Audacity Forum

Hey, I'm mixing several MP3 sequentially using v. 1.2.6 and have been successfully using Audacity on my Windows XP laptop for some time.

Now I'm finding several of the tracks I've imported cut out during playback.The WAV file looks ok and plays fine in itunes, so I'm reasonably sure it's not an issue with the file itself.

What's weirder is that when the sounds does come back (after 5-10 seconds, usually) the left and right channel can often be out of sync for a bit. Seems Audacity is struggling overall and sluggish.

I've already rebooted a few times, changed Audacity's priority settings in the task manager and cleaned up my HD. Can you help?

The more tracks you have in Audacity, the harder it is for your computer. All computers have a limit of how many tracks they can play at the same time. On my old computer it is about 8 tracks of 16bit 44.1kHz - on my faster computer it is over 30 tracks (not found the limit yet).

Higher bit depths and sample rates produce greater load and will decrease the number of tracks available.

Having tracks with sample rates different to the project rate will increase the load and reduce the number of tracks. For the maximum number of simultaneous tracks, set the project rate to 44100 Hz or 48000 Hz and convert all of the tracks to that sample rate.

There are a couple of settings in preferences that affect playback performance. The default settings are for best performance.

Available memory and free, unfragmented disk space have an affect on performance - generally the more the better.

Running other programs at the same time as Audacity will reduce performance. Some anti-virus programs have been reported as slowing down Audacity. Anti-virus programs should be set to ignore ".au" files. (If you physically disconnect from the internet, you can probably turn your anti-virus program off while you work in Audacity without risk).

See the "Tips" section in the Audacity wiki (link at top of page) for more suggestions.

Thanks stevethefiddle.

Your feedback was very helpful.

Turns out I had imported a track that needed to be converted to 44.1 kHz. That ended up dragging my PC's performance down. Deleted the track and everything returned to normal.