Import audio crash when using RAM

[synrgii]

Hey yall, I didn't read this all too carefully but i was having the same problems and though I'd let you know what i did. Essentially there is a setting in Audacity that cured this for me. Edit --> Preferences --> Directories --> Temporary Files Directory = my secondary internal RAID drive. I didn't have more than 3GB of C-drive (solid state) space left so I had to go elsewhere.

Also....Edit --> Preferences --> Directories --> Audio Cache --> UNCHECK using RAM. I know that i had tons and tons of RAM left (12GB actually), but it just doesn't work right. It's much slower loading onto the harddive, but I simply have to for these 5+ hour files, otherwise...crash.

Maybe because Audacity is not a 64-bit program. Thus it's limited to about 3GB of memory addressing, and thus 3-4 hours of data equals about 3GB of memory and after that it can't read anymore of it and....done. So maybe we need a 64-bit Audacity. I'd pay a few bucks for that!

Hope that helps yall.

synrgii

[Gale Andrews]

Hey yall, I didn't read this all too carefully but i was having the same problems and though I'd let you know what i did. Essentially there is a setting in Audacity that cured this for me. Edit --> Preferences --> Directories --> Temporary Files Directory = my secondary internal RAID drive. I didn't have more than 3GB of C-drive (solid state) space left so I had to go elsewhere.

Also....Edit --> Preferences --> Directories --> Audio Cache --> UNCHECK using RAM. I know that i had tons and tons of RAM left (12GB actually), but it just doesn't work right. It's much slower loading onto the harddive, but I simply have to for these 5+ hour files, otherwise...crash.

Maybe because Audacity is not a 64-bit program. Thus it's limited to about 3GB of memory addressing, and thus 3-4 hours of data equals about 3GB of memory and after that it can't read anymore of it and....done. So maybe we need a 64-bit Audacity. I'd pay a few bucks for that!

Thanks, but the problem with audio cache is not related to the specific crash covered in this topic which is due to the metadata in the file.

Audacity is 32-bit, so does have limitations from not being 64-bit, not least that it cannot store more than 2^31 samples of audio in project tracks then save and reopen them as an Audacity project. The limit is 13.5 hours at 44100 Hz project rate, or 6.75 hours at 88200 Hz, or only 6.2 hours at 96000 Hz. So be careful if your files are high sample rate. Use a separate project if you want to work with more files.

In practice, the Audio Cache crash problem seems to kick in for many people long before the available memory falls below the threshold set in Audio Cache or long before the 32-bit address limit of "4 GB less what the system reserves" is reached.

Given every edit of the whole track will double the memory used, it's really best only to use the Audio Cache feature for the strongest use case (recording to a slow or non-local drive where you have no choice). Turn Audio Cache off after you stop the recording.



Gale

[synrgii]

It may or may not be the same topic, but my symptoms were the same and this solved it. that's all we want, right? i can open up any length mp3 file now. I'm staring at a 13h31m right now with no problem. mission accomplished.

[steve]

It may or may not be the same topic

It's not the same topic as was being discussed so I've split it into its own topic.
Thank you for your contribution - a few people have had this type of problem (Audio Cache crash problems), so hopefully this will be useful to others that unnecessarily enabled the Audio Cache.

[Gale Andrews]

I'm staring at a 13h31m right now with no problem. mission accomplished.

Great. But watch that 2^31 samples issue noted above. If you do edits when you have total tracks over that limit, let us know whether it works or not, because that has not been well tested. And remember not to save a project when you have total tracks over that limit.

Thanks,


Gale