Audacity crashes upon opening/importing MP3.

Hey forum. I’m new, and I need help. Badly.
I’m beginning to have an interest in recording and editing music, and discovered that Audacity could do some things that Garageband cannot, so I downloaded and installed it.
Now, what I am trying to do is remove the guitar track in the song BigCityCreams by NeverShoutNever, so I can cover it with my own guitar.
However, the problem that I am facing is that every time, and I have tried 3 or 4 times, I try to import/open the .mp3 file, Audacity crashes.
And after doing some research, I am aware that a progress bar is supposed to appear as it opens/imports, which does not happen. Instead, the program becomes unresponsive, and the cursor turns into the multi-coloured loading cursor, which usually happens when programs are non-responsive, like I said. After a short time of non-responsiveness, it crashes.

Does anybody know what I may be doing wrong, or what may help my situation?

Thanks. -Matt

You’re not doing anything wrong, assuming you have Audacity 2.0.4 (look at Audacity > About Audacity for the version).

It’s a problem associated with accented characters in file and folder names and the way that Audacity records your system language. Please see the top item here:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Release_Notes_2.0.4#Imports_and_Exports .

However, 2.0.4 is worse than we were expecting as regards this problem and on some machines Audacity may crash often when importing.

I would suggest you try the following test build called 2.0.5-alpha that has a fix. It is essentially the same as 2.0.4 apart from that fix:
http://gaclrecords.org.uk/test-builds/audacity-r12559-plus-import-fix-macosx-ub-2.0.5.zip .

It would be very helpful to us if you could try that 2.0.5-alpha build and let us know in this if you get any crashes.

If you still receive crashes with 2.0.5-alpha, please attach a crash report for that latest crash. You can view saved reports by opening Finder, then choose Go > Go to Folder and type:

~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ .

If you are on OS X 10.5 or earlier, that’s at ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter instead.


Gale

Thank you for having an interest in helping me, Gale.

As much as I wish I understood, I do not understand much of the information given to me in the first link you sent.
As well, the second link does not work.

I had been getting crash after crash this morning trying to open AIFF-C files. Then I downloaded the 2.0.5 Alpha version. In an instant I was able to open 13 files without crashing. I brought the files together into one and exported as an MP3. Seamlessly! Thanks a bunch!

You should also be able to get the alpha test build by visiting http://gaclrecords.org.uk/test-builds/ then clicking “audacity-r12559-plus-import-fix-macosx-ub-2.0.5.zip”.

Letting us know if that test works or not will help us refine the fix as needed.

However you can also try the previous 2.0.3 http://audacity.googlecode.com/files/audacity-macosx-ub-2.0.3.zip . That may crash less than 2.0.4 but you could still experience some crashes.

Please let us know if you need any more help.


Gale

After Audacity 2.0.4 crashes on trying to import a file, I tried the 2.0.5 alpha version : it works well on my iMac 27" with French Mountain Lion.
I join the diagnostic report of 2.0.4 crash.
Thanks for this beautiful software !
AntoineR

Thanks, AntoineR.

No file was attached, but it does not matter because the problem should be fixed now.


Gale

I’m having the same problem.

Right-click on an MP3 file (about 3 minutes of music). Select “Open with Audacity”. Audacity launches, and then nothing happens.
With Audacity launched, try the same thing – nothing happens.
Using the “File Open” menu, try opening the file. Sometimes it opens, sometimes Audacity freezes.
After opening one file, I tried opening another, to be able to copy and paste – the second file caused a freeze.
Same thing happened after restarting the Mac.

The only way I was able to edit the 2 files was to save one as an .aup file, open and save the second, then both opened OK, but there was some trouble with invalid clusters in one of the files. Still managed to do the edit.

Tried using the alpha 2.0.5 build – still can’t right-click on an MP3 file and open it in Audacity 2.0.5a.

Same right-click behavior observed on my MacBook with both Audacity 2.0.4 and 2.0.5a.

Right-clicking works just fine in 2.0.3.

Thanks for any help!

Audacity 2.0.4 and 2.0.5a

Mac OS X 10.5.8
G4 PPC Dual 800 MHz processors, 1.5MB RAM

Mac OS X 10.7.5
MacBook 2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 4GB RAM

Please update to the latest 2.0.5 release that solves all these issues:
http://audacityteam.org/download/mac .

Here is a list of the bug fixes and changes in 2.0.5: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Release_Notes_2.0.5#Changes_Since_Previous_Version .

If you are not already doing so, you may subscribe here: http://audacityteam.org/#announce to receive an e-mail when we release new versions of Audacity. To subscribe, enter your e-mail address and click “Add”.

Please start a new topic if you encounter any problems in 2.0.5 release.



Gale