What happens if you restart 2.0.5, open the project then export, without playing the project? Is the WAV still ticky?
Yes. If exporting a WAV is the first thing I do upon launching 2.0.5 and opening the project, the WAV will crackle, identically to the one in the ZIP archive I provided.
I’m not quite clear from the above whether you can ever export a ticky WAV from 2.0.5 after swapping track positions.
Sorry — these are a more test cases than I expected, and I’m having a bit of a time keeping track of them all.
After swapping the two tracks in 2.0.5, I cannot hear static or export a WAV that has static.
Can you try setting the second “Dither” setting (under High-quality Conversion) to “None” and then export from 2.0.5 without tracks swapped. That does not stop the crackle for me.
Following these instructions makes the crackle much, much worse for me.
Could you try 2.0.2 again? I want to be clear in 2.0.2 if the export is crackly a) if you don’t swap the track positions (b) if you do swap positions. Don’t worry about whether you play the project before export or not.
If I drag the draft.aup file onto Audacity 2.0.2 and export a WAV as my very first action (no playback, no track swapping, etc.), then the WAV does indeed exhibit crackle.
Thanks. And if you swap the track positions in 2.0.2, does the export crackle?
By the way, to make sure we are testing the same versions, do please Audacity > Quit Audacity before launching a different version of Audacity. If you have one version of Audacity running then launch a different version, all that happens is that a new window open in the version that is already running.
Thanks, Ken. I just added a P.S. to my previous post to make sure you quit Audacity before launching a different Audacity version.
If that is what you are doing, then the picture is quite confused.
I don’t have any export problem, just a playback crackle in the project in 2.0.3 onwards if I don’t swap the tracks or fill white space with silence.
But you have an export and playback problem in 2.0.2 and 2.0.5 unless the tracks are swapped or white space filled, and have to go back to 1.3.13 to avoid that.
Can I post files exported from 2.0.2 and 2.0.5 for you to listen if they play crackly on your Mac?
I can hear the crackle on your exported WAV even on Windows.
The first was made earlier this month; the other is from November. Each had at least four tracks and was exported from whatever version of Audacity was the latest at the time.
Thanks, Koz. “Before zero” is not a reported problem. The issue in Ken’s project that causes playback problems is that the upper track’s audio does not start at zero (if you zoom out you can see the first track does not start until about 10 minutes 20 seconds).
More generally, there are said to be problems playing at any point on the Timeline where not all the tracks have audio. But I rarely find that. In the subject project, the crackling at the start stops for Ken and I merely by moving the upper track down.
I can reproduce the problem — in either Audacity 2.0.3 or 2.0.5. Doesn’t appear to make any difference.
I could have done with a test that didn’t have crackles and pops as part of the performance…
Just once I got a playback destroyed — digital garbage for the first second and then it straightened out.
The condition is very erratic. I can change the condition reliably by View > Fit Vertically or changing the track sizes manually. It seems to have track sizes it likes or not — and it’s not repeatable.
I’ll make a recording of the tests.
15" Macbook Pro
First Birthday 2013-01-24 although I had it long before that. I think it’s listed as a 2012 MBP.
Mavericks 10.9.2
250GB SSD 102GB used
8GB hardware memory
Audacity 2.0.5 or 2.0.3
If you close and reopen the project then export WAV, do any of 2.0.2, 2.0.3 or 2.0.5 produce crackle in the exported WAV? Ken gets crackles in the exported file unless he goes back to 1.3.13. I can hear the crackle in the exported WAV even on Windows, so the damage is genuine, but the project does not crackle on Windows.
Here it is. Real time capture. All I was doing was pressing space-bar stop and start. I took the pauses out where I tried moving things around the screen. The end piece is a music proof. It was a download. Thats the whole pathway from iTunes in the Mavericks machine to a recording on my Mini “TV set.”
This particular time the problem exhibited nearly every other start. It’s completely random.
The Mavericks machine isn’t running anything else. I think we proved long time ago it didn’t seem to be a machine overload problem or dependent on other applications.
I exported a WAV from both 2.0.5 and 2.0.3. The 2.0.5 wav appears to be perfectly clean (for the first ten seconds). The 2.0.3 export, however, is a Little Bit Dirty. Starts off clean and then exhibits a little crackle here and there. I suspect if I did it enough times I’d get the same variability I get in the playback crackles.
Today’s playback variation is two crackles and one clean, two crackles, etc.
Audacity 2.0.2 crackles just like everybody else, but 2.0.0 does not. I started 2.0.0 multiple times and played/stopped forever and that version does not make noise. Koz
I’m beginning to scare the problem. Audacity 2.0.3 now only crackles on the first play after opening the show. All the rest of them are clean. I uninstalled 2.0.5.
2.0.0 still clean. I tried it with Control-Click the AUP file > Open With, and Open Audacity Cold > Open Recent. All clean. Is this where we flag the developers?
Yes it seems that you cannot depend on 2.0.2 or later on Mavericks to play or export that project without the crackles.
Do you agree if you drag the “Evan” track down to second track that the playback problem reliably goes away in 2.0.2 or later on Mavericks?
Before I raise a report on this, do you have a Mac Pro (or any Mac) with earlier than OS X 10.9 on it? Ken’s project was the first project including white space that I could get repeatable playback problems on, but when I tried other projects before I was not on Mavericks.