RSS feed
<< Metaluna Monster (mp3) | Home | Audacity and podcasting, or, the attack of the 50ft professional >>

Audacity's capacities (for audio editing)

In a music mailing list I'm on, a senior music and sound design lecturer and active musician has been discussing his evaluation of various open source tools for use in their university studio and labs. His report about Audacity was absolutely scathing. The key quote I think is "I would find this tool almost impossible to deploy into even a beginner's lab, as it lacks the simple features which allow people to grasp some of the basic principles of non-linear audio editing and production." It appears that open source audio software has a fair way to go before it truly competes with professional editors like Pro Tools or Nuendo. Maybe you do simply, get what you pay for.

Reproduced below with permission.

From: Julian Knowles <xxxxxxxxxxxxx@mac.com>
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 5:31:40 PM Australia/Sydney

After this morning's email reading, I was genuinely enthused to do the rounds of the open source community in a renewed search for an audio editor/production environment which could at least be a viable substitute at the low end for teaching purposes. I seriously want to find one.

I downloaded 'Audacity', because open source geek friends keep telling me that it's 'great'.. It is platform agnostic, open-source, free, and supports VST plugins.... Sounds good so far.. I then spent the last 2 hours mucking around with it.

Man... what a disappointment. It has about the same level of functionality as SoundEdit 16 on a Mac from the early to mid nineties, albeit with proper undo. Here are some of its limitations

1) No real-time FX.... only file based processing with a 2-3 second preview. GUIs for VST plugins also not working at present, resulting in very non-intuitive parameter lists and generic faders.

2) No 'region' capturing, or clip based editing... you have to chop into the waveform and do copy/pastes to make a simple loop.. no way of slipping clips around in a track - you can only slip the whole track in time.... very SoundEdit 16, very primitive, unusable.

3) Every time you import a new audio file, Audacity creates a new track. This is annoying. There is no 'audio clips bin' like most basic editors and no dragging and dropping of clips into the timeline from a 'library', which is a fairly basic requirement for any sort of editing.

4) You can cut and paste selected audio from one track to another, but when you paste, Audacity automatically butts the copied audio up against the previous and you are not able to paste at a point beyond the end of the previous audio, nor slip the pasted audio in the timeline after you have pasted it. The only way of creating a gap between the previous audio and the audio you wish to paste is to 'generate silence' from a menu before pasting. Once you have done this, you still can't easily vary the silence gap or slip the position of the pasted audio. To shorten the gap (bring the pasted clip earlier in the session) you have to select some silence and 'delete' it.... then the pasted clip slips back closer to the previous.... You can't do proper editing this way and you will end up tearing your hair out fairly swiftly!!

5) There is no such thing as a cross-fade edit in a track. This makes cutting and pasting audio between tracks unworkable. To achieve cross-fades (even small ones) you need to use two tracks and write volume automation on the outgoing and incoming audio. I cannot see how you are able to do any real editing in this kind of environment. Even simple 2 track editing becomes difficult.

6) No video clip import/sync

7) No midi file editing or playback, or support for VST instruments

8) A frustratingly clunky volume automation editor, where you can't nail the break points properly without zooming in to micro level.

9) No decent navigation keyboard shortcuts, like for example jumping to the beginning or end of a selection when zoomed in, or parking the cursor at the end of a clip etc... or selecting from a point to the beginning or end of a clip. The basic editing necessities aren't there - you need basic keyboard shortcuts for navigation and selection... if you are expected to shift click, drag and zoom everything, you will go completely crazy in a short space of time.

I then went to the Audacity Wiki server to look at some of the discussion... There is a development wishlist, which seems to be arse about with some of the basic issues above not even appearing... There are also occasional examples of excessive hubris such as this Audacity developers statement about Pro Tools in the comparisons page - "[pro tools is] Cumbersome at times, but the basic functions of Audacity closely emulate those of Pro Tools",

I don't think so pal.... (please see list of limitations above!!!!) and i really want to believe you!

There are a couple of good things, such as support for 96khz/32bit, capacity to have files of different sample rates in a session, mp3 and ogg vorbis export, 'batch like' processing for exports and an undo history list - but that's about it.

Some may say... well what can you expect for a free, open-source tool? Well, fair enough, the price is right and the politics are too, but the truth of the matter is that I would find this tool almost impossible to deploy into even a beginner's lab, as it lacks the simple features which allow people to grasp some of the basic principles of non-linear audio editing and production. Herein lies the frustration of the exercise, I think. It is difficult to generate enthusiasm for open-source tools if the experience is a really frustrating one. As for me, I would rather use the lite version of Bias Peak over this for simple 2 track editing tasks, and i really hate Peak. I might use it for some ogg vorbis or mp3 exports.. but that would be it.

the search continues...... meanwhile the software corporations bring home the bacon.

Responses[5] RSS feed for responses to this blog entry
Posted by scotartt on 4 January 2005 10:26:01 #


Reply

Re: Audacity's capacities (for audio editing)

Comment from Matt Brubeck on 5 January 2005 7:27:40 #
<p>Hi, I'm one of the Audacity developers. A lot of the criticism was quite accurate and useful. I have some comments on a few of the points. (Feel free to pass this on to Mr. Knowles.)</p> <p>1) We would like to add VST GUI support, but there are both technical and legal obstacles we will have to overcome. We have more hope for the open-source LADSPA plugin standard.</p> <p>2,4) Audacity 1.3 fixes both of these limitations. (This version is currently in development; a public beta should be ready in a couple of months.)</p> <p>9) The "Keyboard" section of the preferences allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts for many common navigation and selection tasks, including some of the ones listed above. You can use the home/end/pgup/pgdn and arrow keys to navigate, and use the "shift" and "control" modifiers with various keys to change the selection. Recent development versions have even better keyboard support. (We're working with several blind users to improve the program's keyboard shortcuts.)</p> <p>Regarding the Audacity wiki, the comments there are NOT written by the Audacity developers. They are written by users of the program. Feel free to correct any page you feel is wrong or incomplete.</p> <p>We are actively working on many of the areas discussed Mr. Knowles. At the moment, most of the developers are busy with other things, so progress is slow but steady. Still, you can see how far we've come recently by looking at the <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/stablenotes.php">changes since version 1.0</a>. We're always happy to help if people want to contribute code or other resources to development.</p> <p>Some of the features (like MIDI editing) are not on our roadmap right now. At its heart, Audacity is designed for sound file editing and simple multi-tracking. Mr. Knowles seems to need a more powerful solution, and I would suggest that <a href="http://ardour.org">Ardour</a> is targeted more towards his type of use.</p>
Reply

Re: Audacity's capacities (for audio editing)

Comment from Scot Mcphee on 5 January 2005 7:51:48 #
Matt, Thanks for your comments. I will definitely pass them onto Julian. His lab, I should add, uses Pro-Tools certainly as it's main tool in the studio. I went to a different university, in the mid-1990s, there we also had a Pro-Tool set up, but in those days there were hardly any alternatives to it. So I guess this is where he is coming from. He did say that periodically he goes on a quest to see if there are any alternatives, because Pro-Tools locks you into a very closed Universe. I acutally suggested to him something like Nuendo or Cubase, because although while still commercial, closed-source, and expensive, in smaller labs you can at least run it on less-cost hardware. Every low-end soundcard comes with an ASIO driver as well. Anyway as I said I will definitely pass your comments on. thanks for the response.
Reply

Re: Audacity's capacities (for audio editing)

Comment from Julian Knowles on 5 January 2005 10:56:24 #
I thought I should respond to Matt's comments. Firstly, it is really encouraging to see such a quick response to the criticisms. This is better than you would get from a commercial developer! <br><p> Re: Editing and selection via keyboard. <p> I should clarify that I tested audacity under OS X on a G4 powerbook. This means there are no home or end keys. After going into the prefs and resetting some of the shortcuts to powerbook friendly locations, I was able to use a shortcut to extend to the beginning or end of a track using cmd+1 and cmd+2. I wanted to use the Pro Tools shortcut of opt+shift and opt+shift+tab, but for some reason I was not able to enter these as a valid shortcut (something to look at maybe). This made for an improvement in editing functionality, but it should be noted that this kind of shortcut is mainly used on regions or clips in other editing environments. For example, if I wanted to carve up an audio file into a number of consecutive regions, I could make my first region, then drop the cursor at the end of the second, select back to the end of the first, define region 2 and so on... Being able to select to the beginnning or end of the whole track is ok..., but you would use that less than selecting to and from region/clip boundaries. <p> I really think the capacity to quickly and easily define and work with user defined regions/clips is at the heart of basic audio editing. <p> I applaud that you are working with visually impaired people on making it work better in that context. After having taught several students with this disability, I know how valuable this functionality is and how poorly some of the major tools meet these needs.<p> Re: The Wiki.<br><p> Thanks for the clarification re the authorship of the Audacity comparison page. Your correction is noted and I have provided another perspective on the Wiki, as you suggest. <br><p> Summary/Further Context <p> This trial of Audacity arose out of list discussion where a colleague expressed a desire to move their facilities to open-source tools. I share their enrhusiasm for the principle, but when one reality checks the situation as regards open source tools, it is not really possible at this point. <p> In that list discussion I made the point that whilst there are some excellent open source plug-ins/processors and live performance tools, the area really lacking is a multitrack sequencer/editor which is able to meet basic professional needs, or a low end editor on which one is able to teach the basic principles up to say a 'lite' version of the major sequencers/editors. <p> For me there are some bottom lines here in a teaching context. At this point Audacity meets some of these, but misses on others. <p> 1) The capacity to define 'regions' or 'clips' from raw audio and be able to assemble a pool of these for easy drag and drop editing <p> 2) The capacity to keep clips/regions as such in the timeline and be able to slip them around the timeline in a reasonably flexible fashion<p> 3) Basic, but workable breakpoint automation for volume and pans<p> 4) Real time FX processing (with gui support).<p> 5) Decent keyboard navigation/shorcuts for editing tasks.<p> These are not arbitrary wants. Far from it. We are far enough down the line in commercial software for some core concepts to be implemented in most software editors (see list above). <p> If I were to make an open-source editor/sequencer the standard 'low end' software environment for students to learn, then I need to make sure that they are learning translatable concepts to high end environments. This means that the low end software has to behave in a similar manner and have similar basic features to professional software<p> Students are also quite rapid learners of software, so you need enough there to last them a year or two. I find the lite versions of the professional tools will get students through the first two years of work and meet most of their needs, and are able to meet their increasing skill level without holding them back.<p> At this point in its development (and I am aware that even my simple list of bottom lines is a major programming effort), Audacity can't fit that particular bill, which is not to say that via the good will and hard work of many (such as Matt), it may in the future.<p> As I said in my original post, I am continuing the search and friends/colleagues have pointed me to various open-source tools to look at - Ardour (as you suggested) has also come up there (along with things like Rosegarden). <p> I don't want my comments/criticisms to sound ungenerous, as the open-source effort is all about people volunteering skills and huge amounts of their time in service of the community. I would have nothing to even try if it were not for the efforts of the Audacity developers. I am expressing a desire to find an open-source, cross platform tool which can meet this list of needs (as I would switch to it immediately for low end teaching) and my comments should be read in that context (which was the context of the original list discussion). <p>
Reply

Re: Audacity's capacities (for audio editing)

Comment from Matt Brubeck on 5 January 2005 11:23:04 #
<p>Thank you for the response, Julian! (And thanks to scotartt for hosting this discussion.)</p> <p>All five items on your list are things that we would like to implement in the near future. (Items 2 and 5 are already mostly implemented in the current development version; the others have been discussed but no one is working on them yet.)</p> <p>As you've said, we have a long way to go before Audacity is usable for the some of the complex editing tasks that Pro-Tools and other editors can handle. We may reach that level eventually, but our goal is not to become just like the full-featured "professional" editors. Most of our users right now are home users making simple recordings, or digitizing old records and tapes. We want to keep Audacity easy to use for those people. For users who expect to use the full range of high-end features, other programs will probably still be a better choice.</p>
Reply

Re: Audacity's capacities (for audio editing)

Comment from Scot Mcphee on 5 January 2005 16:42:11 #
Thanks Matt. It's really cool to find an FOSS developer nowadays who is not totally precious about their code. I think this is an important conversation about software though, for reasons I'll stick in another blog entry tonight.

Add a comment Send a TrackBack