Audacity Update: Free Audio Editor gets new Master Channel & Effects
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Audacity gets an update! Version 3.6 of the popular free audio recording and editing application introduces a new master channel, new mastering effects, an updated GUI, and more.
Overview: Audacity Updates
Audacity 3.6: Facelift and new Master Channel
[July 17, 2024] In addition to a long overdue GUI refresh, the free audio editor has received a new master channel. This allows you to put the final touches on your productions using mastering effects. Moreover, Audacity 3.6 comes with two new real-time effects: a compressor and a limiter. Find out more about the new features in the video below.
The update complements the release of Muse Hub version 2. With the growing selection of loops and plugins available via Muse Hub, the free audio editor is an even more powerful tool for songwriting, producing, and podcasting. We’re already curious about the new features the developers might add in an upcoming 4.0 update. The desktop app remains free and open-source.
Audacity x Intel OpenVINO: A new Level of Audio Editing
[February 6, 2024] Audacity – one of the most popular free audio editing apps – recently received a new plugin suite powered by Intel’s OpenVINO AI toolkit. This means that you can now use AI to separate stems, generate new music, transcribe voiceovers, and more – all from within Audacity and hosted locally on your PC.
Your favorite open-source audio editing software now features a suite of AI-powered plugins developed in collaboration with Intel. This opens up a world of possibilities previously unavailable in Audacity, including stem separation, transcription, and generating new music from a text prompt or an existing audio track.
The Music Generation and Music Style Remix tools both use the Stable Diffusion AI model and Riffusion in particular. This not only allows you to use text prompts to generate new music. With the Music Style Remix tool, you can also tell Audacity to come up with new music based on a pre-existing track. Simply select a portion of an audio file and tell the model in plain English what to do with it.
Audacity also now offers a Music Separation feature that allows you to split a track into parts like vocals, individual instruments, or any combination. Want to sample just the guitar part from your favorite record? With Audacity’s new AI-powered features, you can now do that – even without MPC Stems.
New AI-powered Features for Podcasts
In addition to this, Intel’s new AI tools also include a couple of useful features for podcasting, editing voiceovers, or other spoken-word applications. The new Noise Suppression plugin makes it easy to get rid of unwanted background noise. Moreover, there’s also a new Transcription feature powered by Whisper.cpp that can automatically transcribe and translate voiceovers and output them to a label track.
According to the developer, the new AI features run locally on your PC, so your audio isn’t uploaded to some server on the other side of the world. This is in line with the open-source ethics of the software, even though these plugins were developed by Intel. As Audacity’s Martin Keary puts it: “This is just the first step. We hope to continue partnering with Intel to develop all kinds of new AI tools in the future.”
The only drawback is that the new AI features are only available for Windows as of now. There’s hope that they’ll eventually also come to the Mac and Linux versions – we’ll keep you posted!
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5 responses to “Audacity Update: Free Audio Editor gets new Master Channel & Effects”
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Looks like this feature only available for Windows right now?
Is it still full of spyware like it has been from 3.0 and Muse Group purchased it?
From what I’ve seen, it’s not “full of” spyware. They added one feature (auto-update) that many people find convenient, which you can easily disable.
If there’s more, then let me know.
Can it finally use VSTs or AUs in real-time like a real DAW?
Without stopping to process the whole track….
Is it free or to be paid to avail it?