortcut Shift + R will cause Audacity to create a new track and begin recording on that track from the current cursor position (or from the left edge of a region on the Timeline).

Help buttons

Many place in the user interface have had a help button added. Examples are all the Preferences dialog pages, all the Effects, Generators and Analyzers.

Clicking on that button in the dialog will link you to the appropriate page in the Manual.

Example: the Amplify effect. Try clicking on the "?" at the bottom right of this image.

Standard and Full shortcut sets

For Audacity 2.2.0 we have reduced the number of preset shortcuts in the application to a "Standard" set. We did this to simplify the set of shortcuts somewhat and to provide greater flexibility for users who want to set their own custom shortcuts.

You can choose to revert to the full set of shortcuts that were in 2.1.3 and earlier by selecting "Full" from the dropdown menu accessed from the Defaults button in the Keyboard Preferences dialog.

You can use the Defaults button to switch between the two provided default sets of shortcuts at any time.

See Commands and Keyboard Shortcut Reference for more details.

Selection Toolbar improvements

There are now four available settings in the Selection and Audio Position Boxes in Selection Toolbar for the manner in which the details of your selection are displayed:

• Start and End of selection: the start time and the end time of your selection (default setting)
• Start and Length of selection: the start time and the length of your selection
• Length and End of selection: the length and the end time of your selection
• Length and Center of selection: the length and the time at the center of your selection

Stem Plots

There is a new entry in the Tracks Preferences for Display samples. This setting changes how Waveform and Waveform dB views are displayed. It only affects the appearance of the waveform when you are so far zoomed in that you can see the individual sample dots. At lower zoom levels it makes no difference.

• Stem plot: This is the default setting which draws a vertical line from the track center line to the sample dot, giving a clearer impression of the relative amplitude of the samples. As seen in the images below, when zoomed out close to the minimum for a stem plot, the horizontal distance between sample dots may be more uneven than seen with the connect dots default.
• Connect dots: This is alternative setting yields a waveform where each sample dot is connected to the next sample by a line drawn between them.

Uneven spacing is due to "aliasing", but zooming in further will equalize the spacing whether choosing Connect dots or Stem plot.

New commands for using clips via the keyboard

David states "The first two commands are on the cursor to sub menu, on the Transport menu. The next four commands are on the select sub menu, on the Edit menu. (These six are obviously subject to being moved almost anywhere in the reorganization :) ). The last two commands are occult."

Eight new commands, all of which interact with the clips on the focused track. As yet, there are no default shortcuts:

1. Transport > Cursor to > Previous clip boundary
2. Transport Cursor to > Next clip boundary
3. Select > Clip Boundaries > Previous clip boundary to cursor
4. Select > Clip Boundaries > Cursor to next clip boundary
5. Select > Clip Boundaries > Previous clip
6. Select > Clip Boundaries > Next clip
7. Clip Left (not on a menu)
8. Clip Right (not on a menu)

These are some notes on the functionality of the clip left and clip right commands. The aim is that they have similar functionality to using the mouse with the shift tool. So Clip left/right is roughly equivalent to clicking in the focused track at the time given by selection start, and dragging one pixel to the left/right. To be more precise:

1. If the focused track does not contain selected audio, then if selection start lies with a clip, that clip is moved, and selection start/the selection is also moved. (Using a mouse, selection start/the selection isn't moved.)

2. If the focused track contains selected audio, then if selection start lies within a clip, then that clip, along with all the other clips in any track which include audio which is selected, are moved, and the selected time range is moved.

3. If Sync lock tracks is one, then the relevant additional clips are moved.

Commands for moving the cursor to next/previous clip boundary on ANY track are pending. So as now, if the last clip in track one ends at 5s and the last clip in track two ends at 4s, there is no way to navigate between the clip ending at 4s and that ending at 5s without moving track focus.

Possible MIDI Playback

Playback of MIDI files imported into Note Tracks is now available for Windows computers.

Peter 19Jul-17: ToDo-1 P1 placeholder in case this becomes available for Mac and Linux.

Running out of disk space

We have now provided an error trap for situations where you are running out of available disk space.

You will now see the error message: "Audacity failed to write to a file in <device>"

This is particularly useful when recording as previously in these cases Audacity used to silently, with no warning, re-use the space at the buginning of your project, corrupting your recording.

Additional new features

This page New features in this release - appendix gives an overview of further new functionality that has been introduced in this release of Audacity.

Links

> Audacity Release Notes 2.2.0 - detailed release notes for this release of Audacity