Audacity 3.7.5 has officially dropped, and while it’s mostly a maintenance update, there’s one headline feature worth pointing out. You see, for the first time, the free and open-source audio editor includes native support for Windows on ARM.
This means owners of devices like the Surface Pro X or newer Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs can finally run Audacity without relying on emulation. That should improve performance and efficiency on those systems, though it comes with some important caveats.
The ARM64 version only works on Windows 11 and needs an ARM-specific build of FFmpeg. Many plugins, including popular VST and OpenVINO-based options, won’t work at all. And while the developers note that Windows RT isn’t supported, that’s a given, as Microsoft abandoned that platform years ago.
Because the team doesn’t have wide access to ARM-based hardware, sadly, they haven’t been able to fully test this build. Users are encouraged to try it and report bugs to help improve support moving forward.
Outside of ARM-specific changes, Audacity 3.7.5 brings updates that benefit everyone. FLAC importing now supports 32-bit PCM, which should please audio purists. The release also addresses multiple crash scenarios, including issues triggered by importing very short WAV files, using the Macro Wizard, or rendering spectrum views.
The update also bumps several bundled libraries to newer versions: libopus 1.5.2, libcurl 8.12.1, and libpng 1.6.50.
Audacity remains available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Whether you’re working on a traditional desktop or testing the waters on newer ARM hardware, this release has something for you.
