Audacity Forum

Hi folks.

I'm a newb to Audacity but I was doing great until today. I've been recording a song and have several tracks down. I created a click track, a scratch track, dubbed on some bass, a vocal track and a rhythm track. Oh yeah, and a drum track. So you can see everything has been roses until today. I monitor through a usb external sound card. I input through an external preamp that has a usb output. I just got a mixer and I'm in the process of setting that up and will be recording with it through my external usb soundcard. As a third input option for getting sound into my computer I have a usb interface but I haven't tried that one yet. So anyway, everything has been pretty peachy so far and I've been able to solve all my problems and glitches - until today, that is.

My comp is a Dell, Celeron, 2.39 GHz, 768MB RAM, 46 Gig HD with over 12Gig free. This machine has been handling everything fine until now. I've been monitoring my free HD space and it has been virtually unaffected by my Audacity recording project in spite of the fact that I restarted my project several times and just left the previous versions on the HD. Of course, I can clean them out any time. I'm using Audacity 1.3.11.

Today, I opened some mp3 files from my music collection with audacity to compare the recording level in those files to what I've been creating on my tracks. When I played the mp3 files, they were slow and jittery. I really didn't worry much about it. I rebooted and opened my recording project, but uh oh! Same problem with the project I've been working on. Slow play and jittery. Lags and then catches up and then lags again.

Anyone know what's up with that? Any help would be AAA-preciated!

Thanks.

P.S.

My mp3 players (Win Media Player and foobar2000) play my music just fine. The playback problem is limited to Audacity.

P.P.S.

I have changed settings in Audacity preferences and of course I've fooled around with settings in the on-screen Audacity control panel, but I have no idea what setting might create the problem I'm experiencing.

Again, any help much appreciated!

Try changing the "Project Rate" (lower left corner of the main Audacity screen). It should normally be set to either 44100 or 48000 - you may find that one works better than the other. Note that the "Project Rate" determines the sample rate of exported audio files, so you will usually want to set that to 44100 before exporting, especially if you intend to make audio CDs from the exported files (the CD standard is "16 bit, 44100 Hz").

Has your hard drive been defragmented lately? Audacity will always make a copy of MP3 files when you load them, so if your drive has lots of little fragments scattered around, the copied data may be fragmented even if the original MP3 isn't. If you have the option you should defragment the free space in addition to defragmmenting the files.

Try disconnecting from the Internet and temporarily disabling your anti-virus. Antivirus programs sometimes need to be configured to ignore Audacity's data files (.AU) and this will test whether your antivirus program needs to be configured for this. (remember to re-enable the anti-virus program before you reconnect the Internet).

Hi stevethefiddle. Thanks for your feedback!

Rate is set to 48K and has been for some time now and has been functioning properly. Nevertheless, I tried it at 44100 and even at 32000 with no noticeable change in performance.

Hard drive thoroughly defragged recently.

I tried disconnecting internet and disabling antivirus - no noticeable change.

Note: The reason I mentioned the experience with mp3's is because that was when I first noticed my problem, but the problem is not limited to playing mp3's. It exists when I play my recorded project as well.

I'm up for any other suggestions.

Here's my latest:

I think Audacity became unstable for who-knows-why. I created a folder under programs titled "AudacitySafe" and moved my Audacity program en masse to that folder. Then, I dl'd and reinstalled Audacity. No more lag. No more jitters. I'll post back if the problem recurs. Oh, and btw, I'm using XP Home on this comp. (For reference if someone else has the same problem.)

Thanks again.

Isn't there an error check along with the defrag?

If this happens again, you may just need to trash the Audacity configuration file and not the whole program. That file can get corrupted and tell Audacity to do crazy things but the actual program files are OK.

I don't know where it is on Windows. There's all kinds of info on Audacity 1.2. 1.2 was a stinker because it put the config info in the Windows Registry.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:I don't know where it is on Windows.

Here's one I prepared earlier:

Audacity Preferences are stored in a configuration file called "audacity.cfg" in the Audacity settings folder. The configuration file can be edited with any text editor. The Audacity settings folder is located at:

* Windows (except Vista) : Documents and Settings<user name>Application DataAudacity
* Windows Vista: Users<user name>AppDataRoamingAudacity
* OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/audacity
* Linux: ~/.audacity-data

You may need to enable viewing "Hidden files" to find audacity.cfg

To reset preferences to factory settings:

1. Exit Audacity
2. Open audacity.cfg in a text editor and remove all the content except the line "NewPrefsInitialized=1"
3. Save the changes to audacity.cfg and restart Audacity

Well, I certainly would have tried that and if the problem rears its ugly head again, I'll try the config file reset. However, I will not hold out much hope when I try it for the following reason.

Just before I did the reinstall I noticed another symptom. Namely, when clicking a drop-down menu ("File", for example) the drop-down was hazy/ephemeral/smoky in appearance. I could see through it. This symptom was probably there all along - it just didn't register with me. Anyway, that is clearly a problem beyond a "lag and jitter" problem. That made me suspect corruption. I really don't see how a config file corruption would have that effect on the program menu display, but I am not a programmer and we are beyond my expertise so I can not speak definitively to the topic. But there is a little more info re my problem for anyone who may experience similar problems in the future.

blugrassfun wrote:when clicking a drop-down menu ("File", for example) the drop-down was hazy/ephemeral/smoky in appearance. I could see through it. This symptom was probably there all along - it just didn't register with me. Anyway, that is clearly a problem beyond a "lag and jitter" problem.

How strange - and I agree that it sounds like more than a configuration problem.

I think this is the first time that I've seen anyone on the forum fix anything by re-installing the same version of Audacity - you could be the one in a million that had a corrupt program file - let's hope that it stays fixed.

Yeah, I'll go with that hope!

But I don't think the program file was corrupt initially because I used it for a considerable period of time.