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 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 August we were at 17% live bugs with just under 400 live bugs. See this table 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 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 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
- 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
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 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 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:
- P1 2112 - Crash when opening Equalization settings in a Macro
- P1 2119 - Linux: Incorrect behaviors in "Manage Macro"
- P1 2127 - Track deletion while in Record/Pause state crashes Audacity
- P1 2133 - Silence Audio deletes MIDI notes
- P1 2141 - Tabbing between labels now only works if the label track is selected
- P1 2176 - Crash when attempting to time shift multiple tracks
- P1 2200 - Uncompressed exports in formats that have no (realistic) size restriction fail the 4GB trap for WAV & AIFF - regression on 2.3.1
- P2 344 - FFmpeg: M4A Quality slider has no control of bitrate setting or AAC quality
- P2 1503 - Mac: Modal dialogs cause 100% Audacity CPU when open with any AU or graphical VST/LV2 effect
- P2 1843 - Tracks menu error messages do not have "?" help buttons to link to the Manual
- P3 387 - Mac/Linux: Text export for Contrast and Plot Spectrum does not supply extension if omitted
- P3 1180 - Custom FFmpeg Export: an empty presets list can be Exported
- P3 1281 - Windows: Plug-in manager does not properly disable SC4
- P3 1477 - Mac: Sticky Tooltips
- P3 1567 - Windows: DirectSound Sound Activated Recording does not record correctly or pauses permanently after 12 seconds
- P3 1578 - TXT and XML exports are not to Documents and may require elevation to save
- P3 1723 - Keyboard Preferences: Closing subtrees can leave highlight on wrong item.
- P3 1904 - Audio offset not honored in Export/Export Multiple/Export Selection
- P3 2099 - 24-bit WAV (and AIFF) export is wrongly limited to 3GB
- P3 2113 - Label editor: After it closes, no control is the focus
- P3 2118 - "Q" shortcut for "Toggle Spectral Selection is not in the Standard set
- P3 2122 - Screenshot tool: no way to exit using the keyboard
- P3 2120 - Spectral Selection Toolbar can be truncated when undocked
- P4 240 - Time track selected by itself cannot be removed with Tracks>Remove Tracks
- P4 440 - Metadata Editor: Tags without values can't be added
- P4 496 - Modifier keys ignored when focus is on time box in the Selection Toolbar
- P4 826 - Mis-handling of envelopes when split-deleting, or when cutting with cut lines enabled
- P4 1058 - Windows: Strange cursor changes Works for me on 2.3.2
- P4 1235 - Linux: Mixer Board meters do not update when Meter Preferences are updated
- P4 1269 - "backslash percent" not saved in effect presets
- P4 1411 - Multiple non-modal "Help from the Internet" windows
- P4 1582 - Incorrect level shown in Mixer Board meter when track has positive gain
- P4 1738 - Numeric control units are not translated
- P4 1742 - Built-in Macro name "MP3 Conversion" does not translate
- P4 2043 - Access keys not shown (Japanese)
- P4 2049 - ENH: Noise Reduction error message for no selection is unhelpful
- P4 2136 - GetInfo: localization creates invalid JSON
- P4 2137 - Nyquist: Assert when receiving multibyte characters
- P4 2138 - Crossfade Tracks effect may desynchronize tracks
- P4 2148 - AUD-GET-INFO command fails if data contains backslash
- P4 2154 - selected audio: timeline and track show different selected time range
- P4 2160 - Shipped macros are not protected against edits. Edits can be made, but there is a Restore button
- P4 1780 - Sample Rate dialog does not appear when track has custom sample rate
- P5 680 - "Undo Recover" does not undo.
- P5 1200 - Unwanted duplicate .mo files on Mac.
Links
> Audacity Release Notes 2.3.3 - detailed release notes for this release of Audacity
