effects preview running slow

[kenholz]

I have a issue that just come out of nowhere. I always use vst effects and they usually work great, but today I have a issue. When I select a small portion of a track, (say 3 seconds of a vocal track) and I open my reverb effect, I can hit preview to see what the reverb will sound like. Normally when I hit preview it comes up with a small screen that says "previewing" and it only takes a second or so to process the effect and play it back.
Today I am trying to add reverb and when I hit preview, it says "previewing" but it takes about two minutes to play back the processed clip. Even if I'm only previewing a 3 second clip of the track. Normally it will take a long time to process if you are adding effects to a long track, but this is not the case. I'm lost on this one. It's happening on all of my effects, not just one.

[kozikowski]

That usually means the compute is slowing down. Are you running out of hard drive space? When was the last time you defragmented or did an error test? If you've been at this for a long time on a regular, non-production computer, then it could be filling up.

Have you started to use a new set of filters or plug-ins? Sometimes a badly designed filter or effect can slow things down as Audacity has trouble using it.

How long are the shows? If you're doing an effect on a three-second segment but it's part of a four-hour presentation, that could be a problem. Audacity has to keep track of everything, not just the three second snippet.

Koz