Labels take forever

[Light and Sound]

I am creating a lable track so I can export multiple MP3s. When I type something in for a label, nothing seems to happen, but the processor goes solid CPU bound. About a minute or several minutes later, the label appears. That processing time seems way too long. At that rate, it would be faster to convert my songs one at a time.

Why does it take so long to add lables? Can I do anything about it?

Thanks.

[steve]

There is something wrong there, the label text should appear immediately.
Try Audacity 1.3.6 and see if you have the same problem.

[Light and Sound]

I think I solved the problem.

I had been using 32 bit floating point samples; that is the default in Audacity.

The (cheap) sound card in the on the motherboard had an occasional DC offset problem, so I replaced it. The new card has 24 bit sampling, so I set Audacity to use 24 bit samples. Now, track labeling works well. My PC must not have hardware floating point.

Lessons learned:
(1) DC offset problem: If recording no signal, the line should right at zero. If it is significantly above or below zero, it is a DC offset problem. Replacing the sound card ($39 Soundblaster) was easy and works great.
(2) To use track labeling, set 16 or 24 bit sample size in Audacity. Integer arithmetic is much faster than floating point emulation.

Thanks for thinking about it anyway.

[kozikowski]

The other thing that can cause Sudden Computer Insanity is a filling up hard drive. No drive on a video or audio system should be over 90% full.

Koz