slow playback on a project

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

hello and thanks for any help.

I made a 60 minute audio project and it has 15 tracks. I don’t know if this is a lot of tracks typically, I guess not, maybe it is.

anyway my point is that now when I play it back it plays noticeabley slower. I timed it against a stop watch and it was 1.25 seconds slower over 10 seconds.

btw this slower version is a copy if the original and its opened into audacity via a databank ubs thing.

has anyone experience slowness before. I decided to close the project today and post my question up before continuing.

2

I doubt that the slow playback is due to the number of tracks.
If I play a project with over 50 tracks, I start to notice a slight delay when starting playback, but once started it plays at the correct speed. More tracks increase the delay, but the play speed remains correct even with 200 tracks.


Tell us a bit about that. What is in the tracks, and how did you make the project?
What is a “databank ubs thing”?

3

thanks. 50 tracks blimey! :laughing:

likely my project is about as simple as it gets, it’s songs recorded off the net and added to with silly clips off the net too, its for a present. it wouldn’t have been 15 tracks if I knew what I was doing from the start; every single track except track one which is audio for the full 60 minutes is just random clips every now and then that if you added them all up probably take up like 10 minutes max per track, so basically most of the 15 tracks are empty anyway.

4

sorry I forgot to say… my audacity project is currently stored in a storage drive with a usb plug to connect into my laptop. its probably called an external hard drive having just looked on amazon. I upload it via there into my audacity app on my laptop and save it into there after working on the project.

5

just thought i’d ask again, has anyone experienced slow playback on a relatively simple audacity project? i wonder if it’s my computer?

it’s not that big a problem coz i have nearly finished it anyway and also, more importantly, test-run exports into WMP playback normal :smiley:

6

Just making a note of that for now. External storage devices are not recommended when working on projects, but this may be irrelevant to the issue in question.



For it to be slower, one of two things must be true. Either:
a) The playback has one or more gaps (If the gaps are very short, they may just sound like clicks or slight stuttering)
or:
b) The pitch is also a little lower than the original.

Can you tell if it is (a) or (b)?

7

That’s interesting.
I assume that if you export in any format (for example “WAV” format), then the exported file plays back normally. Is that the case?

8

yes! all test run exports playback normal.

i dont know why the actual file plays slowly. i guess its my computer coz judging from what you say, its not really a common issue.