Calling Mac Devs: Audacity needs your help!

Thanks, gtcaz. I'm importing scores of LPs myself -- so far using Amadeus Pro to record and denoise has worked OK for me (I use iTunes to encode into ALAC, easier for me than for you since I'm doing it for me and you're doing it for someone else), but I'm always open to finding a better way to do things.

@Bob S.: I used WireTap Pro because it's great at saving directly to MP3 or AAC, no waiting for encoding. I was doing this for the sister of a friend, and didn't want to spend forever recording, encoding, and so on. (Especially on a PowerBook G4.) As soon as the album side was finished, I'd save to AAC or MP3 and be done. Fission could then quickly trim any leading or trailing garbage. This also saved on disk space when going through a lot of LPs (saving directly to a decent compressed format).

I started with Garage Band, but it was taking forever, and the older version wasn't working with Leopard, and the new version seemed a bit slow on the G4. WireTap pro was unobtrusive and did the job quite well.

With Amadeus Pro I didn't do any re-encoding. I just opened the MP3 or AAC file, set the track markers, and burned the CDs.

Again, part of the workflow was to make this time-efficient. I wanted to do a decent job, but not spend forever either.

So, that's why!

i use it because it's much faster than Garageband at basic audio jobs. my #1 Audacity task is taking a concert recording and breaking it up into MP3s, which goes very well in that program

I was the one who tipped Nik to the forum post, for selfish reasons: I use Audacity, like it a lot and want to see it continue on the Mac platform. Yes, it's a whole lotta ugly, but it works quite well.

Whether you like the UI or not, Audacity is good for what it is – a free audio capture/editor. It reminds me of SoundEdit from Macromedia (Aldus?). I use it for simple editing and it works very well for that. If I were any sort of developer I would pitch in for sure.

With that said, I hope that it continues to be developed. I've donated in the past. (Granted probably not much in the grand scheme of developing software.)

Audacity is awful. Maybe, just maybe, college students who just can't afford anything else might find it OK. But every minute of using it is like having flaming-hot needles jabbed in my eye while ravenous weasels rout around my gastrointestinal system.

Just curious, gtcaz... why wouldn't you use Amadeus Pro to record the audio, instead of Wiretap Pro? A one-app workflow sounds like it would be better.

OK. So I'm a developer making my first steps into Mac audio (I have a C++/OpenGL graphics background) and downloaded Audacity's code to see what I could learn....

Big Mistake...Here's why Audacty will never make on the Mac:

1) Mac users have very high expectations
With GarageBand being essentially free with every new Mac, Apple has raised the bar in term of what people will accept - even for free. GarageBand shares a lot of code and content (loops) with Logic 8, which has been in development for the past 15 years. Basically, rock solid MIDI and audio editing for free. It's not bad on the eye either.

2) WxWidget=Ugly, Cocoa=Beautiful
The plague of any cross-platform software is always the fact that you have to use cross-platform UI components. So far, the leading ones are Qt and WxWidget, both of which take their design cue from **Windows 95**. There is no way in hell this approach is going to compete with beautifully designed Cocoa objects. With CoreAnimation and Leopard, the gap is only going to get larger.

3) Cross-Platform Audio is very hard
I don't know about Linux, but programming audio on Windows is like playing Russian roulette. You cannot assume that users have a decent audio card capable of duplex playback (play/record at the same time). As a result, you have to write for the lowest common denominator. Don't even get me started on synchronizing with MIDI. I'm still trying to figure out this one.

4) The freakin' code is not commented!
Programmers are expected to write comment with their code. Comments are text notes that explain the purpose and working of the code. Without it, you waste tons of time trying to understand what is going on. Not fun.

Audacity is fighting an unfair battle against Apple. This is why I won't get involved with that one. I'm learning audio/midi programming with Pd, which now has a book coming with it.

- Nick From Montreal -

If only protools free were available for OS X

Pro Tools

Amadeus Pro is a great editor for Mac at a reasonable price. I love it's CD burning feature; I recently used it to master a bunch of CDs from vinyl I'd ripped with WireTap Pro. De-clicking is a little tedious (should be more automation), but setting the track markers and burning was great. Also, the app loaded quickly, even on my PowerBook G4.

For very basic but lossless MP3 and AAC editing (i.e. no re-encoding; edits are done directly on the compressed file), fission is a good choice.