Allow multiple instanced

Hi

I respect audacity not being multithreaded. But it would be so much better if I could open actual multiple instances so I could use effects on different files at the same time. All those cores sitting there doing nothing, so frustrating…

Multiprocessor support is on the developer’s “To Do” list.

A bit of history:

When Audacity was first invented, multiprocessor PCs were rare. It was not until May 2005 that Intel and AMD released their first dual-core 64-bit processors, (the Pentium D and the Athlon 64 X2 respectively). By this time, Audacity was up to version 1.2.4, and the Audacity 1.3.x series was released before multi-core systems became common.

If Audacity was invented today, the developers would undoubtedly have designed it to use multiple cores right from the start, but obviously that wasn’t an option two decades ago. Adding multi-processor support to a large and complex app is a big and difficult task that has to be done carefully to avoid instability and breakages.

Audacity does use multiple threads, and multiprocessor support will come, but it will take time (and a lot of work from the developers).