Choppy Playback in 1.3.5 on Ubuntu 9.04

[wdavro]

I installed the1.3.7 package listed in Synaptics but Audacity won't play or record. When playing, the vertical line moves anywhere from 0.02 to 1 second then stops.

I unloaded 1.3.7 and loaded 1.3.5 (because I couldn't find a package that would install without me having to download and install all sorts of dependancies which I don't have a clue how to deal with). This version plays except it's all choppy. The same file plays perfectly fine in Rhythm Box. I have tried several different files.

I have played with Preferences>Audio I/O Audio to buffer and Latency correction settings. Originally set to 100 and -130 respectively. I have tried settings from 0 to 20000 in Audio to buffer and -10000 to 10000 in Latency correction in 100 and 500 increments just to see if I can detect a difference in playback to give me a direction to work with the numbers. But I can not detect any difference in playback regardless of the settings.

The playback device is ALSA: HDA Intel: ALC885 Analog (hw,0,0).

I am very new to Linux but was a network admin up through Windows nt4 and Novell 4.1 (but not since).

Can anyone direct me?

[steve]

I have played with Preferences>Audio I/O Audio to buffer and Latency correction settings.?

They are not going to make any difference.

Your best bet is probably to go back to Audacity 1.3.7 and we'll see if we can get that version going.
What sort of specification is your computer?
To remove any settings that you may have messed up, delete the "audacity.cfg" file from /home/<user-name>/.audacity/ (the dot indicates that it is a hidden folder).
Make sure that you have ALSA and "PulseAudio volume control" installed.

[wdavro]

I deleted 1.3.7 and got 1.2.6 installed successfully though it took several hours for me to figure it all out. It worked perfectly fine. Then sometime over the next several days I was automatically updated to 1.3.9. This has brought the problem back again.

What sort of specification is your computer?

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8 GHz
MBoard: Gigabyte Technology GA-EP45-UD3R
Chipset: North Bridge: Intel ® P45 Express Chipset; South Bridge: Intel ® ICH10R1 / ICH102
Mem: 8GB (is there a 4GB limit to 32bit machines? it only registers 4GB)
OnBd Audio: Realtek ALC889A codec
VCard: PNY NVidia Quadro FX-370
1 TB drive
Linux 9.04 Jaunty

Make sure that you have ALSA and "PulseAudio volume control" installed.

They are.

What can I try, please, to get 1.3.9 to work?

[wdavro]

BTW, it's no longer choppy playback. It's back to the cursor/line moving only a fraction of a second then stopping when I press the play button.

[steve]

Close Audacity, delete the audacity.cfg file then restart Audacity. This will give it the chance to initialise properly.
If that does not fix it, then tell me about your sound system - do you have a default Ubuntu sound system?

[wdavro]

delete the audacity.cfg file then restart Audacity

I can't believe it was that simple!!

I deleted the cfg file and everything is fine now. Cursor works correctly, playback isn't choppy.

Jees!

[wdavro]

Thanks very much!

[steve]

You're welcome.