My audacity updated to 3.7.3 just a few days ago. Further information: Program build date: March 13, 2025. GCC 14.2.1. My Manjaro version is (from uname -r): 6.12.20-2-MANJARO. wx widgets shows 3.2.7.1-2.
First bug that is annoying is that about 50% of the time, when I hit the play button, the STOP button does not “un-gray”, and I cannot stop the play. It is intermittent and I cannot yet come up with a set of circumstances when it happens, but it is happening often and is quite annoying.
Secondly, in the Selection section on the bottom (I like to use “Start and Length of Selection”), sometimes I CANNOT manually type in start or length. I can click on a digit, and it hilights like it should, but I CANNOT type into it. For this too I have not yet determined a formula for getting into or out of this bug, but if I click around, and then come back to the selection, SOMETIMES I can then successfully type into it. It is extremely annoying when doing so is part of your workflow, and it’s difficult to get it to where I can actually type values in.
I know the STOP button staying disabled started with 3.7.3, because that’s obviously something I do in every session. I think the inability to type values into the Selection was also introduced in 3.7.3, but if not, it’s at least very recent.
The disabled STOP button is most annoying at the moment with 3.7.3.
Thank you!
Hi,
If this issue is with the version packaged with Manjaro, I suggest downloading the Linux AppImage from Audacity to see if that gives the same problem. If it does, that smacks of a bug. If the AppImage works properly the problem could be in how Manjaro built/packaged it.
Just an idea.
Mark B
Thank you Mark. I will do so and report back.
hmm…I have downloaded both the 20.04 ubuntu appimage as well as the 22.04. Neither will run. When I try from a command line, I see: This doesn’t look like a squashfs image.
Failed to open squashfs image
I do have fuse2 installed.
Obviously too much of a n00b, but I don’t know what more to try in order to get the appimage to run.
Did you make the App image executable? I think maybe it isn’t by default.
Mark B
If I have time this afternoon I will install Manjaro in a virtual machine and see what happens for me. I use Mint myself. I was impressed with Manjaro but many packages I use are only available in deb format and I was troubled by numerous reports of Manjaro just breaking.
Mark B
THANK YOU so much Mark! When working with it tonight…soooo annoying that the STOP button, half the time at least, does NOT “un-gray” after hitting PLAY. The difficulty in typing values into the Selection is also annoying, but not nearly as much as not being able to “STOP” after hitting PLAY…
Thank you again!
Does the space bar work for stopping?
You reply very quickly. Where are you based?
Mark B
Haha I am in Nebraska and usually work at night. I have NOT tried the space bar to STOP when the STOP button is still “gray” after hitting PLAY…I will try now…
I always like to have a plan B for such cases. As a backup I use Ocenaudio for audio editing. It’s free, fast and stable but it is not open source if that matters to you. There is an Arch package for it.
Mark B
I too have and use Ocenaudio. It’s just that the files I’m working with are all (mostly) previously saved .aup3 project files 
FURTHERMORE, as I’m sure you can have a good laugh and identify with, as I’m trying to get it to do what it was doing ALL THE TIME over an hour ago (STOP button not “un-graying”), I’m not able to get it to do that now…and thus not able to see if the spacebar does a “stop” when the STOP button stays “grayed”…UGHH…
What I WILL do though, is keep working with it, and when I find the issue re-occurs, I will try the spacebar to see if it indeed “stops”…(sigh)
I could NOT agree with you more!!! After they took it over, I had to abandon it for quite some time due to soooo many bugs that screwed my workflow. It’s funny, when this was occurring tonight, I thought to myself, OMG what will 4.0 be? For quite some time, I had to run 2.4.1 under wine. The first versions of 3 were absolutly unusable.
Thanks again Mark for your responses. Very much appreciated!
I don’t really mean to bash them. It’s just a fact though, that for THIS user, the first many versions of 3 became unusable for me for my workflow. I like audacity and hope that they get it right, but I don’t mind saying that many versions past 3 made it unusable for me 
I was just starting to regain confidence (maybe after 3.3 or 3.4 or so), and then tonight after 3.7.3 update…ughh…deja vu
Last thing…I would simply roll back, BUT, 3.7.3 apparantly updated the .aup3 file format (AKA the warning box when opening previous .aup3 files that “once saved, they cannot be opened by earlier versions of audacity”)…I’m also irritated that when I work with a project file, and HAVE NOT SAVED IT…was JUST EXPERIMENTING…when I close it and answer “NO” to “been changed, want to save?”, audacity does some compacting thing anyway and now my .aup3 project file has a fresh “modified” date. THAT is annoying too! DON’T CHANGE MY .aup3 UNLESS I “SAVE”…ughh…now I have many project files that cannot be opened with pre-3.7.3 versions
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I installed Manjaro (latest version with KDE desktop) in Virtualbox and tried to recreate the problem. After 606 updates (honestly!) I tried with a natively installed version of Audacity 3.7.3 and with an AppImage (the 22.04 one) of the same version. I wasn’t able to make it so that the Stop button stayed greyed-out. The Spacebar and ‘P’ keys also worked as they were supposed to. 
Computers, who’d have 'em?
Mark B
Thank you for trying Mark! I figure with a night like last night where it was happening to me constantly, at some point whatever conditions were present will rear their head again, and when it does I’ll give another effort to figure out such conditions. BTW I use XFCE, but at this point, no need to try again.
Thanks again so much for your efforts!
“Computers, who’d have 'em?” INDEED! 
Let’s campaign for the return of the abacus!