[LAU] Re: FLOSS Audio editors on Linux: are they all dead(-ish)?

On 5/29/25 13:47, Brandon Hale wrote:
> On 5/29/25 06:02, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
>> Hi LAU and LAD,
>>
>> It seems that (FLOSS) audio editors (not DAWs) are all either dead/ 
>> obsolate (mhwaveditor, rezound), in strange development states 
>> (Audacity, Tenacity).
>> Tenacity, the most promising (albeit with its audacity-inherited 
>> idiosyncrasies) has a really annoying bug [1] which makes it take 
>> ages to load [1] - IMHO a no go for an audio editor IMHO (plus its 
>> multi- track-ness like Audacity makes it overload for a few use cases).
>>
>> The only more-or-less usable one at the moment is ocenaudio which is 
>> not free software (and also has some UI quirks, but that's maybe 
>> personal).
>>
>> I've been a fan of mhWaveEdit for its mix of simplicity and 
>> configurability, but as an abandoned GTK2 application it shows its 
>> problems.
>>
>> Is this kind of software not interesting any more? Are people using 
>> DAWs for everything?
>>
>> Are people even using, or interested / committed in using Linux Audio 
>> any more?
>>
>> As LAC approaches (unfortunately I won't be able to attend, even 
>> though it's in Europe), why not try to spark some debate :-P
>>
>> Lorenzo
>>
>> [1] https://codeberg.org/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/549
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>
> I'd have to say, Audacity/Tenacity are probably the best bet. Some 
> other editors that are FLOSS I can think of are snd and 
> sonic-visualizer. To be honest, I really enjoy using sonic-visualizer 
> for its analysis capabilities, but you can use its vamp plugins for 
> audio processing as well.
>
> I think when it comes to editing, even though a DAW can do a lot more 
> than just edit audio, a DAW is what I've seen others use. I totally 
> agree that for editing audio a quick dedicated editor would be faster 
> and more efficient. When I go to use schismtracker, for instance, I 
> would love to just have a fast sample editor, but I tend to open the 
> sample in renoise (not floss) as its editor is amazing. That also 
> reminds me: Openmpt is FLOSS that can edit audio with ease. In music 
> tracking, samples are typically the only thing you can use, so modern 
> trackers tend to have good audio editors. The only catch is Openmpt is 
> tied to a windows gui library, so you will have to run it with wine 
> (not a problem though, it runs great in it!)
>
> Let me know what you think (also at home for LAC. I wish it wasn't the 
> case!) 

I use Audacity. I tried Tenacity, all it did was crash or otherwise not 
work. When Audacity dropped telemetry, I never bothered with Tenacity again.

I've used Wavbreaker <https://wavbreaker.sourceforge.io/> to split album 
recordings into separate tracks. It suffers UI issues I've encountered 
with a number of other graphics and audio applications: icons and most 
everything else is almost unusable on my 4K/hidpi display, they're just 
too tiny. Come on, people, use SVG, not tiny little bitmaps! And make 
sure your applications windows are resizable.

When I was mixing 12 track recordings of my church band, I used 
Audacity. I don't come from a background of using mixing boards and just 
wasn't able to get that mindset into my head. I appreciate the power 
that DAWs offer, just don't find them usable for me.

Finally, I think I can still safely say that pro-audio users in the 
Linux world are a tiny fraction of the pro-audio world that includes 
Microsoft and Apple, and we're an even tinier fraction of Linux audio 
users. So maybe there's not a crowd of users clamoring for Linux 
pro-audio tools? As long as they can hear their media of choice, and 
participate in online video conferences, I don't think many Linux users 
think about audio.

Question: How to visually-challenged Linux users do such editing?

Ideas?

-- 
David W. Jones
[email protected]
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com
"My password is the last 8 digits of π."
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