Audacity Forum

In short, Audacity crashes when I use the Multiband EQ effect. I know, I know, use a different EQ, but I like the precision of the Multiband. And besides, how do I know this glitch won't happen with others?

Has this ever happened to anyone else? I was able to use Multiband EQ quite frequently before. The only change to my system is that I added some VST plugins this afternoon. However, Audacity began crashing like this last night. I even tried to use it in the 1.3.6 version, but it still crashed. I got the whole: Audacity has a problem and needs to close speil.

If it was any other effect, I probably wouldn't care as much.

Hard Drive filling up? When was the last time you defragged?

Sudden, Unexplained Computer Insanity can many times be traced to the machine running out of drive capacity. Up until now, it's managed to shuffle things around from cupboard to cupboard and put some stuff under the stairs and out in the garage, but the instant the last byte goes away, things become unstable in a hurry. Audio and video production programs notice this very quickly. They tend to have big elbows when they run and take a lot of room.

Koz

I have 25.2gb of HD space remaining. I usually defrag when System Mechanic tells me to. I have it set to where it's supposed to do it automatically. I'm doing a deep analysis on the drive right now to be sure because I wouldn't have thought of defragging the drive. There was a time when Audacity would crash upon starting up so I'm pretty grateful.

As an added note, the EQ only crashes when I hit preview. I guess the solution to that would be to hit OK and if I don't like it, then UNDO. Of course, that's a bit tedious. Once the analysis is complete, I'll go messing with Audacity again. I used the DJ EQ (not as much fun) and it worked fine. Of course not as many pretty sliders and therefore not as much demand for bytes.

**Update**

I uninstalled both versions of Audacity (1.2.6. & 1.3.6) as well as the plugins (including VSTs) and started from scratch using Audacity 1.3.6. This time Audacity just shuts itself down. No cute Windows Error Message. Before all of this, I did some playing around with the EQ and discovered the crash comes after the third preview, which means I have three chances to get it right. This is the same even if I did a preview, cancelled, and went back to preview two more times.

Even now with the fresh install, it does the same. I can work around this quite simply. I was just curious if this is a glitch in the programme. At current it seems only to be the Multiband EQ giving me the trouble. I thought maybe all the different elements of the songs was causing the crash, but I imported a mono .wav file, hit preview twice this time, and boom.

Again, I can do a workaround.

**Update**

Sorry it's taken so long. Trouble on the homefront. ANYWAY, Koz, you've give me some great advice since i've been on the forum. You were right about the hard drive. It definitely needed defragging, and also, I was looking at the wrong hard drive in terms of since. The drive that my projects are saved on was pretty freakin full. I only had like 25mb of free space. So, I defragged, and saved a bunch of files to CD and Audacity thanks me for it. Now, when it crashes, I make sure I'm not filling up my HD, and I try and keep an eye on the defrag. I thought System Mechanic was already on it (it was, just a little late is all), but I see I've have to keep an eye on it myself.

I'm able to use my Multiband EQ!! I still tremble a little, but I just save before I go into any of the effects.

Thanks for your help, Koz!!

Lovely, but it shouldn't crash at all. Audacity doesn't like it very much when you install sound services it's not comfortable with. How are you getting in and out of your machine? Built-in sound (I'm betting no)?

<<<I uninstalled both versions of Audacity (1.2.6. & 1.3.6) as well as the plugins (including VSTs) and started from scratch using Audacity 1.3.6.>>>

Probably not. You trashed the program and support files, but probably left audacity.cfg on your system. That's Audacity preferences and if it's scrambled, each Audacity you install will become the same scrambled. Next time you want to start from First Birthday, just trash the cfg file and leave everything else alone. Restart Audacity.

Koz