Regarding the version 3 Windows 10 lagging issue

Firstly forgive me, I am not tech minded and very much a newbie. But I am wondering if there has been any progress to this issue that I am experiencing and have seen that others are too.

Let me explain whats happening to me…

The first thing to say is this hasnt happened on ‘every’ project. Since updating to 3.0.2 Ive made about 30 projects and this has happened to around 5 of them. Also as I recall this never happened on the old pre 3.0.0 version of Audacity.

So … no problem doing the recording. My projects are typically anything between 2 to 8 tracks and around 3 minutes (I do vocal song covers)…

But the issue is when I edit afterwards. I tend to do lots of edits on my recordings (time shifts, volume changes to certain sections, cuts and pastes and deletes etc) Things will start fine and fast but then gradually every action will become delayed to the point where things eventually become unworkable.

Heres the weird part … once the slowdown has begun, the project can never recover. What I mean is even if I save it and reboot pc and go back into it its on go-slow. Even if I create a new project and copy the tracks into it, its the same. (Note that if I open another project at the same time that never had this problem… I can play around with it fine without this problem… even if the go-slow project is still open in another window)

Like I say I am not tech minded but its as if as Im making edits to my project its building up memory to the point where ‘something’ gets full and starts slowing down. And once the slow down has happened that track or project is forever corrupted (I know thats not the right word but you know what I mean)

I’ve tried a few things I’ve read on the forums like turn off auto windows 10 updating and reversing all tracks and re-reversings them and saving into new location. But not working sadly.

Hope you can help.

Have you tried exporting to .WAV and re-importing in a brand new project?

again forgive me for my lack of knowledge but wouldn’t exporting my multi track project to a .wav file and then importing the .wav file back into a new project just result in a single .wav file being importing meaning I can no longer keep editing and working on the original individual tracks?

Yes, if you just export as WAV, the project is mixed down to a single file.
To keep the tracks separate, you could use “Export Multiple” to create one WAV file for each track (See: Exporting multiple audio files - Audacity Manual)

OK it’s something I haven’t tried so I will certainly give it a go.

Its still strange why this is happening in the first place. Especially as it seems so random and only occasionally.

But any workaround is appreciated so I’ll try it. Thank you.

Yes! IT worked. I had this slow down issue starting yesterday. I updated from 3.0.2 to 3.0.3 and still it was a problem. Tried restarting and still a problem. I considered exporting and starting over but had not yet done it. However I would have used mp3 and I’ll bet it would not have worked as well. Now it is back to its speedy self. Thanks for the help.