I installed the latest version of Audacity on Mac High Sierra and am having “spinning ball” issues. I imported a file that was longer than an hour and: A It imports very slowly. B When I try to do something as simple as cutting out dead space, it takes a very long time for the process to complete.
Before I upgraded my OS and Audacity, I could throw anything at the earlier version of Audacity and it was rock solid. Any ideas?
What is the version number of Audacity that you are using? (look in “Audacity menu > About Audacity”)
2.4.2
Have you tried rebooting the computer?
Are you using any 3rd party security apps?
You get the Spinning Beachball when the Mac is taking longer to do a job than it thinks it should.
What else do you have running? How many little lights or markers do you have under apps in the dock? Did you start using iCloud for storage?
Desktop > Go > Utilities > Activity Monitor > CPU.
Any applications or processes taking up large amounts of the system? Any Adobe products?
Desktop > Go > Computer > Macintosh HD > Star Symbol > Get Info.
Sound files can be way bigger than you think. If you open up a highly compressed sound file, the first thing Audacity does is uncompress it to “normal,” and then convert it to its own super high quality internal format. A sound file can balloon to enormous size and be a surprise when you start editing with it.
Which OS were you using before? What did you upgrade from?
Which Audacity? Did you get it from here?
https://www.audacityteam.org/download/
Koz
Thanks! I will try some of the things you mentioned before going any further with more info on my part to save you time. Let you know! Thanks, again!
Mike
I have tried rebooting the computer, no help. No security apps. In the Dock I have Dropbox, Clean My Mac and a few others. I started using iCloud for storage, but started during the last version of Aud. Nothing taking up large amounts of the system. Yes, Adobe, but they do not start when the system starts.
I upgraded from the latest version of Sierra and it’s the latest version of Aud. And yes, I did get it from here.
Still have issues.
am having “spinning ball” issues.
When exactly do get the spinning ball? The video people call that the RBBOD. Rotating Beach Ball Of Death.
Opening a large show? Applying effects? Opening Audacity? Describe the actions leading up to the event.
Koz
If you really offended the sound angels, what you had before was broken.
Did you produce the sound file? Does it happen with a much smaller file, or even an hour-long file that you made as a test?
Koz
In terms of the Beach Ball, all I did was to hit the zoom in, zoom out controls and the spinning began. However, upon splitting the large WAV file in half and saving it as two separate files, there was no longer the waiting. I am going to try effects and the like to see if the problem is taken care of.
Thanks, everyone!!