New version of the audio editor now up for grabs

Mar 21, 2017 10:44 GMT  ·  By

Audacity was, is, and there’s a good chance it’ll continue to be one of the most popular audio editors out there, so every time new updates come out, users rush to give them a try.

This time, however, the new version of Audacity comes with mixed news for Windows users. As our resident Linux expert Marius Nestor told you a few hours ago, Audacity 2.1.3 is bringing tons of improvements, but as far as Windows systems are concerned, there are two very important changes.

First and foremost, this new version officially introduces support for Windows 10. The audio editor was already working on Windows given the fact that it fully supported previous versions of the operating system, but with this update, it’s fully compatible with Windows 10 and no bugs should exist anymore.

“Windows 10 is now supported (there should be no ‘Internal PortAudio Error’ or failure to find any devices as long as the built-in audio devices are enabled),” the change log reveals.

Waving goodbye to Windows XP

Additionally, this new version is also said to be the last one shipped for Windows XP users, though information here is a little scarce.

Basically, Audacity 2.1.3 is the last official update for Windows XP systems, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that future versions would no longer work on Microsoft’s OS launched nearly 16 years ago. The bigger problem is with bugs or new features that won’t work correctly with Windows XP, as the developing team would no longer address problems that users experience on this OS version.

Unfortunately, there still are plenty of users running Windows XP out there, with stats putting this old version at about 8 percent market share, and there’s a good chance some of them rely on Audacity for audio editing too.

Sooner or later, everyone on Windows XP might have to upgrade given that most applications abandon this OS version, so you should consider this option for your PC as well.

As always, if you want to give a try to this new version, you can download Audacity for Windows right now to see all the improvements in action.