Audacity Forum

Can someone help me out with skips on playback? I've tried making the audacity window small and zooming out to show the entire length of the recording (wiki recommendation). The problem is, it is already recorded and I'm thinking this might only help if I do it before I record. I've spend hours on this recording and these periodic skips essentially make it unusable. I'm using windows XP with a Dell Inspiron laptop. Thanks.

What's the show? How long is the show? Stereo? How many tracks?
When was the last time you defragmented your hard drive? How full is your hard drive? How many things do you have open at once?

How big is the machine -- processor speed -- amount of memory?

Koz

Yeah, what IS the show? I don't know what that means.
It's about 6:30 mins. long
4 tracks.
defrag regularly.
Only about 25% of free HD space.
Nothing else opened.
Intel Core Solo processor, 1.86 GHz, 1 GB RAM

Yeah, what IS the show? I don't know what that means.

"I'm singing all the parts of the Hallelujah Chorus, I'm recording my daughter's first birthday party, I'm doing surveillance for my wife's divorce." These have all appeared here at one time or another. I ask that because if your show is an amalgam of hundreds of clips of sound with different technical standards, then Audacity may have to work very hard to play it in real time. If it's a highly edited show with one, straight-through track, it's easier.

It's about 6:30 mins. long

Six and a half minutes? That's important, too. People try to manage six hour shows and that's extraordinarily difficult.

Does it skip in the exact same place each pass? If so, the problem is burned into the show. If they're all different, then it's a machine/playback problem. Does the machine play YouTube OK? Can you download and play music in Windows Media?

Have you saved the Project OK? Have you ever tried to produce anything of this size before?

Make a 6 min track from the Generate menu. Tracks > Add New until you get to four. Generate a different sound in each of the three new tracks. Does that play straight through? Depending on what happens, we can get this down to your content or machine.

Koz

It skips in the same spot every time. It plays Youtube fine. Windows media is fine, even though I don't use it.

Is it just this one Audacity Project that you are having trouble with or do other projects all have the same problem?
If you import an audio file into a new Audacity Project, does it play correctly?

It seems to be just this one project that has the problem. If I import an audio file it works fine. The project that skips is the only one that is multiple tracks. All the others are either solo trumpet or guitar and vocal (recorded at the same time).

As the number of tracks increases the demands on the computer increase making it more likely for skipping to occur. However I would have expected your computer to easily manage 4 tracks. It also seems a bit strange that it skips in the same place. What is "that same place"? Can you see anything significant about where it skips? If you start playback at a different point, does it still skip in the same place or a different place? Which version of Windows are you using?