what settings for audio cache?

[sandy431]

Audacity 1.3.13 Win Xp Home SP3
Ram = 4gb Hard drive space free = 192gb

In edit -> prefrences -> directories there is a section for setting Audio Cache.
Play and/or record using Ram ... etc.

Currently mine is set with "check mark" to use this. Minumum Free memory (mb) is 16

Wonder if my settings are correct? Should I "uncheck" Play and/or record using Ram ... ?
Perhaps 16 (mb) is too low?

Have to admit while I'm recording my cassette tapes to audacity I'm surfing the web at the same time. I minimize audacity, get on the internet and mostly I'm on my Facebook page in web browser (FF 4.0.1). I've had my browser and/or internet crash. Error messages come up with reports of Virtual Memory issues. Thought that meant RAM.

Is audacity needing/using my Ram to the point I can't do anything else but record songs? (I have 4gb) Still wonder @ my current settings for Audio Cache.

Appreciate suggestions.

[Gale Andrews]

"Audio cache" uses 20 MB of RAM per minute of stereo recording (at default quality settings) to make the recording. It also uses RAM for most edits afterwards, which uses lots of RAM because the entirety of any edit is stored so that you can undo it. The main danger of enabling it is that if Audacity crashes while recording then you will lose your recording without any way to recover it. See:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Dire ... nces#cache

The point of writing to RAM is that it is quicker than writing to hard disk. I would personally not recommend enabling audio cache unless you had no alternative but to set your Audacity temporary directory to a slow drive like a USB external drive, or if you had a very slow laptop. In that case writing to RAM might help avoid skips in the recording. From your description I don't think you need Audio Cache on and it could be contributing to crashes in other programs. If you want it on, set the "Minimum free memory" to more like say 250 MB, so that whenever available RAM drops below that, Audacity will write to the drive instead. The 250 MB figure isn't prescriptive - set it to what keeps the computer stable.


Gale

[sandy431]

Thank you appreciate suggestions.

"or if you had a very slow laptop." I'm on a desktop with Dual Quad CPU chip. 4 gb Ram

"Audio cache" uses 20 MB of RAM per minute of stereo recording (at default quality settings) to make the recording.
We're talking @ 20MB audacity uses compared to 4GB ram I have?

Then my settings are wrong?
Currently mine is set with "check mark" to use this. Minumum Free memory (mb) is 16.
I should change mine to higher than 16 mb. Or Not check mark to use Ram at all.?

Like I said:

Have to admit while I'm recording my cassette tapes to audacity I'm surfing the web at the same time. I minimize audacity, get on the internet and mostly I'm on my Facebook page in web browser (FF 4.0.1). I've had my browser and/or internet crash. Error messages come up with reports of Virtual Memory issues. Thought that meant RAM.

I'd like to be doing something else rather than watching audacity recording the whole time but I do check to see what it's doing .

Thank you

[sandy431]

Appreciate link to explain Audio Cache. It has good info.

Still don't understand my situation. Don't know if I should change my settings in Preferences area.

Just change them and see what happens? At tis point not sure what to change. ?

For others that use Windows XP and audacity 1.3.13 What settings do they have?

At this point Win Xp may be considered old system. Whatever OS people are using (sorry don't know macs) What are their settings under:
In edit -> prefrences -> directories there is a section for setting Audio Cache.
Play and/or record using Ram ... etc.

[steve]

The recommended setting are set by default:

Play/Record using RAM: OFF (not selected)
Minimum Free memory is not relevant when Play/Record using RAM is OFF.

I use Audacity with this setting on a number of XP computers including an old 500 MHz Pentium III.

[Gale Andrews]

Turn Audio Cache OFF if you don't understand it. If you do not get recording problems with it off, then you don't need it.

As I said, Audio Cache (if turned on) takes 20 MB per minute of RAM when you are recording, Some or all of this will be swapped out to your page file, so that your page file will grow but available RAM will not fall so much. But when that page file is full, Audio Cache will deplete your RAM by 20 MB per minute (in addition to the RAM that other programs are using). When your available RAM becomes too low, programs will crash.



Gale