The stable version of the open source audio editor Audacity has been updated to v1.2.4; a beta version, 1.3, has also been released and contains hundreds of new features. You can install both Audacity v1.2 and v1.3 simultaneously.

Changes in Audacity v1.2.4:

• The File menu now includes a list of recent files.
• The "Generate Silence" effect now prompts for a length.
• Audacity is now built with Vorbis 1.1, which features better encoding quality and file compression.
• Dragging sound files into the Audacity window now works on Mac OS X and Linux, as well as Windows.
• Better support for certain audio devices on Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger".
• The "View History" window can now discard old undo levels to save disk space on Windows. (This previously worked only on Linux and Mac.)
• "Preferences" command is now in Edit menu.
• "Plot Spectrum" command is now in Analyze menu.
• Opening a project file saved by a later version of Audacity displays an intelligent error message. Also, trying to import a project file (instead of open it) displays an intelligent error message.
• Audacity now compiles in Visual C++ .NET 2003.
• Other minor bug fixes.
• New or updated translations: Arabic (ar), Czech (cs), Finnish (fi), Hungarian (hu), Japanese (ja), Norwegian (nb), Slovenian (sl), Simplified Chinese (zh_CN), Traditional Chinese (zh_TW).

The new features in Audacity v1.3 have been grouped into the following six major categories. Click on the links below for more information.

1. Collapse/Expand Tracks
2. Multiple clips per track
3. Selection Bar
4. Improved Label Tracks
5. QuickTime and Audio Units on Mac OS X
6. Other features