Loud feedback on empty tracks?

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Hi, I am not sure the problem is actually feedback, but when I play back and I am not soloing the recorded track, I am getting a very loud sound like touching a live jack if another track is empty at that point in the timeline and unmated. I need the track unmuted because it contains clips that I would like to play later on. This doesn’t happen 100% of the time, but do all silences need to be filled with zero amplitude clips?

2

This is a known issue with 2.0.6 which will likely be fixed in the upcoming 2.1.0 release.

Yes, select the “white space” (space between the start of the track and the start of the first clip) and Generate > Silence into it. You could also try making the first (top) track one that has audio starting at time=0 and see if that helps.

As far as I know, not all white spaces need to be filled with silence, but very often the space between time=0 and the start of the first clip needs to.

– Bill

3

Thank you Bill, unfortunately this isn’t only happening in the gap from time=0, but every empty space I have on the timeline. I haven’t been able to troubleshoot what causes the issue yet, but it doesn’t always occur (even in locations where it has occurred previously).

4

It’s possible rebooting more frequently might help.

Would you be able to try out the the latest 2.1.0-alpha build from the top of the following page:
http://www.audacity.homerow.net/index.php?dir=mac/&sort=date&order=desc ?

The latest builds there will have the fix Bill refers to. We certainly don’t know that fix is going to improve the whole variety of playback problems that get reported from time to time, so it would be good if you could help us test.

Can you fill us in on what type of Mac you are on and what version of OS X?

Gale

5

Thank you for the link Gale, I’m happy to test out the alpha. I am running OS X 10.10.1 on a macbook air currently.

6

Audacity doesn’t officially support Yosemite yet, although the latest alpha builds have a fix for Apple Audio Units not working in Audacity.

I think there could be some flakiness around Audacity importing and exporting on Yosemite.

Gale