Is Audacity beta that good?

[Claire]

I am thinking about a software for my podcast.Ad I heard ppl talking abt Audacity all the time? Can someone who have tried it give some comments on it ?

Thanks,
Claire

[Yotto]

Audacity is a free, open-source audio editing program. It's pretty solid, though it has its issues (Mostly in the like of crashes and some missing features, and some features not being as high of quality as programs you'd buy). I've personally been using Audacity almost daily for over a year and a half (and sporadically before that) and love it.

The biggest advantage of Audacity over any other software is that it's free (Except perhaps Garageband which is "free" on most (all? I don't use Mac so don't know) and works on almost any computer you're likely to use. That way, you can try it right now for free and if you don't like it you're only out the time you spent looking at it.

So, what are you waiting for? :)

[Claire]

Thanks, Yotto.

I will have it downloaded today then :p
If I find any problems using it, I will turn to you again . hehe
Thanks in advance!;)

[dpeach]

I would recommend the beta 1.3 tree as opposed to the stable 1.2. The beta seems more rock solid for me (I have never had it crash) than the "stable" branch. Beta has better noise removal and a few more features.

[keifer]

Has anyone had issues with Audacity and Vista? I used to record with a samson CU01 USB mic on my old XP laptop, and 1.3, but my new laptop running Vista will not let me record with Audacity. Audacity no longer shows the mic and it is installed and recognized by Vista???

[haveyouheard]

I never thought Audacity had enough options when recording or editing. It's very cumbersome, and it can't handle the range of equipment I need it to.

We went through three or four programs before we found a good one. We tried Logic Pro, Garageband, and Audacity. Logic erased two of our episodes, Garageband doesn't have enough patching options, and Audacity was annoying to edit on.

We finally found Cubase and I would never work on anything else.

I recommend that if you're really serious about your podcast that you move to a better audio program. It will take a little longer to learn all the options, but your sound quality will greatly improve, and eventually it will take much less to get an episode out.

[EndGamePR]

I just started using Audacity 1.2 to edit my shows and I like it well enough. It works pretty well and had a lot of good functions. I'm not fond of the display, though. I think it's too hard to read the blue on grey/white background.

I did try 1.3 and it crashed a number of times on me. It's since been uninstalled.