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I highly recommend this video [1] by the Head of Software at Muse who had a big part in the development of Audacity 4.0. Some great insights and really fun to w

by Lautzi 14d ago

I highly recommend this video [1] by the Head of Software at Muse who had a big part in the development of Audacity 4.0. Some great insights and really fun to watch! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38

Subdivide8452 14d ago
Damn this guy is well versed on the topic at hand. Really clear and nice video.
chrysoprace 14d ago
Beat me to it, I was just about to post this. It's a really cool breakdown of what goes into supporting and modernising such old open source software.
stevoski 14d ago
This video is simply excellent. Really shows the challenges involved. His other videos are awesome too. He is an expert in making great software AND a great video creator.
- fishfasell 14d ago
  He also hit the nail on the head- reaction videos are just low effort click bait.
  - ihujonigyin 14d ago
    [flagged]
    - siriusfeynman 13d ago
      The full sentence from the snippet you copy-pasted is > This has been a hot topic for almost 1000 years... AND I PUT IT TO BED RIGHT HERE! It's clearly intended to be a joke, no one would honestly think they've "solved" a 1000 year discussion with no objective answer.
vintermann 14d ago
Yes, Tantacrul. Pretty weird story, a composer and programmer who absolutely roasted the UIs of well known sheet music dinosaurs Finale and Sibelius in hilarious diss videos on YouTube. Then he conceded a bit reluctantly that Musescore was the better of the lot, but still had plenty of opinions on how it could be better. So the guitar tabs website which had then recently acquired Musescore offered him a job. Not just a job, but basically to be boss of the whole thing. Then they bought audacity, staffpad and Hal Leonard too. Then they bought out their private equity backer. I can't think of any other time something good has come out of a private equity roll-up. They haven't enshittified it (from my perspective as a user anyway). It seems in the end these people just loved music more than they loved money.
- bluGill 14d ago
  > I can't think of any other time something good has come out of a private equity roll-up. Just remember bad news sells. I'm reasonably sure there are a number of other cases where this happens, likely most. However they are not big news and not memorable so I can't cite them.
  - awesan 14d ago
    If it happens all the time and it's positive, you shouldn't need a news story to confirm it. People should just be able to think of examples. Certainly I'm able to think of plenty of terrible results from private equity take-overs from my own personal experience as an employee or as a customer.
    - philipallstar 14d ago
      Well, many things may be going wrong before PE gets involved, or the owners may be retiring and it just will never be the same again even if PE didn't buy. So it's more likely to feel like bad news even if it was still a reasonable outcome. As a public, well-known example, Dell being taken private in 2013 seemed to work out.
    - inanutshellus 14d ago
deleted 14d ago
[deleted]
mikae1 14d ago
So, they've realized podcasters and vloggers are a large part of their target audience. Then I believe they have to implement some models for speech restoration. These days most people just Adobe Podcast Enhance and forget and, from what I've seen there isn't an open source GUI based tool for automated voice processing out there. Must add that it's so awesome to have an open source Qt based audio editor on KDE Plasma that does not look like shit!
- tyffanypastecf 13d ago
  [dead]
Lio 14d ago
Indirectly related his video on music notation itself, "Notation Must Die: The Battle For How We Read Music"[1], is really good IMHO. > Many people feel that western notation makes it unnecessarily hard to read music. If we want to sight read, learn music theory or just practice an instrument, surely there's a better way? Right? This has been a hot topic for almost 1000 years... AND I PUT IT TO BED RIGHT HERE! 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4
- korzinka 14d ago
  Notation is cool and just right, the more I learned the more I appreciated how great contemporary notation is. Yes it's challenging to read sometines but the subject is challenging too, surely you could try to simplify it for certain applications but you'd lose a lot of flexibility. Fighting notation is like fighting piano keyboard which is also extremely convenient thing to play compared to other stuff, even to grid controllers.
  - niek_pas 14d ago
    I find conventional Western notation works quite well for communicating notes, rhythms, and basic expression, but it breaks down pretty quickly once you move beyond that. E.g. a lot of the common techniques on electric guitar (bends, palm muting, tremolo/whammy bar stuff, pick slides, slap/thumping, pinch harmonics, raking) don't really have a convenient notational shorthand. That's without even mentioning synthesizers (how do you notate 'gradually increase the filter cutoff here'?) and DAWs, samplers, drum machines. But it's definitely a hard problem: the more information you try to shove into a notational system, the harder it gets for people to keep track of what everything means. Plus you just start running out of easily distinguishable symbols at some point.
    - KPGv2 13d ago
      > how do you notate 'gradually increase the filter cutoff here'? probably a standalone Italian word would be fine, or some special < like we have for gradually increasing volume
keeganpoppen 14d ago
all of his videos are amazing
sixothree 14d ago
I don't even need to watch that video to be reminded of the tagline - "Audacity says no!". Agreed this is a great watch for pretty much any developer.
- laserbeam 14d ago
  Quit Sibelius
  - cryptopian 13d ago
    ~ A D V A N C E D ~
derefr 14d ago
Alternately, if you want to go on the same journey Keary (the person you mention) went on to form an opinion on what constitutes good vs. bad UX design in music/notation/DAW software, they've also put out a whole series of videos taking the piss out of the UX of most of the software in the field: - Reason (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PFRyONURSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PFRyONURSo) - Sibelius (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI) - MuseScore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A) - Dorico (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3wEC6Fj_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3wEC6Fj_8)
deleted 14d ago
[deleted]
newsy-combi 14d ago
Not trying to hate because a FOSS audio editor is great, but all of these UI improvements are carbon copies from conventional DAWs or video editors, invented 30 or so years ago. Like giving audio clips a header which lets you move them around, or letting you adjust the audio clip start/end by dragging the start/end of the clip, are not exactly revolutionary in 2026. Maybe Audacity will re-invent automation lanes next? I'm not against it. I don't see how any of this requires user studies and the framing as some kind of breakthrough though.

by Lautzi 14d ago

Subdivide8452 14d ago

Damn this guy is well versed on the topic at hand. Really clear and nice video.

chrysoprace 14d ago

Beat me to it, I was just about to post this. It's a really cool breakdown of what goes into supporting and modernising such old open source software.

stevoski 14d ago

This video is simply excellent. Really shows the challenges involved. His other videos are awesome too. He is an expert in making great software AND a great video creator.

fishfasell 14d ago
He also hit the nail on the head- reaction videos are just low effort click bait.
- ihujonigyin 14d ago
  [flagged]
  - siriusfeynman 13d ago
    The full sentence from the snippet you copy-pasted is > This has been a hot topic for almost 1000 years... AND I PUT IT TO BED RIGHT HERE! It's clearly intended to be a joke, no one would honestly think they've "solved" a 1000 year discussion with no objective answer.

vintermann 14d ago

Yes, Tantacrul. Pretty weird story, a composer and programmer who absolutely roasted the UIs of well known sheet music dinosaurs Finale and Sibelius in hilarious diss videos on YouTube. Then he conceded a bit reluctantly that Musescore was the better of the lot, but still had plenty of opinions on how it could be better. So the guitar tabs website which had then recently acquired Musescore offered him a job. Not just a job, but basically to be boss of the whole thing. Then they bought audacity, staffpad and Hal Leonard too. Then they bought out their private equity backer. I can't think of any other time something good has come out of a private equity roll-up. They haven't enshittified it (from my perspective as a user anyway). It seems in the end these people just loved music more than they loved money.

bluGill 14d ago
> I can't think of any other time something good has come out of a private equity roll-up. Just remember bad news sells. I'm reasonably sure there are a number of other cases where this happens, likely most. However they are not big news and not memorable so I can't cite them.
- awesan 14d ago
  If it happens all the time and it's positive, you shouldn't need a news story to confirm it. People should just be able to think of examples. Certainly I'm able to think of plenty of terrible results from private equity take-overs from my own personal experience as an employee or as a customer.
  - philipallstar 14d ago
    Well, many things may be going wrong before PE gets involved, or the owners may be retiring and it just will never be the same again even if PE didn't buy. So it's more likely to feel like bad news even if it was still a reasonable outcome. As a public, well-known example, Dell being taken private in 2013 seemed to work out.
  - inanutshellus 14d ago

deleted 14d ago

[deleted]

mikae1 14d ago

So, they've realized podcasters and vloggers are a large part of their target audience. Then I believe they have to implement some models for speech restoration. These days most people just Adobe Podcast Enhance and forget and, from what I've seen there isn't an open source GUI based tool for automated voice processing out there. Must add that it's so awesome to have an open source Qt based audio editor on KDE Plasma that does not look like shit!

tyffanypastecf 13d ago
[dead]

Lio 14d ago

Indirectly related his video on music notation itself, "Notation Must Die: The Battle For How We Read Music"[1], is really good IMHO. > Many people feel that western notation makes it unnecessarily hard to read music. If we want to sight read, learn music theory or just practice an instrument, surely there's a better way? Right? This has been a hot topic for almost 1000 years... AND I PUT IT TO BED RIGHT HERE! 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4

korzinka 14d ago
Notation is cool and just right, the more I learned the more I appreciated how great contemporary notation is. Yes it's challenging to read sometines but the subject is challenging too, surely you could try to simplify it for certain applications but you'd lose a lot of flexibility. Fighting notation is like fighting piano keyboard which is also extremely convenient thing to play compared to other stuff, even to grid controllers.
- niek_pas 14d ago
  I find conventional Western notation works quite well for communicating notes, rhythms, and basic expression, but it breaks down pretty quickly once you move beyond that. E.g. a lot of the common techniques on electric guitar (bends, palm muting, tremolo/whammy bar stuff, pick slides, slap/thumping, pinch harmonics, raking) don't really have a convenient notational shorthand. That's without even mentioning synthesizers (how do you notate 'gradually increase the filter cutoff here'?) and DAWs, samplers, drum machines. But it's definitely a hard problem: the more information you try to shove into a notational system, the harder it gets for people to keep track of what everything means. Plus you just start running out of easily distinguishable symbols at some point.
  - KPGv2 13d ago
    > how do you notate 'gradually increase the filter cutoff here'? probably a standalone Italian word would be fine, or some special < like we have for gradually increasing volume

keeganpoppen 14d ago

all of his videos are amazing

sixothree 14d ago

I don't even need to watch that video to be reminded of the tagline - "Audacity says no!". Agreed this is a great watch for pretty much any developer.

laserbeam 14d ago
Quit Sibelius
- cryptopian 13d ago
  ~ A D V A N C E D ~

derefr 14d ago

Alternately, if you want to go on the same journey Keary (the person you mention) went on to form an opinion on what constitutes good vs. bad UX design in music/notation/DAW software, they've also put out a whole series of videos taking the piss out of the UX of most of the software in the field: - Reason (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PFRyONURSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PFRyONURSo) - Sibelius (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI) - MuseScore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A) - Dorico (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3wEC6Fj_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3wEC6Fj_8)

deleted 14d ago

[deleted]

newsy-combi 14d ago

Not trying to hate because a FOSS audio editor is great, but all of these UI improvements are carbon copies from conventional DAWs or video editors, invented 30 or so years ago. Like giving audio clips a header which lets you move them around, or letting you adjust the audio clip start/end by dragging the start/end of the clip, are not exactly revolutionary in 2026. Maybe Audacity will re-invent automation lanes next? I'm not against it. I don't see how any of this requires user studies and the framing as some kind of breakthrough though.