I really wish the folks behind open source, cross-platform audio editing utility Audacity would take the beta label off the Audacity 1.3 branch. It's so much better than the last stable release, Audacity 1.2.6 it's not even funny. But it's still considered beta software because it's still under construction and doesn't come with complete documentation or translation into languages besides English.

This week the team released Audacity 1.3.8 beta. Some of the new features include faster equalization and noise removal tools. There's also a new "mixer board" view with per-track volume meters. And mute, solo, gain, and track height information is now saved when you save a project. You can find more changes in the release notes.

Open source, cross-platform audio editing application Audacity 1.3.6 beta is out, and it adds a handful of new features that make it even more useful. One of the most attractive new features is support for using FFmpeg to import and export audio files in a wide range of formats, including WMA, M4A, and AC3. You can even import audio tracks from video files using FFmpeg.

Here's how to set it up. First you need to install Audacity 1.3.6 beta, and then find the preferences menu under the edit tab. Next, click the Import / Export option. If you already have FFmpeg on your system, click the find library button and locate the avformat-52.dll file. If you don't have FFmpeg yet, click the download button and a web browser window will open up with instructions for downloading and using the plugin.

The latest version of Audacity also has a few other tweaks, like improved performance when laoding uncompressed audio files and the ability to link audio and lable tracks so that labels move properly when you move an audio track.

[via Making Music]

The Audacity team has released an updated version of the popular opern source audio editing application. Audacity 1.3.5 beta packs a bunch of minor updates, including bug fixes better file handling, and some interface improvements. Here are some of the things that jumped out at us:

• Hit Shift while clicking record to start a recording at the end of an existing track
• Users should see fewer invalid sample rate problems under LInux
• Updated versions of the Portaudio, Libogg, LIbvorbis, and other libraries
• More informative dialogs when dealing with unsupported file formats
• New keyboard shortcuts

Audacity is already one of the best free audio editing applications for Mac, Linux, and Windows, and the program just keeps getting better.

[via Making Music]

Wavosaur is a digital audio editor for Windows. Sure, those may be a dime a dozen, but there are a few things that make Wavosaur useful. First of all, there's no installation required. You can run Wavosaur from a flash drive if you like. Beware, this 464KB executable will create a bunch of associated configuration files, so you'll want to place it in its own folder. But you can run it from any folder.

Wavosaur also supports VST plugins, multiple file formats including WAV, MP3, and OGG, and all the usual audio editing feaures like copy, paste, mix, trim, crop, insert silence, normalize, fade in/out and so on. If you just want to perform quick tasks like converting stereo files to mono, Wavosaur is a nice low-profile alternative to fuller-featured programs like Audacity or Reaper.

There is no multitrack editing mode, but you can multiple files at the same time. One thing we noticed is that Wavosaur doesn't like working with large files very much. We got it to load a 30 minute file with no problem, but when we went to start editing, the application locked up on us. So we'd recommend Wavosaur for quick and dirty tasks, or for anyone looking for a tiny audio editor that won't take up much space on a flash drive. That said, both Reaper and Audacity can also be installed to a portable flash drive, but they also take up a bit more space.

[via Making Music]

You've made the big jump from Windows to Linux, but there are just a few programs that you can't live without, so you find yourself jumping back on your Windows machine to edit a movie or sound file every now and again. Sure, you know there are open source alternatives to many of your favorite programs, but who has the time to track them down?

Apparently plenty of people do, because we've found at least three good lists of Linux equivalents for Windows software. There's a lot of overlap between the lists, but each site has a few gems that are missing from the others.

1. Linux Alternative Project
2. Linux App Finder
3. Open Source Alternative (this site features open source apps for every operating system, not just Linux)

It's important to note that we're using the word "equivalent" rather loosely here. For example, Audacity really isn't a full-fledged replacement for Adobe Audition. Audacity doesn't have all of Audition's features, not by a longshot. But you also don't have to pay $349 to pick up a copy of Audacity. Like most open-source applications, it's free. And if you need a more robust audio editing package, you can always try Ardour, which is much more powerful, but also much harder to configure properly.
[via Digg and Linux Screw]

The Audacity team has released another update to their popular cross-platform, open source digital audio editing application. The Audacity 1.3.x beta line features a ton of options that aren't available in the 1.2.x stable versions. For example, it's much easier to move sound files from one track to another or to split and manipulate audio tracks.

Audacity 1.3.4 beta features a ton of small, but important updates, including:

• A new welcome screen
• Enhanced Windows Shell integration, meaning you should be able to access Audacity from Windows dialogs like "open with."
• New keyboard commands and shortcuts
• The solo track button actually does what you'd expect and mutes all other tracks
• Metadata editor added for OGG, FLAC, and WAV/AIFF exports

Audacity 1.3.4 beta is available for Windows and Linux. The most current version of Audacity for OS X is still 1.3.3 beta.

So you're an early adopter and you've run out to buy yourself Asus's $400 Eee PC because it seemed like a great price for a fully functional 2 pound computer that's about the size of a typical hardcover book (and far smaller than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows).

But the innovative easy to use interface might get old pretty quickly if you want to do more than surf the web and create letters, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint style presentations for your friends telling them how cool you are because you have an Eee PC while they don't.

Asus includes instructions for loading Windows XP onto the Eee PC, but it requires an external DVD drive, some drive compression, and you know, a copy of Windows XP. Curiously, Asus does not include any instructions for unlocking the built-in potential of Xandros Linux, the operating system that ships with the Eee PC. But as we mentioned in this week's Squadcast, it just takes a little bit of work to unlock this machine's potential.

If you've got a bit of Linux experience under your belt, it's pretty simple to add some programs, enable an advanced desktop, and tweak the Eee PC to your heart's content. But it turns out that even if you're a Linux noob, the learning curve isn't that steep. Here are some of the most useful Eee hacks/tweaks we've discovered in our first half week of playing with it. Thanks to the Eee User community for helping inspire our hacking.

Download Squad reader ch0gan saw our article on digital audio editors Reaper and Audacity and turned us onto another free audio workstation called Traverso. Right now it's a pretty basic audio editor, but it shows promise.

Traverso relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, most digital audio editors worth their salt include a plethora of customizable shortcuts to let you speed up your workflow. On the other hand, Traverso does a few baffling things.

For example, you use your mouse to position a red line on the screen. In most software, pressing the space bar would play the audio from the position of the red bar. In Traverso you have to press V on your keyboard in order to bring a blue line over to the red line, and then you can play from that position.

Traverso is still under development. The version we tested was labeled 0.41, so we'll reserve overall judgement until there's a final release. But the absolutely coolest thing about Traveso is that it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. Oh, and did we mention that it's free?

Podcasters and pretty much anyone in need of low-cost (as in free) audio editing software have been using Audacity for years. It's not quite as full-featured as Pro Tools or Adobe Audition, but with each release, Audacity becomes a more viable alternative for music producers, podcasters, and radio journalists.

While the last stable release of the cross-platform audio editor was version 1.2.6, the developers recently pushed out Audacity 1.3.3 beta, and it's miles ahead of the stable version. Here are just a few of the latest updates:

• Import Quicktime files in OSX (mov, aac, m4a)
• Add metadata to OGG files
• Improved export option selection
• EQ and effects improvements
  
• Screen capture utility
• Improved spectrogram rendering
• Selection bar improvements
• New features for label tracks
• Auto-save and crash recovery
• Collapse and expand tracks
• Multiple clips per track

But if you're looking for a more traditional audio editor, you might want to check out Reaper. This audio editor from Winamp creator Justin Frankel is under constant development, but it's already a full fledged program. And best of all, it's uncrippled shareware. The full license is $40, but you can use it for free for 30 days. And at the end of the trial period, you can continue to use the program, but it will nag you until you register.

An Ubuntu-based Linux distribution designed for creative types has been released. Ubuntu Studio was originally due out last month, but some last minute glitches caused the developers to delay the release date by a few weeks.

Ubuntu Studio is designed to prove that Linux is just as good as OS X or Windows for creating and manipulating media files. Of course, if you're not an ubergeek, installing audio, video, and image editing applications can be a bit of a hassle.

That's where Ubuntu Studio comes in. The distribution comes with some of the most popular and powerful free multimedia software available, including:

• Ardour2 and Audacity for audio editing
• Pitivi for video editing (Cinelerra will be available after license issues are worked out)
• Gimp and Blender for image editing
• And a boatload of other packages designed for creating digital media

Sure, you could configure your own Ubuntu or other Linux system to run all the same software. But Ubuntu Studio takes most of the pain out of the process.

One thing to note, the ISO is a bit larger than your typical LiveCD, at 860MB. So you'll have to burn it to a DVD. Oh yeah, and it's not a LiveCD... err LiveDVD. You'll have to install Ubuntu Studio if you want to take it for a test drive. Fortunately the installation process is fairly straightforward, and if you have an empty partition on your hard drive Ubuntu Studio can happily coexist with Windows or other operating systems.

This nifty tool will record audio streams and encode them to either .mp3 or .wav for you. It uses the LAME "educational" encoding engine, the same as Audacity. Honestly, I already have and use audacity for this function, recording stuff off the Internet or other sources, and it has editing features as well, so I really don't know why you would use MP3myMP3 unless you don't already have Audacity, because why have two programs to accomplish what one can do by itself? I haven't seen the value in application redundancy, but perhaps you will. MP3myMP3 has a nice UI, and I like how it picked right up on the song I was listening to without having to select the source or anything. I suppose the main advantage to this program has to do with its quick and dirty factor. It simply records without any config, unlike Audacity. It is always a trade off between the ability to do some professional tweaking or to quickly and simply do it automatically without taking the time to config everything.