Audacium has officially merged with Tenacity

https://github.com/Audacium/audacium/commit/709c098bdc2968c12fcf9b7092af12d11f309101

by app4soft • 3 years ago

126 86 3 years ago

github.com

bqmjjx0kac• 3 years ago

Is (was?) Audacium related to Audacity at all?

masklinn• 3 years ago

I think it’s one of the audacity fork from when the main devs put telemetry in audacity a year or two back.

petecooper• 3 years ago

Audacium has officially merged with Tenacity

This appears to be the Tenacity referenced:

https://tenacityaudio.org

https://codeberg.org/tenacityteam/tenacity

https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity

mgsk• 3 years ago

Not sure why they wouldn't include that link in the announcement/on github.

Arnavion• 3 years ago

Probably didn't think of it. If you were using Audacium it's because you were looking for Audacity forks in general, so you would already know about Tenacity too.

ilyt• 3 years ago

Great! They can call it Audacity now

talkingtab• 3 years ago

or tenacium

60secs• 3 years ago

or Teneculum

seba_dos12• 3 years ago

Tenacious A

CharlesW3• 3 years ago

Audacity is audio/sample editor¹ that's popular as a My First Editor™ for podcasters, etc. For anyone wondering why the Audacium/Tenacity forks exist: https://www.zdnet.com/article/audacity-reverses-course-on-pl...

Apparently, Audacity telemetry is now restricted to a self-hosted Sentry error reporting service, and to sending version info an IP address (anonymized to the first 3 octets) on update checks.

¹ It's a so-called "destructive" audio editor², and so is different than modern, "non-destructive" audio editors like GarageBand, Reaper, Descript, etc.

² https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/hks-communications-pro...

1f60c• 3 years ago

"destructive" audio editor

I clicked your link, but I'm still unsure what that means. Does that mean it operates on the audio file directly? Or that it has no undo functionality? Or something else entirely?

jaywalk• 3 years ago

It's spelled out pretty directly: "if you delete something, save your progress, and close your project, you will never be able to restore what was deleted"

bombcar• 3 years ago

It's the difference between making changes to the audio itself, and storing the changes as "now do this to the audio".

Similar to photoshop using layers to apply all the changes you've done (so you can undo particular ones easily/turn them on/off) and doing everything in the "flat" image space.

Or using git to track a file's changes vs just editing the file directly.

margorczynski• 3 years ago

I think it operates on the absolute state of the audio where e.g. Reaper uses deltas - your current result is simply all of the deltas applied on after the other so it is easy to go back with each change by just removing a delta from the sequence. Quite similar to e.g. Event Sourcing vs your regular source of truth in the DB

alexvoda• 3 years ago

it means that for certain operations/effects/filters/etc., once done the only way to get rid of them is to undo enough steps or to load a backup, in both cases loosing all of the subsequent changes.

With a nondestructive editor you can remove a change done several steps ago AND keep all of the changes done afterwards.

Ericson2314• 3 years ago

photoshop vs paint

TylerE• 3 years ago

Think of it like working in Illustrator, vs working not just in photoshop, but photoshop with a flattened source image.

stonogo4• 3 years ago

A "destructive" editor is just an editor. Your text editor is a "destructive" editor. A "non-destructive" editor does no editing, and instead stores (in a separate file) a sequence of patches to apply to the original file, resulting in your desired output. This isn't really editing, but the industry didn't do a good job at naming this stuff.

Blackthorn2• 3 years ago

¹ It's a so-called "destructive" audio editor², and so is different than modern, "non-destructive" audio editors like GarageBand, Reaper, Descript, etc.

I have to say as someone who recently got into this space, the value that these non-destructive editors provide for their price is absurd. Reaper costs a mere one-time payment of $60 for individual use! That's ridiculous for the value you're getting.

squarefoot• 3 years ago

Actually, Reaper's license expires after 2 major version steps, that is, if you purchase a license when the major version is x (currently it is 6.75) then you're licensed to use it until x+1.99 (now it would be 7.99). Not to detract anything from Reaper's value: its license is one of the best everywhere, the cost is very affordable and the unlicensed product isn't crippled like others around. I have been licensed a while ago, and plan to purchase a new one as soon as I get back to making music. I would love a crowdfunding initiative to buy it from the creators with the purpose of open sourcing it, but the product quality is so high that even if possible it would likely cost a fortune.

andrepd2• 3 years ago

Audacity also offers non-destructive editing.

swyx• 3 years ago

It's a so-called "destructive" audio editor

this is out of date as of Audacity 3.1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH1CndkiBiU

CharlesW3• 3 years ago

Wow, that's great news for its users! Non-destructive effects as well!

https://support.audacityteam.org/audio-editing/using-realtim...

weinzierl• 3 years ago

Is there anything Audacity can do that the modern, "non-destructive" editors can't. Apart from ease of use and price is there any reason to use Audacity at all?

CharlesW3• 3 years ago

No, not in my opinion. Here are some alternatives I like to recommend, in alphabetical order:

• Adobe Audition is great. Its main drawback is Adobe's rental-only pricing model ($20/month), which kinda stinks unless you need Adobe CC anyway. (macOS/Win)

• If you're on a Mac, many incredibly-popular podcasts have been created with good ol' GarageBand. And if you ever outgrow GarageBand, projects can be "upgraded" to use Logic. (macOS)

• Hindenburg Journalist is unique, in that it's an audio editor designed especially for spoken-word productions. (macOS/Win)

• Presonus Studio One is wonderful and not known about by enough podcasters. There's a free Studio One Prime edition available. (macOS/Win)

• Reaper is an inexpensive and well-liked choice. The discounted license is only $60, but you can “try” it for free as long as you like. (macOS/Win)

Retr0id2• 3 years ago

IIUC both were projects spawned after Audacity added telemetry to their release builds.

The telemetry in Audacity is behind both a build flag, and a runtime opt-in setting (although it was originally going to be opt-out, hence the uproar (I need to go fact-check this, it's been a while)).

So, if you install Audacity through your distro's package manager, you're probably not getting any telemetry, opt-in or otherwise.

With that in mind, I'm not sure I understand why these forks exist exactly. If I was a windows or macOS user, I might be interested in telemetry-free builds, and I'd be very thankful for anyone providing them, but I'm not sure why a whole fork is needed to do that.

Looking at the git tree, it's clear that these forks have diverged significantly from upstream Audacity (simply from looking at commit counts and screenshots etc.), so it's apparently not a simple build-config-change and rebrand. However, the marketing blurb on https://tenacityaudio.org/ does not make it clear which features are distinct from upstream.

Edit: You can read about the telemetry options currently present in Audacity here: https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/

jraph2• 3 years ago

Edit: You can read about the telemetry options currently present in Audacity here: https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/

Seems pretty reasonable actually. I remember that the situation was more arguable when there were the push backs against the privacy issue, The Muse seems to have responded appropriately to the criticisms.

The community split is unfortunate and sad but I sympathize with people wanting to avoid having to sign a CLA. One of the benefits of contributing to a GPL project without a CLA is that for the project to get rid of the GPL, it has to go out of its way asking for permission to every contributor or to remove the concerned code, which ensure your code does not risk ending up in a future, proprietary version of the project.

The reasons given for the existence of the CLA are reasonable too and I empathize (ability to release under GPLv3 and to release an version in Apple's App store, citing the example of VLC), but the CLA gives way too much right to The Muse which has all the rights to say "thank you, now we will actually make Audacity proprietary". Ideally its scope should be reduced.

duped• 3 years ago

Muse group has a history of acting as a bad actor, eg UltimateGuitar.com. They don't have much goodwill to deserve the benefit of the doubt here.

btown2• 3 years ago

With Muse Group's ownership and Tantacrul/Martin Keary as Head of Product of Audacity [0][1], Audacity will be moving in a radically different direction from a UI/UX perspective. I happen to think this will be a good thing, and I happen to think that (opt-in) telemetry is a perfectly good way of ensuring that a consumer-facing open-source project doesn't just build for its loudest users, especially in the context of large interface redesigns. And with MuseScore 4, the creative team struck what I think is a great balance between streamlining the interface and avoiding the removal of complexity/advanced features.

But I can also see why a fork can and should diverge, for those who want a more stable and slow-moving evolution of the software. I hope the Tenacity project succeeds!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMWNvwLiXIQ

[1] https://uk.linkedin.com/in/martin-keary-88a5a7159

wizzwizz46• 3 years ago

for those who want a more stable and slow-moving evolution of the software.

As I recall, Tenacity started with some significant reworking of the development toolchain. But I get your point: that's not something end-users normally care about.

dspillett3• 3 years ago

I'm not sure I understand why these forks exist exactly.

A large part of it is mistrust of Muse, over the initial opt-out nature of the new telemetry and over other past decisions, unrelated to Audacity, that people have found questionable.¹ Fool me once, and all that.

Looking at the git tree, it's clear that these forks have diverged significantly from upstream Audacity

That in itself would be a reason, certainly from a dev's PoV, on top of that trust thing. If both projects fit what they want, but the downstream ones do it in a way they prefer, that is enough difference even if

[sic] the marketing does not make clear the difference from upstream

implies that there is no major difference² from an end-users PoV³ at this point.

[1] I've not looked into the latter in much detail, my use of Audacity is so infrequent currently that I don't think I've updated (or, obviously, switched to something else) since before the hoo-hah.

[2] Yet, at least.

[3] beyond the telemetry and potential trust issues

teawrecks• 3 years ago

I might be interested in telemetry-free builds, and I'd be very thankful for anyone providing them

That is the definition of a fork.

Retr0id2• 3 years ago

No it isn't, it's a build config change which IMHO falls under the scope of package management/maintenance. The "Firefox" that runs on my system has a bunch of custom config tweaks and small source patches[1] applied by my distro/package maintainers to make it work with the rest of the system, and I don't call it a Firefox Fork.

[1] https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/tree/151d14e349c82...

app4soft• 3 years ago

IIUC both were projects spawned after Audacity added telemetry to their release builds.

Even more, Muse Group (owner of MuseScore and Audacity) is affiliated with Russia and has two offices in Kaliningrad and St.Petersburg, so for security reasons it better to not use those apps.[0]

Another controversy in July 2021[1] resulted from a change to the privacy policy which said that although personal data was stored on servers in the European Economic Area, the program would "occasionally [be] required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA"[2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27748261

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/23/audactiy_apology/

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57721967

rcMgD2BwE72F• 3 years ago

Could anyone familiar with this add something about Audacium to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity_(audio_editor) if it's significant to its history? I tried to understand what happened and if there was a fork but couldn't.

branon• 3 years ago

If you want to understand even less, check this one out: https://github.com/Sneeds-Feed-and-Seed/sneedacity

anaganisk3• 3 years ago

Why is error reporting telemetry bad? Im really lost at why this is such a big deal. They're not collecting personal info. They are just looking to make the product better.

rightbyte• 3 years ago

Unless it is opt-in it is spyware.

You can't trust devs that have such bad judgement that they would even think about doing it opt-out with the opt-in data either.

sneak2• 3 years ago

When, where, and how you use your tools is personal info, even if your name is not put on the data.

Entinel3• 3 years ago

This is not true legally. If there is no way to link back to you personally then it is not PII.

noman-land2• 3 years ago

I just wanna live my god damn life in peace instead of wondering if my belongings are leaking data about me.

If I want to help the developers debug their app for free I will decide on my own when and how to do that.

I consider any breach of these desires to be ideologically repugnant and indicative of an extreme disrespect for users of your app.

Entinel3• 3 years ago

If I want to help the developers debug their app for free I will decide on my own when and how to do that.

You say this like you pay for the app. Audacity is free.

anaganisk3• 3 years ago

But they are not even taking your data or asking you to debug, thats the point. They want to collect the errors themselves and improve the product.

croes• 3 years ago

Data traffic without consent is bad.

LeoPanthera• 3 years ago

I’m surprised Tenacity isn’t in Homebrew, even as a cask.

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

A more readable summary: https://github.com/Audacium/audacium

tevon• 3 years ago

The Audacity of it!

Audacium has officially merged with Tenacity

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