www.kvraudio.com/news/audacity-v3-0-0-released-for-windows-macos-and-linux-51282


Audacity v3.0.0 released for Windows, macOS and Linux

19th March 2021

Version 3.0.0 of Audacity, the free, open source, cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing, is now available.

New .aup3 Project Format

Audacity 3.0.0 is a major update. The format in which Audacity projects has changed. Previously projects were saved as a sometimes large number of small files, with an '.aup' file to coordinate the lot. This way of doing things is sometimes called 'pile of files' storage.

The problem, which happened all too often, was that data files and .aup file parted ways. Users quite reasonably expected the .aup file to contain the entire project. Well, the new .aup3 file does contain the data as well. The technical detail is that they are using an open source database, SQLite3, to store everything in one .aup3 file. That all happens 'behind the scenes'. SQLite3 is open source.

The Audacity team states:

This was a huge change, and we decided it was too risky to include many other changes we wanted to make at the same time – so 3.0.0 is almost entirely about this big format change.

Working with .aup3 projects editing audio should on most machines be a little faster than before, because there are fewer files being worked on. Finishing and closing a project at the end of working can be quite a lot slower, since there is more to do when a project is closed. We think the trade offs are worth it.

Label Sounds & Noise Gate

The 'Noise Gate' effect has been improved, a new analyser has been added, 'Label Sounds', that can label sounds and silences. They also made a few small tweaks elsewhere. You can now import and export macros, and there are a couple of new commands for using the last used tool or last used analyser that you can give shortcuts to.

Bugs fixed

Over 160 bugs that had been accumulating over the years have been fixed.

The Audacity team concludes:

This is quite a staggering amount of work. The majority of these bugs were minor problems, easily worked around. Some though were really juicy high priority bugs that would have mattered a lot to the people affected by them. We're really glad to have these bugs fixed now.

We hope you enjoy using Audacity 3.0.0 as much as we enjoyed putting it together.


KVR Audio, Inc.
www.kvraudio.com