Audacity Manual Contents

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# What's New in Audacity 1.2 ??
(History of Audacity)

New features in Audacity 1.2:

### User Interface

- New Mixer toolbar allows you to control the output volume, input volume, and input source directly from Audacity.
- Every track now has its own gain and pan controls.
- Uses improved project file format.
- Block files (stored in Audacity project directories) now use the standard AU format. Though some Audacity meta-information is in these files, they can now be read by many other popular audio programs as well.
- Import RAW has a simpler GUI but support for far more file formats. The autodetection algorithms are much more accurate than in 1.0.
- Using high quality resampling algorithms, with the option of better quality for mixing than for real-time playback
- Preliminary support for Time Tracks, for changing playback speed over time
- Vertical zooming of tracks.
- Improved look and placement of toolbars.
- New custom mouse cursors.
- Complete implementation of editable keyboard shortcuts.
- Find zero-crossings.
- Mouse wheel can be used to zoom in and out.
- Multi-Tool mode.
- Amplify using envelope.
- Labels can store selections (like Audacity 1.0.0).
- Open multiple files from the same dialog.

### Effects

- Repeat Last Effect command
- Support for LADSPA plug-ins on all platforms
- VST support now comes through an optional LADSPA plug-in called the VST Enabler.
- Most effects now have a Preview button
- Compressor (Dynamic Range Compressor)
- Change Pitch (without changing tempo)
- Change Tempo (without changing pitch)
- Change Speed (changing both pitch and tempo)
- Repeat (useful for creating loops)
- Normalize (adjust volume and DC bias)

### Audio I/O

- 1-second preview command (just hit the '1' key on your keyboard)
- Looped play (Shift-click on the Play button)

New features in Audacity 1.1.1:

### User Interface

- Tooltips appear in Statusbar.
- Vertical cursor follows play/record
- Pause button
- Drawing tool (with three different modes)
  Note:
  In v1.1.1 from Nov11th 2002, the smoothing tool (CTRL+click) crashes if used too close to the edge of a tracks audio. Stay away from the edges.
- Vertical Resizing of stereo tracks is more fun.
- Adjust selection by click-dragging selection boundary
- Toolbar button context-sensitive enabling/disabling
- Better zooming functionality (centers region)
- Multiple ways to display the cursor position and selection
- Snap-to selection mode
- Drag tracks up and down
- Align and group align functions
- Cursor save/restore
- Working history window

### Effects

- Effects broken down into three menus: Generate, Effect, and Analyze
- Generate menu lets you generate silence, noise, or a tone
- Nyquist support (supports plug-ins written in Nyquist, an interpreted functional language based on Lisp)

### Localization

- Improved localization support
- More languages available
- Language selection dialog on startup

### Mac OS X

- Support for more audio hardware
- Support for full-duplex (play while recording)
- Support for MP3 exporting using LameLib Carbon

### Unix

- Audacity now has a man page (it describes command-line options and how to set the search path)

### File Formats

- Uses libsndfile 1.0, which fixes some bugs and improves performance

### Searching for Files:

- On Windows and Mac OS, Audacity now looks for translations in the "Languages" folder and all plug-ins in the "Plug-ins" folder, relative to the program.
- On Unix, Audacity looks for translations in /share/locale and looks for everything else in /share/audacity and also in any paths in the AUDACITY_PATH environment variable

New features in Audacity 1.1.0:

### Core audio processing:

- Support for 24-bit and 32-bit sample formats
- Automatic real-time resampling (using linear interpolation)

### Effects:

- Support LADSPA plugins on Linux / Unix

### File formats:

- New XML-based Audacity project format
- Full Ogg Vorbis support now (importing and exporting)
- Export to any command-line programs on Unix
- Support for reading and writing many more types of uncompressed audio files, including ADPCM WAV files.

### Toolbars

- New toolbar drawing code; automatically adopts your operating system's colors
- New toolbar buttons (Skip to Start, Skip to End)
- New Edit toolbar
- Toolbar buttons disable when they're not available

### User Interface

- Fully customizable keyboard commands
- Autoscroll while playing or recording
- New Ruler, used in main view and in FFT Filter effect
- The waveform now displays the average value in a lighter color inside the peak values

### Localization

- Audacity can now be localized to different foreign languages.

New libraries in Audacity 1.1:

- libmad for fast MP3 importing
- libid3tag for editing MP3 file information
- libsndfile to read and write more audio file formats
- PortAudio for cross-platform audio playing and recording