Audacity Forum

After having absolutely wonderful experiences with Audacity 1.2.6, including using it for overdubbing parts for an albums worth of material, it decided to go sour on me the other day. I now inexplicably face latency problems, despite not doing anything differently. I am confused as to how this could be the case, how I could be using the program just fine and then suddenly be plagued with latency issues.

I asked some home-recording buddies for advice, they told me to turn off my wireless connection while I record and to close all unnecessary processes because sometimes that will cause audacity to lag. I did that, no such luck.

I rebooted my computer. This has randomly fixed so many of life's technological issues. Not this time.

I uninstalled, re-downloaded, and reinstalled the old version of Audacity. This did nothing.

I downloaded the new version of Audacity. The overdubs were still lagging behind. I found a video on how to correct latency with the new version and I read a tutorial on this forum. I ran a cable from my speakers to overdub the click track in real time to correct the latency as suggested. I did this for several hours and felt myself getting close, but every time I reopened Audacity, the number that I had previously plugged in did not fit anymore. It seems like the latency changes every time.

I'm completely going out of my mind about this. I apologize profusely if I have not checked the appropriate threads about this, but I'm sure as fellow musicians you guys can understand the whirlwind of soul-draining emotion I am experiencing right now. Also of note is that I am using Vista (seems to be problematic) and have a Sigma Tel thing going on too (also seems to be problematic). I am not too sure that these things are to blame as my computer and overall recording setup has not changed in the slightest and I have never even heard of latency issues until recently.

Aaarrrrrrghhhhh

<<<I uninstalled, re-downloaded, and reinstalled the old version of Audacity. This did nothing.>>>

Did the new Audacity ask you "English?" when you started it? If it didn't, then you didn't really reinstall Audacity.

But that's not what your problem is. If the computer inexplicably slows down and it had been working forever, then chances are really good you're filling up your hard drive. You can't do production forever without taking steps to archive some of the older work onto another drive or storage medium.

My Computer > Explore > C: > Properties

That should tell you the capacity of your drive and how much room you have left. You need to take steps if the drive is over 90% full.

While you're in there, and if there is enough room...

My Computer > Explore > C: > Properties > Tools > Error Check and then Defragment. If you never did this before, the display will fill up with little red bars and it may take hours to straighten out. One poster got his machine so jammed up it took him over 5 hours the first pass. Then he cleaned out some old files and did it again and then again. He eventually got everything cleaned up and the speed came back. The Defrag step on a healthy machine should not take much over ten minutes if that.

Audacity will not work into a badly fragmented hard drive.

Koz

Thanks for your time and advice, Koz. I followed your instructions, but I'm still having the same problem.