Hi everyone,
I recently started exploring Audacity and I’m really enjoying the simplicity and workflow so far. I’ve been using Studio One, Luna, and Reaper over the past 7 years, and thought I’d give Audacity a try. So far, it’s been a pleasant surprise.
However, I’m running into an issue that’s making it hard to continue. Whenever I load more than around 3 plugins in a project, I get a very loud distortion or buzz for about half a second every time I start playback. After that, playback continues normally—but the initial sound is harsh, especially when monitoring through headphones - caused my ears to hurt pretty badly for a while after!
I tried increasing the buffer size since I presumed the buzz was because the system resources were taxed or something (though it usually takes at least 10 plugins for this to happen on my other DAWs, maybe more). I increased it to 2000ms since I was just editing and not recording at that point. No bingo, issue still persisted.
Here’s my setup:
Device: 16” M1 MacBook Pro
OS: Sonoma 14.5
Audacity Version: Not sure but just downloaded it last week so very recent.
Plugins: Various iZotope, Waves and UAD plugins. They all load fine if I use the VST3 version.
After a bit more testing, Audacity also started crashing when I tried to load more plugins—whether on the master channel or on individual tracks. It started crashing after I loaded more than 5 plugins.
Any advice, workarounds, or insights? I’d really love to make Audacity a regular part of my workflow.
Thanks in advance!
Daniel