The open-source audio editor Audacity released version 3.7.5 this week, and with it came support for ARM64 versions of Windows 11. There are a few other bug fixes and improvements with this release too.
The big announcement for Audacity 3.7.5 is the native support for Windows on Arm. However, only Windows 11 is included. Those still holding onto their Windows 10 Arm devices are out of luck, and so is anyone somehow still running Windows RT.
This is an addition to Audacity’s existing support for Linux ARM computers and Apple Silicon, which is also ARM-based. So this upgrade for Windows is a little late to the ARM party.
The Audacity development team added a few more big caveats. First, none of Audacity’s current plugins, like VST and OpenVINO, are supported with the Windows on Arm version of Audacity. Presumably that’s down the road. Also, you’ll need to go out of your way to make sure you’ve installed the Windows ARM64 build of FFmpeg. If you got FFmpeg through a package manager like Chocolately, you may have the x86 version, which won’t work.
The developers noted as well that they’ve personally not been able to test the Windows on ARM experience very much themselves due to limited access to ARM devices. They invited feedback from early adopters.
The ARM architecture, specifically in this case ARM64, is one that allows for better processor performance with significantly less power than traditional x86 processors. However, most Windows software is, or at least was, designed for x86. If an app wasn’t made for ARM, then Windows has to supply a compatibility layer in order for that app to run on an ARM processor. That adds overhead, resulting in a suboptimal experience. Audacity running natively on ARM64 means it should run smoother and more efficiently on a Windows on Arm setup.
Aside from the architecture news, there were several bug fixes included with Audacity 3.7.5, as listed in the release notes:
- FLAC importer now supports 32-bit PCM
- Fixed crash when rendering spectrum view
- Fixed lost focus when registration window was closed
- Fixed crash on wav import (when audio file is up to 7 ms long)
- Fixed crash when using Macro Wizard
ARM-based computers have been creeping into the mainstream for years now. Technically, Windows has offered a version supporting ARM as far back as 2012, but adoption from app developers themselves has been slow. This marks a step forward in that direction for Audacity, though.
It’s fascinating to track the development of Audacity after it was the subject of controversies that seemed to take over the open source community four years ago. At the time, several forks of Audacity’s source code sprung up to serve those who didn’t trust Audacity anymore because of its proposed (and now opt-in) telemetry. As far as I can tell, though, most have died off since then. An exception would be Tenacity, though it seems to get updates far less often than Audacity does—like this one.
Regardless, it’s nice to see free and open source apps making the software usable on a multitude of platforms, so we can all edit our MP3s without worrying whether we bought the right kind of processor.
Source: 9to5Linux, Audacity GitHub