I’m working with 5-track, 2.5 hour long files. Just people talking. I have a process I go through before I start editing (compress, normalize, high-pass, loudness normalization, limiter) and I’ve got it set up as a macro.
When I run the macro on one of these files (all five tracks), I need to make sure I have about 100GB of space on my hard disk or I run out of space before the macro finishes. Even when this doesn’t happen, the hard disk will be almost completely full. Then I close the file, and suddenly I get 100GB of space back again. But sometimes, it will run through the entire macro and fail to save the file (because not enough space), meaning the file becomes irretrievable and I have to start again.
Is this the way Audacity is meant to work? What on earth is taking all that space? Is there anything I can do to reduce the demands - short of doing all those steps above individually rather than as a macro?