# What the hell happened to Audacity? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 25, 2026, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994 "2026-01-25T02:52:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2026, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/81 "2026-01-27T19:00:31Z")
Audacity sent me to Fosshub for old versions. The oldest 64 bit zip is ver 3.7.1 There also a manual available for that version. You can run 32 bit but try to avoid it. Win 10 is a 64 bit OS. It only loads the legacy 32 bit libraries for old software. That’s a CPU and memory load. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2026, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/82 "2026-01-27T21:02:18Z")
There is also the possibility that Audacity 4 will not suck (leaving aside the sneaky pop-ups and links when you set it up trying to lure you into their online services). I guess we will find out. > [@aceplace57](#): > > The oldest 64 bit zip is ver 3.7.1 > There also a manual available for that version. No, the oldest 64-bit Windows version is 3.0.3: [https://github.com/audacity/audacity/releases/download/Audacity-3.0.3/audacity-win-3.0.3-64bit.exe](https://github.com/audacity/audacity/releases/download/Audacity-3.0.3/audacity-win-3.0.3-64bit.exe) ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2026, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/83 "2026-01-27T22:25:49Z")
I didn’t go back quite that far. I used 3.2.2 File dates indicate it’s from 2022 Hopefully that’s before changes **Do I need to go back earlier?** 3.2 and above uses the current 64 bit [FFmpeg](https://support.audacityteam.org/basics/installing-ffmpeg) Before that requires a different dll It would take 2 minutes to delete the desktop shortcut and folder that I just created. Let me know. . 15 year old memories have returned. I installed the FFmpeg dll Lame is no longer a special download. I swear my hair just grew a Mullet!! It’s 2002 baby! Lets party! **Maroon 5** 😃 🥳 Opened a oga audio file and converted to Flac. Opening OGA in Audacity requires the FFmpeg library ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/84 "2026-01-28T00:13:56Z")
LAME mp3 encoder is now included with Audacity Link [FAQ:Installing the LAME MP3 Encoder - Audacity Manual](https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_installing_the_lame_mp3_encoder.html) I like using Audacity for routine audio file conversions. Open the audio, ignore the project, Export Close the file Today, for example two wav files were losslessly converted to Flac. A oga audio was also converted. Audacity would have to decompress first and then lossless convert to Flac. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/85 "2026-01-28T01:04:37Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I like using Audacity for routine audio file conversions. > > Open the audio, ignore the project, Export > Close the file > > Today, for example two wav files were losslessly converted to Flac. > > A oga audio was also converted. Audacity would have to decompress first and then lossless convert to Flac. That will work, all right, though if I were doing it I would not bother using Audacity at all and just run ffmpeg (or LAME) directly. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/86 "2026-01-28T01:50:22Z")
Hehe, yeah a fragment of the one-liner bash script I use for that is: ```auto for i in $( ls -1 ./|grep wav) ; do a=$(echo $i | awk -F. '{print $1}') ; lame -h ${a}.wav ${a}.mp3 ; done ``` I tag another scp command on it after that to upload it to my webserver after that, but that’s not important here. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/87 "2026-01-28T02:09:19Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > That will work, all right, though if I were doing it I would not bother using Audacity at all and just run ffmpeg (or LAME) directly. IHow? Are there dedicated Apps that only run LAME and ffmpeg? I always thought they were run-time call libraries. Audacity is a large App to depend on for two run-time library calls. But, I never knew how else to do it without programming a Python script myself. Audacity requires the ffmpeg dll to run. **D** ynamic- **L** ink **L** ibrary ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/88 "2026-01-28T04:17:31Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Are there dedicated Apps that only run LAME and ffmpeg? I always thought they were run-time call libraries. Well, on a Linux/Unix system, lame is just a command line tool. I imagine you can install it in Windows through Windows Subsystem for Linux, but I don’t use that anymore because I migrated away from Windows on my work laptop, But yeah, for me lame is just a command line utility that I run independently. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/89 "2026-01-28T04:21:51Z")
I keep forgetting a lot of Github and Sourceforge are from the Linux world. I can’t imagine todays video standards without independent developers. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/90 "2026-01-28T04:26:23Z")
Hehehe, and it’s that kind of thing that makes me laugh at people who view open source software as somehow unreliable or sketchy. If you’re using the internet, you’re almost assuredly using the FreeBSD or Linux TCP/IP stack, or something derivative of it, even in Windows. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/91 "2026-01-28T04:52:41Z")
ffmpeg is also available for Windows as an .exe that you can run directly. No need for WSL or anything else, just download it and run it: [https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip](https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip) (That’s linked from [Release Latest Auto-Build (2026-01-27 12:58) · BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds · GitHub](https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/tag/latest), which was in turn from [Download FFmpeg](https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html)) Then a command like `ffmpeg.exe -i input.opus output.flac`\* will convert it with default settings. There’s a million other options you can tweak if you need to. Personally I can never remember them and the docs are too complicated, but ChatGPT is really good at figuring them out. You also don’t really need LAME at all anymore. ffmpeg itself can handle MP3 inputs and outputs just fine. ffmpeg is also great at handling video conversions, not just audio. Or extracting audio from video, for that matter. (\* Note: That’s just an example. Don’t actually convert an Opus to FLAC; that’d be pointless and just waste space since Opus is lossy.) ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/92 "2026-01-28T05:00:31Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > You also don’t really need LAME at all anymore. ffmpeg itself can handle MP3 inputs and outputs just fine Actually, I’m not totally sure about this part… it looks like the Windows .exe can use something called `mp3_mf`, or “MP3 via MediaFoundation”. This looks like a codec that Microsoft provides: [MP3 Audio Encoder - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/medfound/mp3-audio-encoder) ffmpeg can also be bundled with LAME as a library, so maybe on other platforms, that’s a default dependency? In any case, on Windows at least, that link I gave should include all the dependencies you’ll need (including MP3 encoding & decoding). ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/93 "2026-01-28T11:27:19Z")
I’m surprised that much of what we’re discussing was true 15 to 20 years ago. Sourceforge has been with us always. The developers have made improvements in codecs. X264 with H.264 dramatically reduced the sizes of movie video. A 45 minute tv video went from 950 mb to under 650 mb with _better_ resolution and smoother playback in VLC. Now a video is 8Gb. Back then size mattered. I still use x264 routinely when archiving my dvd’s. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/94 "2026-01-28T11:57:25Z")
For what it’s worth, though, there have been small changes. Sourceforge is mostly a repository of old projects now, as far as I know. Most modern projects have either moved to Github or their own setup if they don’t like Github. I haven’t seen anything actively developed or shared on Sourceforge in a decade or more. (It’s also quite ad infested these days, and the last several packages I tried to download there were bundled with adware. I just realized I had chosen to block the site in my search engine because of this.) x264 is also pretty old by this point, and modern codes like h265/x265, VP9, and AV1 offer mostly superior quality and performance. The downside is that they have different levels of patent encumbrance and hardware and platform support. h264 is the closest thing we have to a universal standard, still, where compatibility is the chief concern. If you’re ripping home DVDs it mostly won’t matter anyway (because the quality is so low anyway vs, say, 4k BluRays or higher). I should note, though, a lot of the progress in codecs were from private companies and interest groups that developed proprietary and patented algorithms, then licensed them out at tolerable terms (especially for non-commercial use). Then some of them get reimplemented by the open source community, while others get sponsored or bought up by big corporations (like Google or Cisco) who then pay the fees for public use. It’s rare to see one developed from scratch in the wild by FOSS devs. The entire field of codecs is a huge patent minefield stretching back decades, and it makes greenfield development quite terrifying, from what I understand… ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/95 "2026-01-28T12:01:23Z")
I never archive my Blu-Ray. Files are much too massive and I just don’t care enough to learn the process. Most of my purchases were dvd. Blu-Ray came along after I’d already invested heavily in a video library. I’ve bought a handful of Blu-Ray. I’m choosy in the investment. The movie’s special effects has to _require_ the higher resolution. Alien and Aliens for example are worth purchasing again. _When Harry Met Sally_ is on dvd and I wouldn’t consider wasting my $ to buy a comedy movie again. (Vhs,dvd,Blu-Ray) ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2026, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/96 "2026-01-28T12:04:52Z")
Yeah, for home archival it doesn’t really matter that much to begin with. A lot of these newer codecs were mainly useful for the hyperscalers like Netflix and YouTube, where a tiny % gain in efficiency could mean millions of dollars in bandwidth and storage savings. The few odd gigabytes you’d save reencoding home dvdrips wouldn’t be worth the time. Besides, almost certainly someone on the torrents would’ve already done it better, with a higher quality rip and optimal encoding settings that took many hours. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2026, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/97 "2026-01-29T01:09:06Z")
People that are interested in Audacity, audio and video compression should use Discourse’s bookmark feature. I’ll be referring back for information for awhile. I depend on Open-Source software. Handbrake for my purchased dvd video storage. VLC is my only video player. It’s installed on every computer that I own. Musescore for creating and editing sheet music Audacity for editing audio ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2026, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/98 "2026-01-29T01:15:01Z")
Although… Except for a mildly annoying invitation to save my data to the cloud (which can be dismissed permanently) it still seems to work fine. A slightly less convenient set of menus when i want to amplify a file isn’t a huge deal. Is there some horrible downgrade or spyware or something that I’m missing? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2026, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994/99 "2026-01-29T02:00:57Z")
One can try an alpha version of Audacity 4 right now if one wants: [Linux](https://github.com/audacity/audacity/releases/download/Audacity-4.0.0-alpha-2/Audacity-4.0.0.253031629.f3e3e3b.-x86_64.AppImage) [Mac](https://github.com/audacity/audacity/releases/download/Audacity-4.0.0-alpha-2/Audacity-4.0.0.253031629.f3e3e3b.dmg) [Windows](https://github.com/audacity/audacity/releases/download/Audacity-4.0.0-alpha-2/Audacity-4.0.0.253031630.f3e3e3b.-x86_64.msi) and judge for oneself. They _want_ people to test it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-happened-to-audacity/1026994.md?page=4)