env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 audacity

I am on Linux Mint 17, 32 Mate.

Thank you Gale for suggesting to start Audacity from the Terminal with the command
env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 audacity

  • it played fine. Now folks, please help me implement this fix permanently!

I looked through the forums and noticed my problem is well known - however I didn’t find the clue how to implement this fix permanently.

My initial Preferences-Recording-Latency settings were
Audio to buffer = 100
Latency correction = -130

I changed Latency correction to 30, as Gale suggested. Audacity started playing mp3 files fine, but the cursor changed smooth motion to jumping by 1/4 inch intervals. And Audio to buffer by itself turned into 31000.
Please advise how to fix the problem.
Also I found that I added development PPA - please advise which PPA to use for Audacity stable.

Gale wrote:

I am not sure why the Linux Mint repository is carrying unreleased versions of
Audacity - did you enable unofficial or PPA sources?

Anyway, the problem probably isn’t version-specific and is likely due to the
interaction of pulseaudio and Audacity.

You can select the (hw) playback device - so bypassing pulse.

Because you are now trying to access the device directly through ALSA, if any
other program is accessing the device then it will not be available
for Audacity.

Also this denies exclusive access of a device to PulseAudio, so other
applications
using PulseAudio will not be able to use that device.

Or you can try launching Audacity at a terminal with

env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 audacity

If you are launching Audacity from a launcher or menu item, edit the “properties”.
For example, if the launcher “command” is currently:

audacity

change it to:

env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 audacity

Go back into preferences and delete the “31000”. Then, type in “100” (without quotes).

It is normally recommended to use the official repositories for your distribution and not use PPAs.

PPA repositories may be suitable for advanced users that are able to sort out any problems that may occur from using them.

No I wrote only what you cited further down your post.

“Latency correction” in Recording Preferences does nothing except move a recorded track left or right after you have finished recording against another track. It does not affect playback or recording at all.


Gale