Hi there! I am working with Audacity 2.4.2 on a Mac OS Catalina 10.15.6. I use the program to edit a podcast. I import audio files from recording sessions over Zoom and royalty free music and so depending on the episode usually have anywhere from 5 to 10 tracks because we record the audio from the zoom interviews locally as separate audio files for each person on the call. This allows for more accurate editing ect. However, it seems the program has gotten more and more sensitive and will crash for the slightest reason. I even updated the program thinking the older version was the problem but that didn’t help. I want to continue to use this program - it’s awesome - but when you have to constantly save, then go to add an effect, and have it crash it’s extremely frustrating. I.E. reopening, saving, and then just simply pressing play to only have it crash again. I’ve attached pictures of the warnings that I’ve received multiple times while working. Specifically, Warning: Problems in Automatic Recovery and Warning-Orphan Block File(s). I would love help understanding these warnings and how to avoid them if I’m doing something wrong.
Are all your tracks at the same sample rate and the same as the project rate?
– Bill
Hi Bill
The project rate is 32000 and tracks are either 44100 or 32000 (some mono some stereo). Is that my problem?
Is that my problem?
Probably not, but why 32000? 44100 is the quality of Music CD and 48000 is the quality for Video. 32000 is about the quality for FM Radio. You shouldn’t be producing at that low quality if you can help it.
You might just be out of room and I don’t mean the hard drive. For some effects, Audacity has to put the whole track into active memory. I show by the indicators in your doc that you have a whole basket of things taking up memory. Why do you need two browsers—both on at once?
I know it’s convenient to leave all the apps napping like that and that’s how the system was designed, but audio (and video) production doesn’t like that very much. They’re memory hogs.
Make sure all your work in all the apps is safely saved and then quit everything.
Then Apple (upper left) > Restart.
That better?
Some Apple-y things. You can make the dock sink out of sight when you 're not using it. Apple (upper left) > System Preferences > Dock
Get the cursor close to the bottom and it will pop back up.
There’s magic keys that let you take pictures of the screen. SHIFT+COMMAND+3 will shoot the whole screen and leave the picture file on your desktop.
SHIFT+COMMAND+4 will let you draw a box around something small.
Koz
Yes, that’s your problem. This is a known bug.
For the tracks that are at 32000, select each of them and do Tracks > Resample and choose 44100 as the new sample rate. Then change the project sample rate to 44100.
In the future, make sure that all tracks, and your project rate, are that same (preferably 44100), just to be safe. Audacity can almost always handle tracks at different sample rates. A project rate of 32000 with tracks not at 32000 is the perfect storm.
– Bill
@billw58 THANK YOU SO MUCH! That resolved the issue.