Thanks to the team + some possible bugs

Hey there,

I’m a music producer working as part of a hip hop group in London UK. I started using Audacity software to create sample-based hip hop and electronic music because I couldn’t afford “industry standard” software, and my laptop is frankly not good enough to run an interface. Naturally I’ve had to record all the group’s vocals at a different studio on Logic and then edit the stems in Audacity.

Audacity’s name isn’t really mentioned among the DAWs that are used to make whole albums of material. It’s mostly renowned, I think, as a program for podcasters and content creators to do their voice-overs.

I’ve generally been met with genuine shock and confusion when I show people the songs and they are told it was all made with Audacity. I think the fact there isn’t a grid might be the primary reason. That, and effects are destructive. My laptop is so bad I can’t even run the real-time effects that Audacity 3.6.0 offers. I also couldn’t open the MuseHub program or install any other VSTs or plug ins, so I made the entire album using stock tools.

All this to say, at risk of blowing my own horn, based on the responses from listeners (it isn’t released yet btw) I think that I’ve proven at least to myself that Audacity can absolutely be used to create whole albums in this way. I’m sure I’m not the first to do it. Plenty of people likely or do use it to record instruments, perhaps. But making purely sample based, chopped-and-screwed, heavily edited hip hop is not something I’ve ever heard of on the platform. I would really love to know if there are any records out there that dispute this point.

So I just want to express my thanks to the team. When the album is released (Summer) I will drop it in this forum. I’ve learned more about Audacity in the last year than I ever thought I would, and frankly, when using other softwares I’m actually a little bit bothered by things they’re missing that Audacity has. Of course, other pieces of software have distinct advantages and I can’t deny that. An example would be being able to loop a section and hear how the effect you’re intending to use will sound over the whole thing, rather than five seconds. I appreciate however, that this is probably possible with the real-time effects tool. Still I find that their UIs are not as accessible as Audacity, in my opinion.

I’ve also realised that Audacity and it’s unending list of importable plug-ins would likely make the software every bit as functional and intuitive as Logic, Pro-Tools, etc. It’s most likely that my laptop just simply can’t handle these plug ins or tools. For example, having a moving EQ visualiser that I could watch as the song played to see what frequencies are poking out or under announced would have been a god send. Again, I imagine that’s downloadable.

There are some ways Audacity is just completely superior, in my opinion. The lack of a grid means that elements can be dragged into place based solely on feel and intuition. I tried doing this in Ableton a while back on a friend’s laptop when we recorded a more organic, rock oriented album and the grid felt like an ever-present barrier. I imagine there are ways to turn the grid off on Ableton to allow for free-hand movement of stems, but we weren’t able to crack it. This is one of many examples of things that I find Audacity advantageous for.

I would like to list a few bugs that I’ve noticed that I cannot discern whether are the result of my hardware, or the software.

Firstly, when multiple Audacity windows are open, if one is saving a project, rendering a stereo file, or basically doing any other process, the other Audacity windows will cease to work until the process on the other is complete.

Secondly, compacting a project takes upwards of 6 minutes in a lot of cases.

Thirdly, I’ll press CTRL+S a thousand times to ensure no loss of date. The project has already been “saved as” something some time before. When the project is closed and later re-opened it states that it wasn’t saved properly and is restored to the last snapshot. There could be incremental losses of data happening here that I am not able to perfectly re-call having been implemented in the first place, so I may be losing important changes.

Next, I have noticed that sometimes trying to copy and paste a snippet of audio onto another track will just close Audacity completely and offer me an error report.

Audacity assigns track numbers when bouncing out stems, but when they’re uploaded into another open Audacity window, they get ordered alphabetically, which seems counter-intuitive.

When I have multiple projects open, sometimes when I try to pan or adjust the gain on a channel it will automatically open another window, but the process will be doable. It will allow me to ride the fader down (or left, I suppose) but I will not be able to see that screen on which I am actually doing it, as another project is now on my screen. This is without a doubt the most frustrating thing I’ve contended with.

Most frighteningly earlier today I had an error message that said “Internal error at ProjectWindows.cpp line 75.
Please inform the Audacity team at https://forum.audacityteam.org/”

This nearly made me throw my laptop out the window as no projects were opening. The Audacity forum has zero information regarding this incredibly serious error. Luckily, it did not mean all my music had vanished forever. Still, in that moment I could have really done with a more in-depth explanation of the issue.

There are more minor issues that I have noticed, but I cannot recall them off the top of my head right now. Suffice it to say for all it’s great qualities, making over an hour of music this way on Audacity has been the cause of quite a few headaches.

Anyway thanks all for reading, and hopefully these minor bugs I’ve mentioned (if indeed they are Audacity’s fault and not my laptop) can be addressed.

And it’s free … TDR Nova | Tokyo Dawn Records (works in Audacity 2 & 3 in realtime)

Currently Audacity is only using 1 of your CPUs.
It’s struggling to juggle 1 ball, it does not have access to the computing power to juggle more balls.

Honestly I know very little about computing. Are you inferring there is a way to give it more balls with which to juggle, or is one the lot? Like what they said about Adolf.

Additional active Audacity windows would be more balls to juggle. When it’s struggling with one ball.

Is this any use to you? - Making Music - Dennis de Santis
Mark B