Sounds: Refresh and Update to Audacity 4

[its-miroma]

Audacity 4 is a ground-up rewrite of the beloved Audacity, with a fresh new interface, many new features, and streamlined workflows. https://www.audacityteam.org/audacity-4/

We should consider updating our custom sound pages to use Audacity 4 instead of Audacity 3, including the screenshots. That's because now the official website promotes Audacity 4.

If it's too early, we should at least update the link to be: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/older-versions/. But personally, I'm of the opinion that we should embrace Audacity 4.

• https://docs.fabricmc.net/develop/sounds/using-sounds (no external software)
• https://docs.fabricmc.net/develop/sounds/custom
• https://docs.fabricmc.net/develop/sounds/dynamic-sounds

A few other notes regarding "Dynamic Sounds" and the other pages too:

• It recommends Reaper, which is paid-for and not open-source, therefore not ideal for hobbyists. Consider rewriting the article to use other software (perhaps Audacity 4 itself, I don't know if the feature set overlaps enough).
• It uses the singular first person in some places, which is discouraged by refresh contribution guidelines #547.
• It is a very long article. We probably should move #advanced-sound-instances to its own page.
• Let's remember to update the Resources in the aside.
• While we're updating, we should reconsider the heading structure. In general, articles shouldn't start with a heading, there should be a preamble always. And "Using Sounds" —the only page that actually has one— still isn't ideal, because the entirety of the rest of the article is nested under one same heading ("Using Sounds in Your Mod", basically the page title). I will add these to the guidelines too.

cc. @JR1811, author of all three articles 🔥✍️, for his thoughts

[JR1811]

Audacity / Reaper

I think we should link to the new Audacity page, but im not sure if we should rework the page documentation to actually use Audacity 4 just yet. From what ive heared, they are still in a big rewrite so a lot is still up for change, and im not a big fan of how they throw the external launcher at you now (i think MuseHub?). If you want a full rework to Audacity, i would probably still wait a bit until all the kinks are ironed out over there.

Reaper DAW is not open-source, but you can use the software as is if you need to, similar to WinRar. They just force you to wait for 5 sec and you can use it... 😕 I understand if thats problematic for the docs page tho.

In terms of sound design Reaper is one of the industry standards and its what im used to. Also, from what I've seen, Mojang is using it as well in their audio production pipeline since its one of the most customizable DAWs out there.

Rest

I totally agree with the other points. The pages were created before the guidelines were reworked iirc but getting them all in line with the rest of the docs will make it easier to navigate and work with.

[its-miroma]

im not a big fan of how they throw the external launcher at you now (i think MuseHub?).

I don't like that either, and this is yet another reason why we should update our docs page so the user knows about that

i would probably still wait a bit until all the kinks are ironed out over there.

Fair enough, and I'm not in a rush either. We can wait a few more weeks np

Reaper DAW is not open-source, but you can use the software as is if you need to, similar to WinRar.

That's pretty honorable of them, especially reading the message they wrote in the dialog. It is still technically using unpaid-for software, so it may raise some people's eyebrows. Also, while you and I know and trust the software, some newcomer might confuse it for a scam that asks for money.

I don't disagree that it may be the industry standard, but if its features we use are covered by Audacity we could avoid confusing readers with multiple different programs. We can still keep it as a recommendation, of course, and I'm not demanding that you learn a whole new DAW of course