Is there a way within audacity to control its processing to a fraction of its accessing system's resources, like CPU usage, RAM, HDD, etc.?

Audacity 3 Help Forum GNU/Linux
1

Is there a way to throttle audacity internally?
RAM has become very expensive of late. My technician tells me that the price may come down after a few months. Until that time, I am a bit limited with a HP OMEN Gaming Laptop with 8GB memory. The system comes to almost a standstill when audacity uses batch process to process long audios, of about 40-60 MB m4a audio files.
Until that time, I am compelled to throttle audacity externally through the following script file:
######################
#!/bin/bash
###########
Note: Use code below:
'# su
'#### ./audacity_throttle.sh 200 800
'# Usage: ./audacity_throttle.sh [run_ms] [pause_ms]
'# Default: run 200ms, pause 800ms
'###########
'# Then if not required, kill the script with:
'#### kill -CONT $(pidof audacity)
'###########
RUN_MS=${1:-200}
PAUSE_MS=${2:-800}

PID=$(pidof audacity)

if [ -z “$PID” ]; then
echo “Audacity not running”
exit 1
fi

echo “Controlling PID: $PID (run=${RUN_MS}ms pause=${PAUSE_MS}ms)”

while kill -0 $PID 2>/dev/null; do
kill -STOP $PID
sleep $(awk “BEGIN {print $PAUSE_MS/1000}”)
kill -CONT $PID
sleep $(awk “BEGIN {print $RUN_MS/1000}”)
done

echo “Audacity exited”
######################
But is there a way within audacity to control its processing to a fraction of its accessing system’s resources, like CPU usage, RAM, HDD, etc.?

2

On a Windows system, messing with priority will make a difference to the Audacity program, but affinity makes no difference because Audacity only accesses one CPU. I am not sure if that is still true on version 4 of Audacity.

3

ChatGPT tells me Audacity4 still only uses one CPU, (even if you have 8).

4

Thank you, Mr. Wrecks0 & Mr. Trebor for replying to my post.

I noticed your flow of thoughts which digresses from my original query.

So my natural question to the Team Audacity would be:
Has my observation been heard? Kept as a Note for implementing the idea in future?

I was thinking in terms of multiplexing/multitasking fine-controls based on CPU load to manage higher priority tasks more effectively.

My afore-mentioned script greatly reduces the pressure upon my system, of course, at the cost of reducing processing speed of audacity, until I could find RAM prices normalising & production speeding up to fulfil the market demand.

Is Mr. Steve still around? Then he must have observed the thread. A creative developer always remains a creative developer, I have always believed.

Unfortunately, despite your invigorating presence, Mr. Steve, Mr. Trebor, & other positive leaders, self-appointed gatekeepers/adjudicators being everywhere ready to pontificate & irritate, we have to be patient, cautious, etc., & await creative programmers & leaders of the Audacity universe to suggest ways to solve our issues with software glitches/lacunae that bother us.

Problem with such self-appointees is that they might continue to shadow-track someone they perceive as an easy prey. We could only hope that the leaders would intervene in such unpleasant circumstances.

5

Please be aware that you are writing this in a forum, where users (try to) help other users. You are not writing to the developers of Audacity.

6

I don’t think he needs us. I think he needs to obtain the latest fork of the program, modify the code to do exactly what he wants, and compile it himself.

7

Mr. Steve, my hero, my teacher, I await your advice.