Controls not working

I’m using OSX 10.9.4. Trying to learn Audacity, but following the tutorial gets me no where. I practice getting a :10 cut, but immediately it starts to play and when it reaches the end, the markers are lost. Following instructions, I cannot fine tune start and stop points since they are lost as soon as the play stops. Chosing Edit>Remove Audio or Lebels>Trim Audio does nothing. Is Audacity 2.0.5 compatible with Mavericks? What am I doing wrong?

I’m trying to guess what you might be doing as you have not said what instructions you are following. If the instructions are on-line, perhaps you can post a link.

Not sure what you mean.

For that to work, you need to have “region labels”.

To “label” a region, first “select” part of an audio track.
The simplest way to “select” part of a track is to click on the audio track and then, while holding the mouse button down, drag along the track, then release the mouse button. The “selection” will then be highlighted in a darker colour.
You can then label the region by pressing Command + B, then Enter.
Optionally you can type text into the label before pressing the Enter key.

In order to edit a track, you don’t have to “label” the track, you just need to make a “selection”. For example, if you want to delete the last 10 seconds from a track, click on the track 10 seconds before the end, and drag to the end (or beyond the end) of the track, then press the Delete key.

Probably a good place start, is to work through the “Getting Started” tutorials.
They are available on-line here: Audacity Manual
or can be found in the Audacity “Help menu > Quick Help”.