Powerful audio production meets audio-sharing — introducing Audacity 3.2 and audio.com.

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The Audacity team has been working hard to empower audio creators with the following highlights of this release: real time editing capabilities, VST3 plugin support and sharing. Let’s deep dive to discover what you’ll experience in Audacity 3.2.

Audacity with real time effects

We’ve taken a major step towards transforming Audacity into a digital audio workstation (DAW) with realtime effects that will allow users to apply and edit effects at any point in their project.

It is now possible to reduce the amount of echo on a vocal track, or increase the amount of distortion on a guitar track, without having to modify the underlying audio data. An immediate improvement on your ability to produce polished audio and music. No more using the ‘undo’ button to remove an effect you applied and want to modify, ever again.

‘Stackable’ real-time effects can be re-ordered (or stacked) at any time as well, making Audacity a very powerful production tool for complex projects. Take the example of a podcast recording; if a siren goes off in the background it can be completely removed. That said, Audacity is still very much accessible for anyone using as a beginner along with those at a more specialist level.

A tool with improved UX and UI

Think decluttered interface. A nip here, a tuck there. The interface has been stripped of unnecessary and duplicate functions in order to make it simpler and easy to use; as well as become more aligned with other digital audio workstations. The dropdown menus full of audio settings have been combined together and substituted into one ‘Audio Settings’ button. Under the body of work, users have the ability to come into Audacity to record music, record midi, and start adding many popular VST3 effects plugins. Take Izotope; a suite of mixing and mastering plug-ins that a creator would use when refining their audio file. They might choose to increase the separation of the instruments in the mix, or simply enhance the sound of certain instruments or voices by adding effects that emulate analogue recording technologies. Other plug-ins such as Krush, provides a sound palette of the dirtiest digital effects to a range of bit-crushing effects opening up cool and interesting rhythmic sounds.

Introducing audio.com. A new companion tool

Enter audio.com. The new stand alone audio sharing platform with storage, designed to empower all audio creators. Link your account with Audacity for seamless uploads using the new ‘Share Audio’ button and your original works are shared in a matter of seconds.

As a newbie or an Audacity die hard, there’s something for everyone with these new capabilities. Welcome to your one-stop solution for recording audio, adding a sparkle to your projects and sharing your work with your community. It doesn’t stop here either, watch this space for more major improvements currently in the works and coming to Audacity in the near future.

‍*Songwriting credit: Peter Cunnah, Jamie Petrie