I have used Audacity for the last 5 days. If I left it too long without using it I would have to throw everything away, empty the trash and then reinstall it because the sound was no longer working. It would crackle when I first hit play, but that was it. So have thrown away, downloaded, and installed Audacity 8 times now !!! Now the last couple of times I have done this and tried to reinstall, I still can’t get any sound! No matter what I do, I can use another audio and it still does the same thing. A little voice and crackle and then nothing. It’s playing because the meter is running on the audio. I have sound because I can hear it through iTunes. It’s MP3 audio. Why can’t I get this thing to install and stay installed and work from day to day? Love Audacity because I can slow down the recording, but wish it would work better. Is there a fix for this?
We need to know a few things about your system and job. I’m typing on a 2008 Mac Mini OS-X 10.6.8. What do you have?
What’s the job? What are you recording or playing? Did you make an MP3, or are you trying to play somebody else’s MP3, and from where?
And just to cover it, you downloaded the Audacity .DMG file, exploded it into the installer drive and then dragged the Audacity Folder into Applications, right?
Koz
I am so, so sorry! I didn’t do the “if all else fails, read the instructions”. I was going through the earlier posts and I have just been opening Audacity with the icon I was not dragging the whole folder into the applications. So sorry. It works like a charm now. I’ll cross my fingers that’s all I need to do. Sorry if I wasted anyones time.
Dang. Now I’m back. So right in the middle of listening, the sound went out. It’s never has gone out in the middle before, so something new for you. Crackle, little bit of voice, nothing. Geesh, so frustrating. I am using MAC OS 10.9.
Is it a Macbook Pro? Mavericks seems to create audio problems with those type of Macs.
If you installed Mavericks over earlier OS X, you could try reinstalling Mavericks.
What is your playback device in Audacity Device Toolbar ?
Does the sound come back in Audacity if you open QuickTime and play a song there?
Does it help if you choose Audacity > Preferences, “Recording” on the left, then reduce or increase the “Audio to Buffer” value?
Gale
I am getting the same problem i have ver 2.0.5 installed by dragging the folder from the DMG file on a MBP running 10.8.5. when i press play i get a bit of the music then a large crackle and silence.
i can change the output device to airplay and it works fine on my apple tv
i have experienced a similar problem with parallels and their forum said set the virtual machine of parallels settings output device to built in output rather than default device which cured the parallels problem so i thought this may solve the problem in audacity but no joy, any advice would be appreciated.
Press Play where - in Audacity? Is it only Audacity that has the problem?
Please try the fixes in the other threads like changing the Audio to Buffer up or down in Audacity’s Recording Preferences, or playing audio twice in QuickTime.
If you are using (or have used) headphones, be aware that the headphones port is flaky on MacBooks - try putting the headphones in and out firmly several times.
If it’s only an Audacity problem and nothing else helps, try 2.0.6-alpha (the top build from this list http://www.audacity.homerow.net/index.php?dir=mac/&sort=date&order=desc ) .
If 2.0.6-alpha has the same problem, try 2.0.3 release: http://audacity.googlecode.com/files/audacity-macosx-ub-2.0.3.zip . In some circumstances, 2.0.3 is said not to have crackly playback or playback that fails until you use QuickTime. Try 2.0.6-alpha first, if you can. We can’t test - our Macs do not have these issues.
Gale