New features in this release
- Details of all the major changes since 2.3.2 can be found in Audacity Release Notes 2.3.3.
Contents
- Nyquist Effects now translatable.
- Spectrogram and Wave of same audio shown in the same track.
- It can already be done by scriptables, for mono, but is a hacky approach.
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 almost no new or changed features in this release. However, we have fixed quite a few 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.
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 bu Audacity and it used always a constant bit rate (CBR) 196 kbps (stereo) file or 98 kbps (mono) file.
This was P2 Bug 344 - 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 whereby 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 was always treated as silence if you Play such an offset audio track from T=0
- 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
- A use case for turning this off is track-based multiple export where you have "songs" lined up one after the other on different tracks - and in this case you probably do not want the offsets exported as long silences at the start of "songs".
This was P3 Bug 1904 - Audio offset not honored in Export/Export Multiple/Export Selection
End-of-life retired functionality
For this maintenance release we have decided to withdraw some pieces of functionaality 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 Nyquist IDE. 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 wav audio files 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.
Equalization Effect now 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:
Details (and images?) TBP
Bug Fixes
We have fixed many bugs in the course of this maintenance release:
- P4 2138 - Crossfade Tracks effect may desynchronize tracks
- P4 826 - Mis-handling of envelopes when split-deleting, or when cutting with cut lines enabled
- there will be loads ...
Links
> Audacity Release Notes 2.3.3 - detailed release notes for this release of Audacity
