Hello everyone! Not that long ago, I was working on finishing up a song I’ve been working on for about a month now. While I was doing some editing, I accidentally knocked my mic over, which then knocked over a soda can, which spilled soda all over my powerstrip. I quickly saved and cut power, then I grabbed a new powerstrip and got back to work. Problem is, now every track except for one is grayed out and won’t play.
It doesn’t say they’re muted, and muting then unmuting has no effect. I can still apply effects to the tracks, but that’s not very useful if I can’t actually hear the track.
Everything else on my computer seems fine, so I don’t think the sudden power cut damaged anything. What I’m starting to think happened is I cut power while it was still saving. Anyway, is there any way to recover everything? I’m seriously about to have a breakdown.
*** I FORGOT TO MENTION I get the warning that 54 Orphan Blocks have been found.
I never deleted them, just in case they had to do with the project. I didn’t start getting the warning until I had the problem I’m posting about.
You can run Audacity in two different ways. There is a mode where Audacity uses external sound and music files right where they are. When their turn in the song comes, Audacity goes out, opens them up, uses them and then puts them back to bed. The advantage of this is speed. The disadvantage of this is you have to remember not to move or change any of your clips. If Audacity needs the banjo clip and it’s not there, you lose big time.
The other way Audacity makes personal copies of music. It’s slower but safer because all the work including the clips is contained inside the Project.
If you used the first method, can you still play all your original clips divorced from the song?
The blue waves are drawn by a graphic file and they can get out of step with the show. I don’t remember what gray waves means…
Orphan block files are not unusual after a crash. In most cases they are just unused temporary files that were not removed (because Audacity did not have time to clean up before closing). Do not delete them manually!
I’m guessing that the “problem” is just that you have the “Solo button” behaviour set to “Standard” and have one or more tracks set to “Solo”.
Expand all tracks so that you can see the solo/mute buttons, and check that none are set to “Solo”.
Personally I find the alternative “Simple” behaviour for the Solo buttons to be easier and more useful. You can change the behaviour in “Edit > Preferences > Tracks”.
See near the bottom of this page for more details: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tracks_preferences.html
By the way, I’d recommend, for complex projects, to make regular back-ups.
“File menu > Save Project As…”
Each time you create a backup, give it a unique name. I use a naming scheme that uses numbers added to the end of the project name:
myproject001
myproject002
myproject003
…
The highest number is the most recent backup.
The name of the version that you are currently working on is displayed in the title bar at the top of the main Audacity window.
