Feature Requests

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Please try to keep feature requests as short as possible here so that it's easy to quickly scan the whole list; if you want to discuss the feature, please add a WikiWord and link to another page to discuss it. The Audacity developers will refer to this list for ideas.

Click here to add a new request. Please remember to see if your idea hasn't already been suggested.

If you would like to vote for your favorite features, please feel free to edit this page (use the link at the bottom), and change the number of votes next to any feature. You may also re-sort the list. Please be honest and only increase the count by one, and please only vote for 6-8 features. (Increased from the previous limit of 3-4 features because there are so many. Also, once a feature has been completed (like VU meters, in Audacity 1.2.2), you can vote for another, too!

Interested in sponsoring a feature? Contact the Audacity developers for information if you want to contribute money in order to have your favorite feature implemented sooner.

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Completed Features have moved to a separate page

= Features We Can't Implement = because of restrictions placed on us by other copyright holders. These are things that it would be good to do in audacity, but would involve using formats or protocols that belong to companies who do not allow them to be used in open source programs like audacity.

Highest-rated

Anything with 10 or more votes can be moved here so that it will really grab the Audacity developers' attention:

Highest-rated by Community Radio Public Affairs and News Editors:

• Ability to drop vertical marks that are 'glued' to the waveform on the main track (not on a label track). They should move when when track is moved, and also be adjustable and label-able. Should be possible to highlight for cutting, copying or other operations the area between two adjacent marks. This is an extremely useful feature available in Sound Forge and most other editing programs. (If this feature were installed, AMARC would recommend and distribute Audacity for the worldwide community radio editing norm. It would be wonderful to have it available by November 2006 when AMARC has its quadrennial conference! [see www.amarc.org} Add AMARC's 3000+ worldwide members to the votes here.) (17 Votes and rising)
• Ability to make selection between labels (like double clicking between markers in soundforge)
• Ability to select multiple non-adjacent labels (such as with control-click or shift-click (which is better for previously requested item)). Then pressing the play button would play all of the selected areas in the audio file, skipping the non-selected regions. This feature would be useful for comparing two regions of an audio file without delay between the playback of the two (or more) labeled regions.
• Set selection based on multiple time-points as "clipped in" or "clipped out," and then have the ability to play the track with "clipped in" points only -- standard feature on professional audio editing systems. (3 votes)
• Synchronize playback / recording without manual time-shift tool (53 votes)
• Should be MTC/MMC slave and master
• LAME commandline switches (40 votes)
• Punch-in and punch-out recording (32 votes) *PLEASE!*
• Panning envelope editing (31 votes)
• Dolby: Multi-track output (mix down to Dolby 5.1, 7.1, 10.2, 64.4 etc, Playback w. ALSA and Export). (30 votes)
• Noise removal (more flexible - ala Goldwave, possibility to apply effect even less) (31 votes)
• Import/Export Aud-X (mp3 5.1) files (1 votes)
• Horizontal line at 0 (DC=0) to more easily detect DC offset. (19 votes)
  • Implemented in CVS
• Import/Export AAC/MP4 multichannel files using free FAAC library (24 votes)
• Cue sheets: ability to import/export cue sheets for CD burning (and/or text file compatible with shntool) to and from labels (3 votes)
• Automation: Capacity to apply to a great numbers of files in a batch mode the following actions: to normalize, to make fade in (from the beginning) and fade out (from the end), determining the time of the fades in seconds (18 votes)

* Bpm Detection and beats / bars timecode and automatic beat matching/syncing with 2 or more songs (21 votes)

• Allow real time adjustment RealTimeAdjustment (17 votes)
  • could allow effect intensity/LADSPA plugin parameters/panning to be varied in real-time?
  • include something similar to the envelope tool to adjust the effect parameters?
• Fast-foward and Fast-reverse to the Next or Previous, Silence or Marked Point (16 votes)
• More precise Volume leveling (both gain and input volume where card supports it (15 votes)
  • (Note that you can shift-click to drag the gain/pan sliders with more precision)
• Allow saving and loading of FFT/adjustable filters/EQ parameters to reapply later (17 votes)
  • Would be nice if a batch file of sorts could be created that allows effects with given params in set order - this implements other requested features too
  • And if the FFT filter data were saved in a nice format, such as CSV, we could work around the currently awkward dialogue interface.
• Incorporate midi sequencer (16 votes)
  • It doesn't make a lot of sense to add support for MIDI files if Audacity can't also be used as a sequencer. Obviously this would take some time, but if sufficiently developed would make Audacity competitive even with ProTools and Sonar!
• Loop file in track (i.e. drum lines, bass loops, etc.) (11 votes)
  • Note: The "Loop Play" command ("L" or shift-play) and the "Repeat" effect provide limited looping features.
• Time Shift Tool to move all selected tracks at the same time, and tell in tool bar the shift amount (12 votes)
• VoiceActivated -Recording (VOR or VOX) - stops recording when you are not speaking but continues to record in the same file when you start speaking again (12 votes)
• Import/Export AC3 files (11 votes)
• SampleClipCount

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Hello. It would be nice to have the timed recording option in the file menu so you can just check it and you hit record buton and it would come up with a dialouge box that would give you choices. (1 vote)

• logarithmic Y axis scale in the spectral track view would be cool, so played notes are easiliy transscribable to music notes (1 vote)
• note recognition view with wav-to-Midi capabilities
• a beep should be emitted after certain types of operations have completed; the operations would be things like file import/export which can take a long time (which means that the user may wish to do another task while waiting for it to compete, but would like to return to audacity the instant that the operation has completed); an additional option would be to have a popup (1 vote)

Segmenting Tracks

• Ability to time-shift a /selection/ within a track and not have to split selection to another track first. (1 vote)
  • This would also make an automatic crossfade feature necessary in order to make edits not produce those irritating little clicks.
• Parsing (automatically starts recording a new track) based on configurable "silence" period usually found between program segments (merged two items here) (8 votes) try this script to create labels at each silence, then export multiple.
• In case the track contains multiple songs (e.g when created from a cassette/LP or live recording), the user needs to save each song separately. Allow Audacity to automatically select/mark/label each section of a track that are separated by n seconds of silence. (where n is user-settable.) After this, let the user check each part manually, and if required adjust the star/end of each part. Then let him save/export all parts at once.
• TextTrack 's (3 votes)
• Export Multiple - change radio buttons under "Name Files" to check box or drop-downs with. Ie. Label/Track name and Number consecutively, and Prefix (e.g. <album><track><title> would now be automated. Postfix label as well? (3 Votes)
• Define selection start and selection end via keyboard while listening (3 votes)
• Preview
  • Cut: Plays 3 secs before and after the selected area but skips the selection itself (12 votes)
  • Selection: Listen to a few seconds before and after a highlighted section (while in high magnification) (4 votes)
  • Selection Beginning-End: Listen to a few seconds of the beginning of selection; Listen to a few seconds of the end of selection (to test whether long selection is desired selection) (2 votes)
• A "paste special" function, my main desire would be the ability to paste a loop 2 or 9 or 'x' number of times, but might also include some other paste options (1 votes)
  • select the section, then use the "Repeat" effect ?
• Paste a selection to any track, to the current position of the cursor, not just to the beginning of the track, or just to the end of existing material on the track (2 votes)
• When setting volume envelope points for a track, it would be very useful (and sharp), when moving a edit point, having, in the status bar, or in a tooltip, the possibility of showing, while the point is dragged:
  • gain amount
  • position in the timeline
  • it's also very useful the possibility of having a tooltip appearing when the mouse is over a volume envelope point, telling the gain amount, and maybe also the position in the timeline (1 vote)
• Adjust Clip Boundaries - Recovering original audio from adjoining split/deleted clip. Done in other programs (Audition1.5, Cubase, Vegas) with a drag corner at the start and end of clip. (2 votes)
• Improve time shifting. When using the time shift tool, a useful improvement would be for the cursor within the track being moved to move with the track. Currently is stays at the same time setting. Additionally, if this cursor extended over other visible tracks, it would make it much easier to line up one track with the others. (1 vote)
• Add ability to automatically select audio between two labels (1 vote)
• Need display of Snap to { on | Off } setting (probably at bottom of screen) (1 vote)

Expand selection command: After recording from an LP or a cassette or a live session, a single track will contain multiple songs, which the user has to separate. Let the user place his cursor on a track, and then use a "Expand selection" command. Audacity should expand the selection on both sides (towards left and right) till it finds silence (or the beginning/end of the track).

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Frequency Analysis Capabilities

This section is now at Suggested Frequency Analysis Capabilities.

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Automation

• Batch process a folder of audio files as follows for making samples for the web: open file, select portion of file between 0:30 and 1:00, trim away the rest of the file, add fade in and fade out, save as 128kbps mp3. I have to do literally thousands of these a month by hand. (6 votes)
  • look at a comand line program like SOX (http://sox.sourceforge.net/) - works best for jobs that are strictly repetitive, with no user input.
• Ability to use the bass boost in batch encode (1 votes)
• Convert between file formats / bit depths / sample rates in the same way (9 votes)
• How about simply allowing any effects to be used in batch mode, with the specified parameters, like a macro script? (4 votes) (Couldn't we just add all other batch mode request votes to this?)
• Scriptability (19 votes)
  • LibAudacity - library allowing integration with other C code. a pre-requisite for the following? (6 votes)
  • Control Audacity from Python (5 votes)
  • Control Audacity from Visual Basic (1 votes)
  • Control Audacity from TCL/TK (0 votes)
  • Control Audacity from AppleScript (5 votes)
  • Control Audacity from command line, Audacity-remote (19 votes)
  • Nyquist debugger within Audacity (0 votes)
  • Ability to save currently applied filters (those appeared in Undo/Redo) as an editable (probably Nyquist) script. (1 votes)
  • User defined composite operations (scripts) bound to a button (2 votes)
• PlugIn Support (1 votes) - allow plugins to replace any/all of audacity and expose all of audacity to plugins for manipulation. Will allow plugin packages for specialized applications (video-editing, CD ripping, CDDA support, for example)
  • Equals Mezzo (http://www.audacityteam.org/wiki/index.pl?Mezzo) ?
• Ability to bind functions (effects, plugins, etc) to buttons and/or keystrokes. E.g. one keystroke to amplifiy +3db, another keystroke -3db, another to compress (0 votes)

• Start/stop recording at a user-defined threshold, e.g., start recording when the level goes above 30db, and stop recording when the level drops below 30db and stays there for 3 minutes or some other user-defined interval (2 votes)
• RSS Support (mainly to podcasters) in 'Podcast Projects', integrated with FTP, then the RSS is automatic created and the Podcast is uploaded to Server (0 votes)

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For Documentation Update or FAQ

• Easier way to convert between different sampling rates without changing pitch and speed. In the current version I changed the sampling rate of the track, then I compensated the speed. But how can I save the wav in the correct sampling rate then? The saved wav is always 44khz!
  • The "Project Rate" menu at the bottom of the Audacity window controls the export/playback format. Just set the desired project rate and export, the tracks are automatically converted to the project rate for export.
• Deletion of selection without moving further parts of the track backwards (2 votes)
  • Can't this be done with the "silence" command?

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Effects

• A de-clipper for repairing overdriven sound
• Classify the LADSPA effects, a bit like in TerminatorX (very clean sub-directories arrangement). (2 votes)
  • It could be given to the user the ability to create and manipulate you own effects submenus for organizing the plugins(eg. using XML files)
• Preview effects for whole duration of a selection, with option to loop the preview(1 vote)
• Allow effects to be applied in realtime (3 votes)
• Allow saving and loading of FFT/adjustable filters/EQ parameters to reapply later (14 votes)
• Include a grid in the EQ display (1 vote)
• Add effects for post-processing records (like GramoFile ) (7 votes)
• Noise gate (not noise removal, just a simple binary gate) (6 votes)
• I would love it there were more stompbox-style effects, you know, like distortion, the leslie speaker effect, chorus, flanger, talkbox/vocoder, That would be great. (3 votes)
  • LADSPA plugins are already supported, and there are many available for such effects
• Truncate silence. Implemented in 1.3.x for mono tracks but needs to work in stereo (7 votes)
• Generate silence does not change zoom level (3 votes)
• Generate tone does not change zoom level (4 votes)
• Generate tone exactly covers selection (ie beep out) (3 votes)
• Generate tone provides a drop down list of notes to set the frequency - i.e. middle C (264Hz), etc. (3 votes)
• Single menu command for Extract vocals/instrumental from stereo sources (4 votes)
  • This is very hit and miss - on many recordings simple techniques don't work well or at all. Better techniques very complicated and need considerable setup / helping.
• Allow MIDI files to control VST Instruments (1 vote)
• Dolby B and Dolby C input and output filters (for converting to/from tape recordings in Dolby) (0 votes)
  • Will need quite a lot of trial and error by ear, as the Dolby process is recording level dependant. Needs expander and treble cut.
    • I agree. It would be tricky to get it right without straight-up copying the actual process. This would be a licensing no-no. Trust me, I work at Dolby.
• Smoothen effect, perhaps using a weighted average (or a better method), see http://audacityteam.org/FeatureRequest.php?mode=details&id=83 (0 votes)'

a. I wunder about a tool to easy removing of noise could be usefull in the program. Like the rubber tool in f.ex. photoshop. The rubber tool schould flatten the noise when you tuch the noise. It would then be possible to remove noise in less zooming.

b. And maybe it could be usefull to have the possibility to set the

pencil to (f.ex. with SHIFT ) only go complete horisontally.

would it be possible to include some pre sets on effects like echo(stadium,hall,front room etc and any others like gverb ??

• An option to normalize tracks individually. (Currently, normalizing works either on all tracks as a single group, or only on the selected track.) (1 vote)
• An automatic silence remover for silence at the beginning and end of a track. I would like to open a WAV file I have and have Audacity automatically cut out the silence so the sound begins right away. This feature is perfected in commercsoftware such as Acoustica Audio Converter Pro (1 vote)
• I would like to see a treble booster. I wonder if there could be loops in Audacity for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux because garage band has it already and i have heard other people are dying to get something like that. especially windows users.
• Gradually increasing/decreasing tempochanges (without pitch) to facilitate DJ-style mixing
• to make the effects drop-down menu capable of sub-folders, so that the user can organize his plug-ins however he wishes.(1 vote)
• Provide a way to see the same VST plugins interface that we can see in other softwares like Cubase or Sonar
• Apply Change Speed effect to labels as well as audio, otherwise, labels become out of step.
• Allow a way to categorise effects, or place them in directories. Also allow Audacity to use effects in a different location.

Improved Resource Control

• Search and recognize existing hardware capabilities. Specifically, note limits on quality achievable due to RAM configuration, DAC bit counts, soundboard specifics such as db gain at recording levels (41, 44, 96), and other software installed on the machine (iTunes, other popular players / organizers). Then customize recommendations by what is doable on that machine, but still allow anyone to get extreme if they wish. (0 votes)
• A nondefault setting to allow recovery/retaining of current data (recording in progress or otherwise) in case of accidental closure of audacity or power failure - even if data cannot be fully recovered it is preferable to have something (e.g. 70 minutes) rather than nothing, especially when recording live events (2 votes)
• Disk use limit for recording (6 votes)
• Loop record option, commit last 2 hours of recording, at any moment. (2 votes)
• Undo buffer management:
  • Compress undo buffers (2 votes)
  • (You can already clear the Undo buffers by opening the Undo History dialog box, and compressing will take lots of CPU and have little space gain unless you use a lossy compressor, which kind of defeats the point of undo...)
  • Save undo history into the project file(s) - useful for picking up on a project at a later time (2 vote).
  • Per-track undo history and stack. So you don't have to undo a bunch of changes you DO want on some tracks to get rid of something you did a while ago to another track. Also, the history would be viewable per track so you can remember what effects and such each track has had applied (so you don't mess up the effects chain order or over-do anything).
• Allow recording from multiple channel sound devices at once - a lot of multi-channel cards look like this to the application, rather than one multi-channel device. A good behavior could be: (6 votes)
  • there must me the possibility of selecting, for any track, a recording source, from the ones available for a certain sound card (also with the possibility of using multiple sound cards)
  • for mono tracks a mono IN form the sound card must be choosen; for stereo tracks, two mono INs from the soundcard must be choosen (but they can also be the same)
  • for each track the INs can be the same or different, and there must be a key for selecting whether the track is selected for recording or not
  • when the recording button in the transport panel of audacity is pressed, the recording begins, from the current position of the cursor, to the multiple tracks active for recording, from the sources selected for the various tracks (that is: real multitrack recording); so, the recording doesn't create a new track, but happens in the already present tracks
  • a versatile possibility would be to be able to choose the default recording source from Audacity just the way it is done now, and this is selected by default for each track, but with the possibility, for each track, of selecting a different recording source, the way I just described
  • this would also allow the possibility of easily setting the sampling rate, depth and number of channels for a track, before recording, and not simply based on master Audacity preferences and project settings, with maximum versatility
• IdlePriority

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Imports and Exports

• Import CD audio tracks (6 votes)
  • Import and edit a WHOLE CD, including the ability to edit track bonduaries and re-export it as a CD image (or tracks images). Useful for audio CD publishing. (2 vote)
• Option to export an Audacity project as a single file (7 votes)
• Speed up the importation of MP3 or other sound formats from avi or mpeg files (2 votes)
• Support for Speex codec (similar to Ogg Vorbis but optimized for voice) (8 votes)
• Export OGG tags (title, artist, album, etc) (8 votes)
• Import/Export AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) found e.g. on Nokia/SonyEricsson Mobile Phones' Voice Memo or Playing features (supported in ffmpeg) (4 votes)

Import/Export QuickTime files on Windows/Mac (5 votes)

• Import/Export OMF multi-track to/from ProTools /Cakewalk, etc. (2 votes)
• Export over a currently open .wav file (so Audacity can edit samples for a host sequencer without the user finding the new file) (1 vote)
• Import meter/key meta-events from MIDI-file (to represent time in measure/beat) & markers. (0 votes)
• Import / Export MPC files (Windows) (2 votes)
• Import/export DSS (3 votes)
• Ability to import and export .wma audio (Windows) (1 vote)
• Export multiple using labels to split tracks should filter out disallowed characters from filenames. e.g. a label of '01 - When?' should strip off the ? when creating the file name (1 vote)

• Option to export a meta-data file that records all changes made (5 votes)
• support import and export of AVI files including the video (2 votes)
  • what would you do with the video? - also, AVI is a wrapper, so would need dozens of codecs to cope with range of AVI file compressions. Could easily double the size of audacity just to open and play video files (look at Mplayer, Xine etc)
• An "all recognized formats" mask selection in the Windows open dialog (2 votes)
• Improvements to MP3 export dialog
  • Display genre drop-down list in alphabetical order (5 votes)
  • Define both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags simultaneously (rather than just either-or) (3 votes)
  • Allow leaving genre field blank (1 votes)
  • Allow custom genre in genre field for ID3v2 (4 votes)

• • More MP3 encoding options (bitrate, the possibility of choosing between CBR or VBR, etc...) (8 votes)
• The ability to turn off the realtime rendering of the waveform being recorded (for slower systems, to free up CPU and thus reduce the likelihood of glitches while recording)
• Ability to right click on multiple audio files in Explorer and have them open a project and then add to that project
• A fully paragraphic equalizer(slider for level & text boxes for frequency and Q width)(0 votes)
• When doing an export multiple to break a long track by labels, it would be useful for each WAV file to be an exact number of CDDA frames (similar to using the snap to option). Samples could be carried over (or borrowed) from following section as required. This would be useful when buring CDs to avoid microgaps. The FLAC encode actually has an option to do this (1 vote)

Web requests

• Add a link to this Wiki to the main (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ?) site's motif.
• Add some prominent, or add some more prominent if it's already somewhere on this wiki, linkage back to the main place andor wherever a newbie can quickly find themselves installing Audacity on their computer.
• Facilitate funding of features. Tip cup towards features? An "i'd give x dollars towards someone working on XYZ bit" kinda thing?

(1 vote)

Spectrum Settings

A lot of wildlife enthusiasts utilise this software for recording and editing animal sounds (e.g. birds, bats) who generally work from the spectrum rather than the waveform. The following would extend the sound analysis capabilities of the software and make the spectrum feature easier to use: . Threshold settings to remove the displayed background noise - i.e. only sound over a certain amplitude is displayed . Time marks displayed along x-axis, more frequency marks along y-axis . User defined spectrum colours . Settings saved upon exit (e.g. fit vertically, spectrum, threshold)

Controls

Add option for playback cursor to resume at stop point, not start point (3 votes)

Scrubbing: While playing back audio, I'd like to be able to drag and drop the time position indicator (cursor) left and right to skip to various places in the project. When I release the mouse button, playback should resume at that position. This is not an unusual feature - it is merely how every single one of dozens other audio players work. Good for controlling the end of (long) selections. So you don't have to start from the beginning and hear it all for the n-th time.(3 votes)

Mixer toolbar needs L....R balance control (2 votes)

Non-linear Fade In and Fade Out.

Perhaps include the ability to change the rate of the fade in and fade out.

Create labels automatically at pre-defined intervals.

Create labels automatically at pre-defined intervals on the timeline e.g. every 5 minutes. This would be of great help when you need to split a long continous single track from a speech.[ 2 votes]

Reversibly silent selection

Add the ability to silent a selection and later un-silent it (not just with undo, since we might want to do some other things before undo-ing the silence). Perhaps can be done similar to cut-lines.

`Peak hold` on limiter and compressors

A `peak hold` line on the compressors and limiter so that you can see what the maximum amount of compression/limiting was since starting. This can help in finding the right settings without having to watch stuff very very closely.

Indicators when audacity is busy

When I do a control-f (zoom to fit in window) in audacity on a 2 hour recording it takes a while before the waveform is displayed. Some busy indicator, maybe even progress bar might help. Same for moving around in a file, which can take time. (even on striped disks)

Statistics

Ability to gather statistics (Margin to dBFS, RMS volume, etc, see SF, WAvelab, etc) over an abirtrary length of audio, even the whole file.

DSD

DSD editing capabilities.

Korg MR-1 and MR-1000 are coming, making DSD more affordable, usable, etc. DSD editing software is rare and/or expensive. Dunno how well it blends with the current architecture for PCM. (bad?)

Stop Recording Before Disk Filled

Instead of having to perform crash recovery because of recording to a full hard disk, why not simply stop recording just before the disk is full?

Option to Record to an Existing Track Rather than to a New One

I believe it would be useful to have the OPTION to re-record to an existing track (i.e. the current cursor position), rather than always have to record to a new track and then copy/paste from there back to an existing one.

Remember import data for raw

When importing raw data, the sample rate is not remembered from last time. If I change from 44100 to 8000 I want that to be default next time I import something.

Secondary horizontal scrollbar for extents of selection

One very useful addition would be a secondary horizontal scroll bar (just above the existing standard horizontal scrollbar) that scrolls only the extents of selection.

This would come in handy when you've highlighted, say, one bar of a song, then want to zoom in to the sample level. You want to scroll back and forth in your selection, but the standard project-wide horizontal scrollbar isn't granular enough and you whiz way out of your selection.

Export Text Labels as XML

For using Audacity to analyze interviews or to generate Audio-Picture-Slideshows it should be possible to export all Text-Labels (with names) as XML. Nodes: "trackname" with Nodes "start, end, label".

Effects - normalise - percentages

Would it be possible to have a percentage normalisation option (as an alternative to decibels)? Many people have problems with decibels.

Importing a project into another project

Importing an Audacity project into another one could highly facilitate the development of big projects, because one can mantain the diffent parts separated

Gverb Negative roomsize

In Gverb I'd swear we used to be able to apply negative roomsize which reduced reverb which improved back-of-the-room recordings. Can this be reinstated?

Multi Channel Soundcard support - Posibillity to select Track input channel.

Also it does not seem to be possible on Windows at the moment, it would be really nice to have this function on Mac Os X and Linux, if possible. At the moment, if I like to make a stereo recording with my soundcards Microphone inputs, I have to create a 10 channel Project, to get to the input channels. If I like to use the digital Input its impossible, because of the restriction to 16 input channels. My digital Inputs are 21 to 28 ... so it would be important to increase at least the number of supported inputs.

Option to import .wav without resampling - changing .wav headers.

I have a problem with some .wav Files that I recorded, with an Hardiskrecorder, that had external sync to 48 kHz but due to an error in the settings after a short poweroff wrote 44.1 kHz in the .wav headers. This wavs now play at the wrong speed / pitch. If I import them to Audacity at 48kHz they are resampled, which is wrong, too. I´d like to just play them on 48k without other changes...