i am on a mac OS X 10.7.5 using audacity 2.0.5 i am continuing to have problems with audacity crashing. today i recorded two 60 minute sessions, exported one and then was working on a new recording when audacity froze. i forced quit and when i rebooted i was asked if i wanted to recover the two files. i said yes and the program froze again. again i forced quit, shut down my computer and re-started. now what? I am again being asked whether or not i want to automatically recover these files. not sure what to do. i have tried reading the forums and can not seem to follow how to manually recover these files.
In addition to Steve’s question, please say more about exactly what you are recording, with what equipment and how that equipment is connected. If you have a USB recording device, connect it to a spare USB port, not to a USB hub that has other USB devices connected to it.
If you are running Skype, turn it off.
Audacity is trying to recover the two projects from two AUTOSAVE files at ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/AutoSave. You can use Go > Go to Folder in Finder to visit that location. Check your exported file. If that exported file is OK you can trash the AUTOSAVE file for that recording, which only leaves you one file to recover.
If that other file freezes up on recovery, and if you hadn’t yet started editing that recording, you can recover the recording manually using the steps at Missing features - Audacity Support . Note that a stereo recording may recover with the channels transposed here and there.
Note: if you are not sure what drive or folder Audacity is using for the recovered projects, you can open the AUTOSAVE files in TextEdit and look for “datadir” near the top of the file.
Steve: I have 10.6 GB free. Gale: Is running Skype simultaneous to running Audacity a problem? if so, why? Gale: i will try your suggestions and report back to the forum. Thanks.
That isn’t much. One hour of stereo recording at 44100 Hz is 1.2 GB by default. Make an edit to the whole recording and you have used 2.4 GB.
Skype manages audio routing quite aggressively in order to do what it does. It’s possible it is causing a recording to freeze, but you still haven’t said what you are recording and how.
If you are using a USB recording device, use 44100 Hz or 48000 Hz project rate bottom left of Audacity. Higher rates may cause a USB freeze and will quickly eat into your limited disk space irrespective of how you are recording (88200 Hz uses twice as much space as 44100 Hz, for example).