Effects silence the waveform[SOLVED]

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Win Vista / Au2.0.5 / zip
Been using Audacity for 3 months to revive old media. Amazing program!

However out of the blue today any action of any length under the Effect menu simply silences about 6 seconds of track.
I’m not sure how to reinstall because Au is not in the Progs registry.
Can anyone tell me where to edit the profile or any way to sort this?
Thanks

2

Look in Edit > Preferences then choose “Directories” and ensure you have permission to write to that directory.

If you imported a WAV or AIFF for the audio that disappears, open File > Check Dependencies… to see the expected location of the file that Audacity can’t access. You can set Import / Export Preferences to always copy in WAV and AIFF files which then lets you move, rename or delete those files.

See here for how to reset Preferences by editing audacity.cfg:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/preferences.html#stored .


Gale

3

Thanks for looking at this but - respect - I don’t think your ideas have any bearing on this problem:

  • All files (.mp3, .aup) are now compromised by any Effect operation
  • I have been chuntering through the same .aup file for a few days before this happened today
  • there are no permission probs and this is not a file to disk issue - it happens within the Au prog
  • I have only exported to .mp3 or saved to .aup which still work
  • I have reset the config file as per webpage
    I’m guessing that a reinstall might do it but first how best to uninstall completely?

Thanks

4

They were (and still are) by far the most likely explanation, based on the information you have given.

Audacity makes all effect edits by writing the audio data changes to disk.

The audio data is divided up into “block files” with AU extension. The block files are by default about six seconds long. Even if you only select a millisecond of audio, if Audacity cannot write to that blockfile, the whole six seconds of audio for that block will be silenced.

If you have not saved a project yet, the AU files are in the temporary folder I pointed you to.

If you have saved a project, the AU files are in the _data folder for that project - wherever you saved it.

That depends where you are writing to.

Where are the projects located that show this issue?

If you start a new empty project, import an MP3 and don’t save the project yet, then apply an effect, do you see the audio silenced? If so, then Audacity cannot write to the location stated in Directories Preferences.

I have already said - as per: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/preferences.html#stored . In other words, quit Audacity, edit audacity.cfg down to:

NewPrefsInitialized=1

and restart Audacity.

All that does that is relevant is to reset the Audacity temporary directory to its default of:

C:Users<your user name>AppDataLocalTempaudacity_temp

If you cannot write there, the problem will persist. If you cannot write to the folder you saved your project to, the problem will persist.

If you still have a problem, please open the saved project that has the issue (or import the MP3 into a new unsaved project if that creates the issue) then attach the log file from Help > Show Log… .

Then we can see where Audacity is trying to write to, and what the error is when it tries to do so.


Gale

5

Thank you Gale

The audio data is divided up into “block files” with AU extension. The block files are by default about six seconds long. Even if you only select a millisecond of audio, if Audacity cannot write to that blockfile, the whole six seconds of audio for that block will be silenced.

Understood.
I was wrong. My files are on a separate HDD which had timed out.
Problem solved.