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 Audacity Version 3.6 screenshot showing the timeline, tracks, and basic controls | |
| Developer(s) | Muse Group The Audacity Team |
|---|---|
| Initial release | May 28, 2000; 24 years ago (2000-05-28) |
| Stable release | 3.7.3[1]  (13 March 2025) [±] |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C,C++ (using thewxWidgetstoolkit)[2][3] |
| Operating system | Windows,macOS,Linux, otherUnix-like systems[4][5] |
| Platform | IA-32,x86-64,PowerPC |
| Size | 16.2MB:Windows 27.2 MB:macOS 53.9 MB: macOS Universal 104 MB:Linux 25 MB: manual |
| Available in | 38 languages |
List of languages
| |
| Type | Digital audio editor |
| License | GPL v2 or later,CC-BY-3.0 (documentation)[6][7] |
| Website | www |
Audacity is afree and open-sourcedigital audio editor and recordingapplication software, available forWindows,macOS,Linux, and otherUnix-like operating systems.[4][5]
As of December 6, 2022, Audacity is the most popular download at FossHub,[8] with over 114.2 million downloads since March 2015. It was previously served byGoogle Code andSourceForge, where it was downloaded over 200 million times. It is now part ofMuse Group.
It is licensed underGPL-2.0 or later. Executables withVST3 support are licensed GPL-3-only to maintain license compatibility.[6][7]
The project was started in the fall of 1999 by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg atCarnegie Mellon University, initially under the nameCMU Visual Audio.[9] On May 28, 2000, Audacity was released as Audacity 0.8 to the public.[10][11]
Mazzoni eventually left CMU to pursue software development and in particular development of Audacity, with Dannenberg remaining at CMU and continuing development ofNyquist, a scripting language which Audacity uses for some effects.[9]
Over the years, additional volunteer contributors emerged, including James Crook who started the forkDarkAudacity to experiment with a new look and other UX changes.[12] Most of its changes were eventually incorporated into the mainline version and the fork ended.[13]
In April 2021, it was announced thatMuse Group (owners ofMuseScore andUltimate Guitar) would acquire the Audacity trademark and continue to develop the application, which remains free and open source.[14]
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.[15] It has been used to record and mix entire albums, such as byTune-Yards.[16] It is currently used in the Sound Creation unit of the UKOCR National Level 2ICT course.
Audacity can record multiple tracks at once, provided the sound card supports it. In addition to a normal mode,[17] recordings can be scheduled ("Timer Record"),[18] or used in aPunch in and roll fashion.[19]
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 volumeenvelopes[20] and playback rates, but since version 3, this has been extended to clip trimming[21] and effects.[22]
Audacity natively imports and exportsWAV,AIFF,MP3,OggVorbis, and allfile formats supported bylibsndfile library. Due to patent licensing concerns, the FFmpeg library necessary to import and export proprietary formats such asM4A (AAC) andWMA is not bundled with Audacity but has to be downloaded separately.[23]
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.[24]
Audacity supportsLADSPA,LV2,VST, VST3,Audio Units, Vamp and Nyquist plugins, which allows it to load most audio effect plugins.[25] It additionally features a console forNyquist, aLisp dialect, in which users can script their own plugins[26] and support for external python scripting.[27]
Audacity is somewhat customizable and supports arbitrary arrangements of its toolbars, custom themes and enabling and disabling of several features.[28]
In January 2024,Intel introduced some AI-powered capabilities for Audacity as part of itsOpenVINO plugin suite.[29][30]
Audacity has several features to allow forspectrum analysis using theFourier transform algorithm[31][32] andspectrograms. As with effects, additional analysis plugins can be added, such as ones that check audiobooks forACX compatibility.[33]
While Audacity has some features found indigital 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,[34] Audacity cannot run on mobile platforms.
Audacity can make precise adjustments to speed (tempo) while maintaining pitch, to synchronize audio with video or for precise running time.[35] It also has a large array of digital effects and plug-ins,[36] including: noise reduction based on sampling the noise to be minimized,[37] vocal reduction and isolation for creation of karaoke tracks and isolated vocal tracks,[38] pitch adjustment maintaining speed, and speed adjustment maintaining pitch.[39]Audacity also has support for multi-channel modes withsampling rates up to 96 kHz with 32 bits per sample.[40][41] It can also detect dropout errors made while recording with an overburdened CPU.[42]
In addition toEnglish, Audacity is available inAfrikaans,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 andWelsh.[43]
The documentation, the Audacity Manual, is available only in English.[44] The Audacity Forum offers technical support in English.
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 andPortAudio are OS abstraction layers, containing conditional code that chooses different implementations depending on the target platform.
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.[45]
Audacity won the SourceForge 2007 and 2009 Community Choice Award for Best Project for Multimedia.[46][47]
Jamie Lendino ofPC 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."[48]
CNET rated Audacity 5/5 stars, calling it "feature-rich and flexible".[49] Preston Gralla ofPC World said: "If you're interested in creating, editing, and mixing you'll want Audacity."[50] Jack Wallen ofTech Republic praised its features and ease-of-use.[51]
InThe Art of Unix Programming (2003),open-source software advocateEric 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."[52]
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".[53][54]
In May 2021, after the project was acquired byMuse Group,[55] there was a draft proposal to add opt-intelemetry to the code to record application usage. Some users responded negatively, with accusations of turning Audacity intospyware.[56] The company reversed course, falling back to error/crash reporting and optional update checking instead.[57] Another controversy in July 2021[58] resulted from a change to the privacy policy which said that although personal data was stored on servers in theEuropean Economic Area, the program would "occasionally [be] required to share your personal data with our main office inRussia and our external counsel in the USA".[59] 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".[58]
This table shows the major and minor releases of Audacity. Patches are omitted.
| Version | Date | Major changes and notes |
|---|---|---|
| 3.7 | October 30, 2024 | This version fixes bugs. |
| 3.6 | July 16, 2024 | This version adds master effects, new compressor and limiter, new themes, and increased performance. |
| 3.5 | April 22, 2024 | This version adds Cloud saving, automatic tempo detection and non-destructive pitch shifting. |
| 3.4 | November 2, 2023 | This version adds a musical view, time stretching and a new exporter. |
| 3.3 | April 24, 2023 | This version is mostly focused onrefactoring. A preview of abeats and measures feature is added. |
| 3.2 | September 22, 2022 | This version added real-time effects, VST3 support and a streamlined interface. A cloud audio sharing integration with audio.com is added.[60] |
| 3.1 | October 28, 2021 | This version introduced clip handles, smart clips and playback looping.[61] In April 2022, an official Audacity app was added to the Microsoft Store.[62] |
| 3.0 | March 17, 2021 | This version introduced a new project file format, .aup3, using anSQLite database to store each project in a single database file.[63] |
| 2.4 | May 15, 2020 | This version adds Loudness, Noise Gate and Spectral Delete effects and adds Side-by-side view of waveforms and spectrograms. |
| 2.3 | September 29, 2018 | This version 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).[27] |
| 2.2 | November 2, 2017 | This version ports changes from Dark Audacity to Audacity, adding themes.[28] Additionally,MIDI playback is added.[64] Four user-selectable colorways for waveform display in audio tracks (version 2.2.1 on).[65] |
| 2.1 | March 29, 2015 | This version adds Real-Time preview of some effects. Saving and loading user presets for effect settings across sessions (version 2.1.0 on)[66]Scrubbing (audio) (version 2.1.1 and later).[67] |
| 2.0 | March 13, 2012 | This version 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 | This version introduces clips and adds performance improvements for large projects. Version 1.3.2 and later supportedFree Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC).[68] Version 1.3.6 and later also supported additional formats such asWMA,AAC,AMR andAC3 via the optionalFFmpeg library.[69] All of the 1.3.x releases were considered "beta". |
| 1.2 | March 3, 2004 | This version 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. |
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