Loudness Normalization on Thousands of Files

[amateuraudioguy79]

Hi All, I’ve got ~50k very small audio files that need to be normalized for loudness. The macro feature on audacity is awesome so I thought I’d give that I shot. The files are organized into folder that each contain ~3500 audio files.

I found that when I run the macro, Audacity stops responding, and eventually crashes. I have a Mac Studio with 64GB of memory. Memory usage gradually increases the full 60GB and crashes. However it’s able to save about 1000 files out of the 3500 before the crash.

Maybe I discovered a bug in the form of a memory leak? The 3500 audio files are a total of 80mb. So the fact that it’s taking 60GB of memory tells me something is probably going wrong. My macro has two steps:

1. normalize loudness
2. export to mp3

Any advice on settings I can change to reduce the amount of memory being consumed? I realize this is probably an edge case so not sure if the bug is worth dev time right now.

Thanks everyone!

[kozikowski]

@amateuraudioguy79

Maybe I discovered a bug in the form of a memory leak?

No that’s normal. Every time Audacity does an edit or any other process activity, it saves saves a safety copy of The Whole Show. When your machine fills up, it crashes.

We would, of course, give just about anything to keep it from doing that.

We should remember Audacity is intended for quick home production, small podcasts, or audiobook reading. Not industrial processing.

Koz

[LWinterberg]

You’d be better off using sox for this, probably. It does appear to have loudness normalization in its loudness filter.