Audacity is crashing every time I hit the play button or the spacebar or click in the timeline. is this a bug or is it my computer??
A “bug” is when it happens to everybody else, too. It’s good not to automatically use the “bug” word, particularly if you’re requesting help from the people you’re accusing of making mistakes.
We should figure out what’s wrong. How long is the show?
Are you trying to use iCloud? if so, stop. Audacity doesn’t like iCloud or any of the other cloud services.
If your machine filling up? How many other things do you have running at the same time?
Whenever Audacity or any other program runs into trouble, it can leave trash, fragments, bit and pieces, and debris all over the place making it even more likely to crash again. It’s good to restart the machine to clear it. If you can’t easily restart the machine, you may have identified one of the problems.
Koz
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend or accuse anyone of anything. I just want to continue to use audacity but I won’t be able to unless I can solve this problem. thanks for any help you can give me!!
I work on tracks that are no longer than one hour with no more than three separate tracks. I’ve been doing it like this for months without any issues.
I’m not using iCloud for anything. everything is stored on my system and when I’m done with editing I put the files on an external drive.
I’m also certain that when I use audacity there are no other apps open or being used. I also haven’t added any software or apps to my computer in months and this problem with crashing has only just started.
I’ve restarted my system and re-installed audacity as well as a system check that showed no problems.
Any other suggestions?
Don’t worry about the use of the word “bug”.
Which version of Audacity are you using?
Do any of your tracks have a sample rate of 32000? Look in the info area of the track control panel. If so, select the track(s) (click the “Select” button in the track control panel), then do Tracks (menu) > Resample and select 44100 in the dialog box.
Also make sure the Project Rate is 44100.
– Bill
Oh wow…thank you Bill!
This is working. And yes my tracks were set to other and theproject rate was 32000. 
Do any of your tracks have a sample rate of 32000?
Fascinating. 32000 isn’t a native, supported sample rate? That’s alarm bells. I’m pretty sure one of my ordinary sound recorders produces 32000 rate files straight out of the plastic wrap. I need to look.
Koz
@Koz
TL;DR
32000 (or any other rate) is supported by Audacity. There was a bug when the project rate was 32000 and the project contained tracks at rates other than 32000.
Details:
We’ve seen other users apparently import 32000 sample rate files into their projects as the first thing they do. That sets the project rate to 32000. Then they import files at other sample rates. When they try to play the project Audacity (almost always) crashes. This is bug 2536. It was first reported on the forum last August - see this thread. A bug was opened after I confirmed the problem. Since then several other Mac users have reported this. The bug has been fixed for the 3.0.0 release. It was apparently a bug in the soxr library that Audacity uses to resample tracks - so it only happened when a) there were tracks with different sample rates, and b) the project rate was 32000.
@laeccles: you were bitten by a known bug. Glad we were able to get you working again.
– Bill