Audio playback slow and skipping

[thebeatles5573]

I run audacity 1.3.x on my laptop no problem. I want to use this old desktop I have to record now too. It has 256Mb ram and runs great for being so old. All of the recording goes well but when I play back the recording it is slowed down and skips every half second or so. The only way to fix this is to enable the software playthrough. This wouldn't be a problem except that the playthrough is significantly delayed and when doing a multi-track recording, this delay makes it nearly impossible to record. I know that the problem is only the playback on audacity because if I export the recording and play through WMP there is no skipping or slowing down.

[steve]

See if your old machine will run with Xubuntu ( http://www.xubuntu.org/ )
Xubuntu is a modern, but lightweight Linux operating system that is ideal for older and low specification machines.
Running Windows XP with only 256 MB ram is pushing things close to the limit, so you may find that you get better mileage from Xubuntu.

[kozikowski]

Most programs pile the resources onto the record side because you can't recover from an error there. If playback is damaged, you can always play it again (Sam).

So your machine won't do both--at least in Windows. See: Xubuntu.

Koz

[thebeatles5573]

I didn't mention this before-- it's running on windows 98se

[steve]

The skipping is because your computer is running out of steam, or there is a data bottleneck somewhere.

What specification is the computer?

When did you last defragment the hard drive (Win98 is even more susceptible to poor disk performance due to fragmentation than Windows XP).

Keep CPU and memory usage to an absolute minimum - shut down all non-essential processes and applications.

Give Audacity 1.2.6 a go - you may find that multi-track performance is better (or worse) - no need to uninstall Audacity 1.3.x as you can have them both installed on the same machine, but note that Audacity 1.2.x can not open Audacity 1.3.x projects.

[thebeatles5573]

But why is the playback fixed when I turn on "software playthrough"?

[kozikowski]

I don't think Software Playthrough goes through the hard drive. Did you defragment like we said? Audacity will not work on a badly fragmented hard drive.

I don't know where it is on Win98SE without starting mine up which will take hours. Google Win98SE Defrag.

Koz

[steve]

But why is the playback fixed when I turn on "software playthrough"?

With hardware playthrough, the computer is trying to record and playback in real time. When you use software playthrough your computer is only having to record in real time and can be a bit more relaxed about the playback.

In Win98, quite a lot of sound cards are not really capable of true 16-bits full-duplex operation, so trying to use them in that way puts a lot of demand on computer resources.

[kozikowski]

I do remember the first time I bought a "modern" SoundBlaster card for my Win98SE 233 MHz machine. Vastly improved over the original card and this one was a lot better at MIDI controlling my keyboard.

Y'know, I haven't defragmented that one in a long time. That machine keeps the older applications and I think it's the only one that will talk to the house lighting automation system, dating back to the Eisenhower administration.

Koz

[thebeatles5573]

Ran the older version of audacity and now it works fine. Thanks for the help