I have M1 Mac running Tahoe 26.0.1 with Audacity 3.7.5. Recording and playback works without issue and I can save and load files on the local machine, but I am unable to save to or open from a mounted network share. My Windows PCs can work directly off of the network share.
When attempting to save to the share, Audacity seems to go through the entire save process as normal then… doesn’t produce a file. When trying to open a file from the remote folder, I get an error that simply says “could not open file”.
This is not a permission issue as I can save the file to the desktop then copy the file to the folder manually. Also, other programs (Text Edit, MS Word, etc) are capable of saving directly to/opening directly from the network share.
The network share is hosted on a Synology NAS running DSM 7.1.1-42962 Update 9 (the latest stable release). We operate in a domain environment, and everything else seems to be working as expected.
What format is the actual drive? Audacity cannot work with a FAT32 formatted drive, and will tell you that when it encounters one, but a NAS can obfuscate the underlying drive format.
This is not an arbitrary restriction on Audacity’s part. Audacity naturally assumes that any drive it can see can be used for any job. Picture setting up for a carefully timed musical overdubbing performance and then the network has connection troubles and changes to a longer, delayed pathway. Oh yes, they do do that. So now your music is out of time and you didn’t do anything! Networks can solve problems and not tell you.
Better stick with the machine’s internal drive for the actual work.
I should (and do on Windows PCs) have the ability to save anywhere. The working temp directories are all on the local machine.
Adding the extra steps of saving to the local file system then copying to the remote directory is inconvenient for one file, but adds a lot of complication when working with 50+ files at a time.
That puts you outside of Audacity’s design concept of one person recording one audiobook or song in a quiet room. It’s not designed for massive, large-scale industrial production.
Others have given the practical angle (work on the computer’s local drive).
The situation from a technical angle:
Audacity 3 projects (.aup3 files) are SQLite database files. Audacity uses “WAL mode” for efficiency and reliability, but this comes with some constraints, notably: WAL does not work over a network filesystem.
Thank you for giving a more detailed answer. My misunderstanding was in the fact that my Windows PC could complete the save across the network, which is apparently anomalous.
Our use case generates a large number of small files, which is why local save/transfer later was inconvenient. I can make a different arrangement (RSYNC a local folder or something similar) that will keep the number of steps for our use case to a minimum.
Hi, I’ve experienced exactly the same problem with Audacity (even in recent versions) on macOS when working with NASes (like Synology).
Unfortunately, this is a known limitation in how Audacity handles live file connections and data locking, especially with its new project format (which uses SQLite). Audacity typically requires exclusive and faster access to files, which network drives (even with well-configured SMB) often cannot reliably provide, while applications like Word or Text Editors do not.