Audacity Forum

I used the last version of audacity on a different laptop computer and after recording a certain number of tracks (15-20) the playback would be out of sync or it would freeze up for a while and then finally play after "stuttering" a bit. On my current computer using the current version audacity, this happens after about 6/7 tracks and then I have to combine a lot of parts in order to do a full song. What causes this and how can I fix it?

So you see there is a limit on a number of tracks. This can be benchmarked somewhere in the 'Help' menu of Audacity.

Some component of your computer makes this limit. I expect it would be disk access, though in principle it could be proccessor speed.
15-20 looks like the usual limit of IDE hard drive.

6-7 tracks is really too low.
Make sure you do not use compressed harddrive. (Do you have any?)
Make sure your disk has DMA switched on (there is more information on wiki.)
Make sure your antivirus software does not make the process slow (switch it off during recording)
Make sure your disk is not badly fragmented.Make sure you do not use external disk connected by slow wires.
(Make sure you do not use network data storage.)
Make sure your hard disk is not in hard use by any other software (file download, network sharing, windows update, movie, antivirus scanning, windows indexing)

jan.kolar wrote:So you see there is a limit on a number of tracks. This can be benchmarked somewhere in the 'Help' menu of Audacity.

Thanks, Jan. This menu item is at Help > Run Benchmark..., but only in Audacity Beta (current version is 1.3.7).

To save time answering this question when it comes up, we could post this link instead. I just added your two tips there about defragmenting and avoiding network drives. Thanks for your contributions.



Gale

PS: Another problem you get in Audacity with many tracks is that response (for example to clicking menus and clicking Play) slows down very considerably. This should be much better in 1.3.8 but does not remove limitations with regard to computer processing.

Thanks guys. Something I have also been doing is mixing tracks when I do backgrounds instead of having 3 separate tracks for 3-part harmony.