http://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/

https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity.html/audacity-win-2.1.2.zip

https://www.google.com/#q=fosshub+audacity+problems

If you download either delete it or make sure to scan good for poisons.

Thanx Frank for the heads up!

If you download from good sites, that should not be an issue. Get the download from Audacity's native site.

Lots of 3rd party sites will also have the download to the popular and free software. They are the folks who like to load it up with bloatware and malware. Always seek out the OEM website for downloading any software.

I think it's called C-net.... a popular 3rd party site for downloads of freeware..... man, there's no way I would DL from that site. It's confusing as to are you actually clicking on the link for the software you want or is it for some other crapware software that you don't want? If I can't t find the original site, I will often pass on that software rather than take the chance.

Yeah... be very careful when downloading free software.

Agreed, downloading from CNET is very confusing. Sad, as it is a good source of info on new technology. I recall reading they were just bought out; don't know if that is true as Wikipedia only mentions acquisitions from 2008 (CBS) and standardizing with the U.K. version.

It's possible to acquire malware now by mousing / hovering over spots on a website. Scary.

Audacity's website and download host, Fosshub, was hacked. Audacity's download was replaced with a hacked version for less than three hours before the issue was discovered and Audacity went offline. According to Audacity's download counter the hacked version was downloaded 213 times.

Audacity is now operating from an alternative website. The Audacity team is reviewing ways to prevent future hacker incursions.

When googling something I've been directed to the C-net site more than once over the years and the above it true.
It's not ever clear what exactly you're downloading.
Hence, I've always left the site with little confidence in their motives and would not send someone there.

Back to topic....

Still flummoxed as to why people choose audacity when there are so many alternatives that some find easier to use.

Some of the reasons why I use it:
1. Free
2. Very stable.
3. Editing commands for cut, copy and paste work in a similiar manner as most word processors
4. Excellent WAVE to MP3 conversion.
5. Capability to enter metadata into a file.
6. Very nice set of effect tools.
7. Excellent documentation.
8. Have not found any alternative that is easier for me to use. I could do what I wanted in Audacity the first time I used it. Every other editor I've used I've needed to look at the documentation to understand how to use it.

Everybody approaches how they think through a task differently. Audacity's way of performing some tasks works for me but I understand it is not the only way and is not the best way for everyone. Variety is nice!

If you are just using it as a single track editor, then it is useful. But for multi track use, it still seems terribly hard to use and with no midi integration

I abandoned it for years but did use it fairly extensively this past winter with the function of splitting an audio track based on level for use of converting vinyl to mp3.

Other than that, to my mind much of the click based editing it counterintuitive compared to other daw software and freeware

Three Audacity features I find very useful are add click track, add silence and add label track.

If I know the tempo of a selection I can add a click track at that tempo and then use the click track to count bars or as visual reference points. That's a great way to align multitracks.

Adding silence is a great way to gain space for a quick fade-in to soften abrupt sounding beginnings of a file (like when a song begins at full volume with no fade-in).

Add label is great for making notes about what's going on or what I want to do at a specific location in a file.

Jim are you doing the manual alignment for every project? Manual track alignment is unnecessary in any DAW software. That's one of the things that just makes me scratch my head as to why people spend so much time messing with it. Have you ever used Real Band or any other software that is advertised as a DAW? You don't have to visually align tracks. They all have latency compensation in them and when you record a new track to be mixed with others they are already aligned. Things have been this way with DAW software in general for at least the last 10 years. Add silence in DAW software usually involves inserting bars. Not sure I understand the add label function, but there are some DAW like Tracktion which allow clip specific plugins and there are several VST which are just note plugins to type in comments and what not. Also most DAW have a tempo calculation feature for imported audio where you select a certain section and tell the DAW what number of measures that represents and voila the tempo is calculated. Click track is actually not printed to audio in most DAW but you can do that as well.

I'll definitively try using my daws, RealBand and Music Creator 6. I appreciate the suggestions.

"Not sure I understand the add label function" ...

Is one thing Audacity actually does a very good job of.

An example:

Download an entire album from YouTube which is a single file. Add labels to the beginning of each track and Audacity will export each labeled track as an individual file. Therefore, instead of a One Track CD consisting of 10 songs and requires fast forwarding or rewind to move between songs, the CD consists of 10 individual tracks.

You could also break a speech into specific sections.

Not a deal breaker but certainly worth the cost of the Audacity program.