Audacity Crashes by Applying Noise Reduction on Long Tracks – Windows 10

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Hi everyone,

I’m using Audacity 3.4.2 on Windows 10 (64-bit) and encountering a consistent crash when I try to apply the Noise Reduction effect on audio tracks longer than 30 minutes.

Here’s what happens:

  • I select a short noise profile (few seconds).
  • Then I select the full track (30–40 mins) and apply Noise Reduction.
  • Audacity immediately freezes and then crashes after a few seconds.

Things I’ve already tried:

  • Increased RAM and virtual memory allocation.
  • Disabled real-time preview (not available for this effect anyway).
  • Applied noise reduction in smaller chunks (which works, but is very time-consuming).
  • Reinstalled Audacity and updated all drivers.

Smaller files don’t cause any problems, but long-form content like podcasts always crashes when applying this effect.

Is there a known memory limit or buffer issue in Windows for this effect?
Would splitting the track or using another filter be a better option?

Any insights or tips would be greatly appreciated!

Also, for those exploring useful resources online, I recently came across this site might be worth checking out for general tools and content.

Thanks in advance!

2

I’m just going by memory here, so I’m probably wrong. 100,000,000 is the maximum number of samples that can be used by an effect. The effect should be checking for that when it starts.

3

It depends on the effect.

Some Nyquist effects have length limits, but Noise Reduction is written in C++ and should support processing any length.