Audacity 2.3.2, Windows 10 Pro. I’m editing a multi-track file of around 4 hours, so I acknowledge that this might just be due to the sheer size, but: no matter what I’m doing, Audacity experiences long (more than a minute) freezes and grey-outs whenever I try to make a change to the file. The window goes grey and unresponsive, and the cursor spins. It does this for up to a minute, sometimes longer, then resumes letting me interact with the file. This happens at least a dozen times per session, and the freeze is limited to Audacity. Everything else is running fine with no problem. Activities that have triggered this response:
opening a file (the file seems to open, but freezes/greys as soon as I click into the timeline)
importing a file
attempting to zoom in or out on the timeline
exporting the file
While I’m currently working with very large files, this also happens, to a lesser degree, with smaller projects. Sometimes just importing a 10-second effect to a 40-minute file is enough to freeze things up for a full minute. My system is custom-built with enough processing power and RAM to run the Adobe suite, and I never have this problem in Adobe Audition - just Audacity. Any idea what’s going on? Is it just the file size/length? Do I need to chop the file up into smaller bites?
I acknowledge that this might just be due to the sheer size
I think that’s a good guess. Audacity doesn’t edit sound files. It converts music to it own super high quality internal sound format and edits that. Further, under certain edits, it makes a backup copy of The Whole Show and it can do that multiple times.
When was the last time you restarted the machine? Win10 can do a clean shutdown with Shift-Shutdown. Wait a bit. Then Start.
Have you ever defragmented the drive?
Win10 does pretty well by itself, but it’s not perfect. This is from a Google search. YMMV.
but only if you leave the computer on over night. If you always shut down the computer when not in use (as everyone that is aware of the environmental issues should do), then Windows will not defragment. By default, Windows 10 disk optimization (previously “defrag”) runs automatically on a weekly schedule at the time set in automatic maintenance. On some systems, disk optimization “may” run when the computer os next booted if the computer was off at the scheduled time (I’ve not found definitive information about this, but there is hearsay evidence that some users experience substantial slow-downs due to this).
Having said that, a modern Windows computer with a large hard drive can run for a very long time before it really “needs” to be defragmented (typically many months).
A common cause of slow downs is Windows Update. I would recommend forcing a full Windows update, reboot and repeat until there are no further updates available. Do this at least once a month to avoid automatic updates from interrupting your work.
When was the last time you restarted the machine? Win10 can do a clean shutdown with Shift-Shutdown.
It gets a restart or a shutdown/restart every other day on average, and I’ve tried that as a solution before. It doesn’t generally make any difference.
Have you ever defragmented the drive?
Not for a few months, but it’s worth a try.
What else is running? Is this a clean machine or do you have Skype and a million other things running back there?
No Skype. I let very few things run in the background as a rule, and when I"m editing I manually close everything except Audacity (habit from the old days when I had a much slower machine).
By default, Windows 10 disk optimization (previously “defrag”) runs automatically on a weekly schedule at the time set in automatic maintenance. On some systems, disk optimization “may” run when the computer os next booted if the computer was off at the scheduled time (I’ve not found definitive information about this, but there is hearsay evidence that some users experience substantial slow-downs due to this).
Having said that, a modern Windows computer with a large hard drive can run for a very long time before it really “needs” to be defragmented (typically many months).
A common cause of slow downs is Windows Update. I would recommend forcing a full Windows update, reboot and repeat until there are no further updates available. Do this at least once a month to avoid automatic updates from interrupting your work.
I keep forgetting that “optimization” is automatic now. The machine is usually on during the day anyway, and it seems to think it’s all right on that score.
Windows Update is up to date, and I only ever install updates manually, but it’s gotten a lot harder to prevent Windows Update from doing whatever it wants, let alone defer or turn off updates. WU had occurred to me as a culprit, but it doesn’t show as overusing resources in the background in Task Manager while this is happening. I suppose I could disable it entirely while editing?
It’s also next to impossible to disable or defer updates on Windows 10 these days, even Pro, especially if you’re one of us unfortunates whose 1903 update disappeared the “defer updates” section from Advanced Options for no apparent reason.
Nonetheless, I’ll give manually disabling WU a try. It’s worth a shot.
