audacity alpha freezes

[phantasm777]

even after unhiding the - hidden files, i can find NO audacity.cfg file whatsoever in apha nor beta. guess i need to be pointed directly to where it is at.

[steve]

It should be in:

Users<user name>AppDataRoamingAudacity

[phantasm777]

done, but it made no change. just basically started me over with audacity, but no change.

[steve]

Thanks for your perseverance, and for trying all of the suggestions.
At this stage I'm unable to see any explanation for the problem.
I'll see if anyone else has any ideas, otherwise it'll just have to be passed on to the developers as a bug.
In the mean time, rather than using the Mixer Board, are you able to use the track sliders (left hand end of the tracks)? I know it's not as convenient, but if works without freezing then at least you have a workaround while this gets sorted.

[Gale Andrews]

phantasm777, have you got any explicit steps from launching Audacity (without any .aup project file) that recreate the Mixer Board problems (including button interactions)? I'd like to isolate Mixer Board problems (if possible) from slowups drawing waveforms in longer projects. The latter are well known, see for example:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 46#p157652

The Mixer Board problems are still in the alpha ("Nightly") builds. As I explained to our Forum staff recently, they are tied in with screen drawing changes made to improve viewing of MIDI files. These problems might be worse with longer projects if they are interacting with the waveform drawing issues above. While these Mixer Board problems are known, they don't have a formal bug report because a developer should have been working on fixes a long time ago. @Steve, are you still getting the Mixer Board crashes you told me about recently on Linux? Do you have steps to reproduce them?

Also I wonder if phantasm777 is on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (check by clicking the Windows globe > right-click over "Computer"). Service Pack 1 (for a variety of reasons) is quite widely reported to cause slowups which will be noticeable when doing processor-intensive tasks (such as manipulating the large amounts of data in Audacity projects). See:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 16&t=58387

You could consider changing to 16-bit Default Sample Format in the Audacity Preferences (Quality section), though this could lead to a very marginal loss of quality if you are doing heavy effect editing of the projects.



Gale

[phantasm777]

even a small project takes a bit, just wont open quickly like it used to. also if i do a few effects, and or tracks, i cant do too many in one sitting or it freezes, also cannot remove too many black lines from doing "silence" cause after doing some of them it freezes. luckily in most cases i can recover but, sure is limiting. yes i have service pack 1, always try to keep up in updates. sure hope the next vers. comes out quick with some fixes. im finaly getting used to this program, and would prefer not to go to another.

[Gale Andrews]

even a small project takes a bit, just wont open quickly like it used to. also if i do a few effects, and or tracks, i cant do too many in one sitting or it freezes, also cannot remove too many black lines from doing "silence" cause after doing some of them it freezes. luckily in most cases i can recover but, sure is limiting. yes i have service pack 1, always try to keep up in updates.

Then Service Pack 1 (as I explained) could be part of the problem. Did you have a look at the link I gave?

Try clicking the Windows globe and type "Task Manager" (without quotes) in the search box. Click the link to Task Manager when it appears. What is the "CPU Usage" in the bottom of the Task Manager window? If its always more than 60% or so, any processor-intensive task will take a long time.

Audacity pushes huge amounts of data around. Have you tried if 16-bit Quality helps?

sure hope the next vers. comes out quick with some fixes.

Can you give us any explicit steps about the Mixer Board freezes? Without explicit steps that can reproduce the problems it is unlikely there will be "quick fixes".


Gale

[phantasm777]

its as i already stated, just sliding any vol bar in mixer stops the meters on all of them, and i let go cause it might freeze, simply just adjusting the vol's up or down can cause a freeze. so far it has been a bit better opening the mixer before i play the music to mix, seems it freezes less but still close to the same. again, just moving the vol control in the mixer on any track can freeze it up, and it actually stalls the vol meter as i do it, so i see this and let go, fearing a freeze. i just realized all the audacity projects i made has cluttered up my hard drive, so i now have ot about 85% free, and there has been absolutely NO change in any problem.

[Gale Andrews]

As I already explained, Mixer Board problems are separate from freezes that may be dependent on the length of audio being imported or the bit depth they are imported at.

The Mixer Board problems are still in the latest "Nightly Builds" but Vaughan is looking at Mixer Board issues that arose from MIDI changes at the moment.

If you are not already doing so, you may subscribe here:
http://audacityteam.org/#announce

to receive an e-mail when we release new versions of Audacity with the latest fixes.

Are the Mixer Board problems any worse if you have a lot of tracks? I would guess not, but how many tracks do you have?


Gale

[Gale Andrews]

The Mixer Board problems are still in the latest "Nightly Builds" but Vaughan is looking at Mixer Board issues that arose from MIDI changes at the moment.

The changes are committed now, so if you wish you can get the latest "Nightly" build here:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nightly_Builds

and see if Mixer Board is better behaved.

Grab the build for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 (the Win 98/ME build does not have the changes yet). To use it, extract the contents of the zip to a new folder and double-click audacity.exe from that new folder to launch it. It will not remove any installation of your current Beta version.

Although major problems with alpha builds are rare, they should not be used as your production version of Audacity. Please back up saved projects and export your work as WAV before closing a project.


Gale