I have Audacity 3.1.3 on Windows 10. My projects all consist of 4 to 6 audio tracks taken from one of two sources. One source has a robust noise filter but has problems with aggressive attenuation and dropped audio, the other is higher quality and does not attenuate but has zero noise filter. I chiefly use the latter source to patch the former when a notable audio error occurs. The way I do this is by aligning the two waveforms, selecting the relevant portion on both tracks simultaneously, using the Split function, and then copying the good section and pasting it directly onto the bad one.
My issue is, sometimes, for reasons I cannot determine, when I paste, everything after the split will jump rightward on the track to the tune of several minutes to an hour. The resulting gap is completely empty, not just a section of newly-created silence. No amount of undoing and repasting will yield a different result, I have to perform a different series of actions to get the desired result.
I have a feeling that there’s some quirk to the Split function that’s causing this that I’m unaware of, but any help at all would be appreciated. I’ve included screenshots of the event for reference.
I tried to replicate your issue with 3.3.2, but was unable to do so in my limited testing.
Note that the developers have been improving some of the clip pasting logic during 3.2.x. So let me suggest upgrading to 3.3.2; if the problem recurs, open a trouble report here: Issues · audacity/audacity · GitHub
Good news is that moving to a more recent version seems to have cleared up this particular issue. I’ve edited 5, maybe 6 projects since you posted that suggested and I have not encountered this behavior.
Bad news is that I really don’t care for some of the UI changes in the most recent version (most notably the removal of the Project Rate standalone toolbar and the fact that the Audio Setup button is 3 units tall no matter what I do) so I’ve had to move down to 3.2.0 to get what I want.
Worse news is that, since last night, I’ve a new, much greater issue. The program’s memory usage is permanently increasing by ~120MB after every action and also hanging for at least a full second for everything. Last night it got to the point where it was using a full 2GB of RAM just sitting there. I have no idea what could be causing this, the project I’m working on isn’t any more complex than any of the others I’ve done since changing version numbers. I’ve tried a full reinstall and I’ve tried Save As-ing it under a new name, neither have worked. I’ve checked around and seen a few people (yourself included) posting about the same issue, I’m going to try the “export WAVs and recreate” suggestion next and pray that does it.
Unfortunately, I would not recommend moving to 3.2.0. It has, as you say some size issues, particularly related to “smart clips” which people unknowingly create.
To correct these issues, you would need to move to at least 3.3.0, preferably the current 3.3.3. To do this, in 3.3.x, open the old .aup3 project, then Ctrl+A (select all), Ctrl+C (copy), Ctrl+N (new project), Ctrl+V (paste), and when prompted, do NOT copy Smart clip information.