Audacity 2.2.2 (Windows 7) is VERY slow to respond

Hi all … Longtime Audacity user, new to these boards…

I’ve been noticing some extreme slowness in Audacity, and it has gotten worse in 2.2.2. When I click Play or Record (or use the spacebar for Play), there is often a lag of 10+ seconds, during part of which, the program reports “Not Responding” before finally starting.

As well, running processes like Compressor, Bass & Treble, Silence Section (Ctrl-L), etc. can take minutes rather than seconds, and again Audacity will often report “Not Responding” while the process runs. I saved about a 70-minute mono voice-only file as a project, and it took 10 minutes. I’m not exaggerating when I say that sort of thing used take 30 seconds or even less.

I am using Win7 on an Core i7 processor, and the computer has 4GB of RAM with about 800 MB to 1 GB free during these situations.

I’ve seen other people commenting about lag and general slowness… Any ideas?

On my Win 10 machine, Audacity was running (crawling) extremely slowly until I forced a full Windows update (to get the full update I had to update three times, and reboot about 6 times). Since then, Audacity 2.2.2 has been running fine. Check that your machine is fully updated.

Yikes. The updates are so poorly crafted that I don’t like using them. Food for thought.

I sympathize
(and don’t forget to back up anything important)