Equalization, selection problems

Had to revert to old version of Audacity, going back from 2.2.0 - bugs/changes in behaviour in 2.2 too troublesome. On Windows 8.1,

  • Create an equalization curve using points; try applying it again - doesn’t work, curve is lost
  • Selection toolbar too erratic, can’t adjust numbers to fine tune selection lenght, etc - as was always possible before

More info … downloaded 2.2.1, the selection mechanism seems better; will investigate more.

The Equalization effect still has bug; have determined that brickwalling the cut off is the issue. IOW, in the Draw mode, dragging one point to as as close as possible to another, say underneath, causes the latter’s position to be lost - this wasn’t an issue in 2.1.

This sounds like this known (and logged) bug:
“Equalization: control points can disappear when switching between log and linear if the points are at the same frequency”
https://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1750

WC

Okay, the bug has been around, but what triggers it has altered. Prior to 2.2 I’ve never seen the control points disappear adjusting for sharp cutoff in Draw mode - the equalisation always works as requested in the first instance, but the memory of the setting is lost as soon as the window is closed.

Getting back to the selection peculiarities, there definitely seems to be changes here: I quite often pad the beginning of a track with a tiny silence, for alignment purposes, and this is not behaving in an intuitive manner, as before. Specifically, if I add samples at the very beginning, I have a split, and I can’t join the boundaries - this is workaround territory, which I never had to worry about before.

And noting that sometimes I get a split, and sometimes not, when inserting a silence - there is a consistency of behaviour issue here.

Also, the precision has been lost. Trying to pad with samples of silence, the number needed to get alignment is hit and miss - is it 15, or 16, say? Never had this problem before.

Another selection issue, in 2.2.1. Multiple tracks, made the Selection Toolbar floating; altered the Project Rate in that toolbar, then attempted to focus on another track than the selected one, interface didn’t respond. Reversed the change of Project Rate, and that allowed track selection to work again.

Regarding the Project Rate issue, the problem is because the focus is not released on the input box - shift the focus, say, to the Start Selection entry, and everything’s normal.

Hmmmm — now looking particularly bad - a project was left overnight, with quite a few tracks, and work done. Tried undoing a couple of steps next day, and redoing - all tracks visually flatlined. At least one had real data still, it played, and applying a negative gain it reappeared - but a couple of others brought up a disturbing message, “Audacity failed to read a file in :.” … the program has lost track of the temporary files, it appears.

I’ve never had this level of reliability problem before, in Audacity.

Just to confirm, 2.2.1 corrupted both the project files of the working version and the earlier backup version. Error messages on reloading said there were problems with .au files, and silences would be inserted - but the tracks were all silenced. Luckily, I knew what had been done, so not a major issue regenerating the work - but, worrying …

I can think of nothing unusual that had been done to initiate this corruption - I think I’ll have to go back to 2.1 until 2.2 settles down a bit more …