I share the full list of changes in Audacity 1.3.13 and personal experience with several of them. Ron Eastwood shared a fun special effect in Audacity.

Download the latest Audacity now.

Make ghosts with Audacity

Ron Eastwood shares a creepy special effect he enjoys, and I demonstrate it in the podcast.

Hey Daniel,

I enjoyed the recent episode, as I do all of the episodes! Here’s something I like to show the Cub Scout tours of the radio station.  I record someone saying a short phrase.  Then I play it back.  They laugh.  I perform the reverse effect on it and play it back.  More laughs.  I add a long reverb to that sound and then reverse it again so it is forward.  When I play that, I got “ooooooohs”!!  It is the effect you often hear on modern movies associated with ghost voices.  Lots of fun and not too hard to pull off.

Thanks for all you do!

Ron Eastwood

What's new in Audacity 1.3.13

I talk through the complete list of changes and share several specific examples. The follow list is from Audacity 1.3.13's changelog, but the screenshots are my own.

Bug fixes for:
Interface:

  • Cutting or copying from a track at a given sample rate into a track at another rate resulted in speed-changed audio.
  • Generating inside a clip could modify the clip length or create spurious clips.
  • Recorded stereo tracks were only half the height of imported or generated stereo tracks. Imported stereo files had a “1” appended to the track name.
    Stereo Track Height (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.12

    Stereo Track Height (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.13

  • Edit > Region Save did not save the cursor position.
  • (Windows) Projects crashed when clicking rapidly inside the interface or when applying repeated effects towards the end of audio tracks. [I've had this happen!]
  • (Windows) Some Unicode characters could not be typed into labels,or caused a freeze using some input methods.
  • (OS X) Crash when quitting an empty project window, or when closing the main project window while a progress dialog was on screen. [I've had this happen!]
  • Numerous other interface fixes including Dependencies dialog, Keyboard Preferences and spurious lines drawn on waveform. [Shift-scrollwheel now works on OS X!]
Imports and Exports:

  • Support added for later versions of the optional FFmpeg library up to current FFmpeg HEAD. This should significantly improve FFmpeg support on Linux. FFmpeg downloads for Windows and Mac updated to v0.6. This fixes mono AAC files importing as stereo, though current 0.5 versions of FFmpeg will still work.
  • Both FFmpeg and LAME should now be properly detected even when other versions of those libraries exist on the system.
  • New warning (on by default) for importing uncompressed audio files. Better error messages when read-directly uncompressed files are missing.
    Import Warning (Audacity 1.3.13)
  • Imported ID3v2 metadata tags were removed when exporting without the Metadata Editor appearing (for example, when using an export command in Chains). Note: As a result of this fix, ID3v1 tags must now be written by exporting using (external program) and an installed LAME.
  • U-Law/A-Law files with WAV headers now use the standard 18 byte fmt chunk, so should now be recognised by most telephony applications.
  • Variable bit rate MP3s exported using “MP3 Files” were larger than necessary because using the bit reservoir was disabled.
  • (OS X) Files imported from iTunes could create invalid characters in the .aup project file, causing an error when re-opening the project. Note: An error “reference to invalid character number” will still occur if re-opening a project created in previous Betas that contains such characters. To fix the issue, open a back-up copy of the .aup file in a text editor, turn off word wrap, then in the line indicated in the error message, remove the string of characters that starts with &# and ends with a semi-colon (;).
Other bug fixes:

  • Nyquist effects: fixes for crashes, incorrect slider behaviour and better support for backslashes, double quotes and Unicode characters.
  • (Windows and OS X) Processing of VST effects was substantially slower than in previous versions of Audacity.
  • (OS X 10.5 PPC) A first-time installation of Audacity Beta would hang on launch if VST effects were detected.
  • (Linux) Recordings made with the pulse device crashed or stalled when using overdub and/or software playthrough.
  • (Linux) Play-at-Speed crashed at 0.08 speed or lower if Audacity was configured with libsamplerate.
Changes and improvements:
  • Control Toolbar renamed to Transport Toolbar.
  • Device Toolbar (on by default) now contains all input and output device choices, including host and recording channels. Input/output choices are no longer in Mixer Toolbar on Windows XP or some older operating systems. New Transport > Rescan Audio Devices menu item to refresh the device list. [Very helpful!]
    Device Toolbar (Audacity 1.3.12)

    1.3.12

    Device Toolbar (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.13

  • New “Sync-Lock Tracks” feature (turned on in the Tracks menu [Also found in the Edit Toolbar, pictured below]) to allow groups of audio and/or label tracks to retain synchronisation when the track length changes.
    Edit Toolbar (Audacity 1.3.12)

    1.3.12

    Edit Toolbar (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.13

    Sync-Lock Tracks (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.13

  • Equalization: New “Manage Curves” dialog for importing and exporting curves.
    Equalization (Audacity 1.3.12)

    1.3.12

    Equalization (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.13

    Save Equalization (Audacity 1.3.12)

    1.3.12

    Equalization Manage (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.13

     

  • Noise Removal: New “Sensitivity” slider to adjust the noise threshold, and new option to isolate noise.
    Noise Removal (Audacity 1.3.12)

    1.3.12

    Noise Removal (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.13

  • New “Extended Import” Preferences for specifying different importers to open specific file extensions.
  • Improved Automatic Crash Recovery with all project changes autosaved.
  • MIDI tracks can be vertically zoomed, time shifted and display bar lines. Note: the channel selection buttons are not available in 1.3.13.
  • (Windows and Linux) The window Close button and other system close or shutdown commands now quit on closing the last window. File > Close now always clears to a new, empty project.
  • (OS X) Simpler installer with top-level “Audacity” folder.
    Disk Image (Audacity 1.3.12)

    1.3.12

    Disk Image (Audacity 1.3.13)

    1.3.13

Please be aware of Known Issues at Release (also viewable in the included README.txt).

PodCamp Cincinnati on October 22, 2011

PodCamp is a social-media “unconference” and I would love to have you attend, or especially sponsor or volunteer for PodCamp Cincinnati on October 22 near Cincinnati. If you're interested in sponsoring, please email Daniel@PodCampCincinnati.com.

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Ask your questions or share your feedback

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Disclosure

This post may contain links to products or services with which I have an affiliate relationship and may receive compensation from your actions through such links. However, I don't let that corrupt my perspective and I don't recommend only affiliates.

About the Author
As an award-winning podcaster, Daniel J. Lewis gives you the guts and teaches you the tools to launch and improve your own podcasts for sharing your passions and finding success. Daniel creates resources for podcasters, such as the SEO for Podcasters and Zoom H6 for Podcasters courses, the Social Subscribe & Follow Icons plugin for WordPress, the My Podcast Reviews global-review aggregator, and the Podcasters' Society membership for podcasters. As a recognized authority and influencer in the podcasting industry, Daniel speaks on podcasting and hosts his own podcast about how to podcast. Daniel's other podcasts, a clean-comedy podcast, and the #1 unofficial podcast for ABC's hit drama Once Upon a Time, have also been nominated for multiple awards. Daniel and his son live near Cincinnati.
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aigweb
aigweb
12 years ago

"MILEAGE"! Thank you, Wayne. "YMMV" and "AFIAK" are two that I can never remember.

Steven Durette
12 years ago

You mean AFAIK (As Far As I Know) 🙂

Fred
Fred
12 years ago

Daniel,
Thanks for summarizing the updates in the Audacity version. This is something that could be of significant value to the podcasters that don't have time to sift through all the features and see what is different, and what they can use and be of value to them. Also, kudos on your show notes with the visuals to help the podcasters that are starting to use Audacity (I am training several of them during this time, and this will provide them timely and useful information). As a podcaster, I am aware of how much time this took for you to prepare this episode. I appreciate your delivery to the community.

Max Flight
Max Flight
12 years ago

I'm having a problem with 1.3.13 and had to roll back to 1.3.12.

Effects in 1.3.13 are taking a long time to complete. For example, when I silence or delete a selection, there is an obvious delay before anything happens. It seems like the delay started at less than a second when I began editing the podcast file (775 meg), but over time grew to several seconds. I closed Audacity and reopened, rebooted the PC, reinstalled 1.3.13 – all with no effect. I then installed 1.3.12 (in another directory) and that works fine. The speedy response time was back on the same project.

So I'm living with 1.3.12 again and have no idea what's causing this. Is it me or is it Audacity – I don't know. It's a bit annoying. Anybody else have a problem like this?

Max Flight

Max Flight
Max Flight
12 years ago

Thanks, Daniel. It's Windows 7, and it's completely reproduceable. There are no other odd things going on with my system. When I click to do an effect, and as the several second delay begins, my little CPU meter shoots up from "idle" (maybe 10 or 15%) to around 65%, then back to idle. Odd.

Max Flight
Max Flight
12 years ago

Daniel: The podcast was recorded as a series of stereo WAV files with a digital audio recorder connected to a mixer running mix-minus. I'm on the left channel and my co-hosts and guest are on the right channel.

The first WAV file is 776MB and I brought that into Audacity at a 44100Hz project rate. I split the stereo track to mono, and applied very light noise reduction to each of the two mono tracks. Then I began editing.

That involved silencing portions of each track, and cutting sections of both tracks. I really didn't notice much difference until I had progressed maybe halfway through the project. Then the lag started to be about a second, growing quickly to a couple of seconds. That's when I gave up and switched to 1.3.12.

I just pulled the 776MB WAV into a new project in 1.3.13, split the stereo track to mono tracks (didn't do the noise reduction) and tried the same kind of editing on different portions of the project: no problem.

Opening the original project in 1.3.13 as I left it (before switching to 1.3.12), the problem remains. I deleted all but the first 13 seconds of that project, made a selection, and silenced it. It executed immediately – no problem. I undid the deletion to get back to the entire project and the problem returned.

I'm noticing now that I had pulled the second stereo WAV file (424MB) into the project. I started playing to see what happens if I delete the two mono tracks from that. Silencing a selection on one of the tracks from the first WAV was fast. I undid the deletions of the two tracks from the second WAV, and now silencing a selection seems almost as fast as normal.

So I closed the project without saving it, reopened it, and now it's responding to silencing pretty much normally. Great. I can't explain that.

So, if you're still with me (I wouldn't blame you if you're not) I'm not expecting anyone to be able to answer this. Especially now that the problem SEEMS to have become un-reproducible. Plus the project is too large to send you.

I'm max.flight on Skype (with the dot) if you want to talk live.

Thanks

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