The new audacity is not very good on win7 but old one is great on XP

The new audacity 3.0.4 is not very good on win7 but old one 2.1.2 is great on XP.
I do realize they have some some compacting improvements but that’s where it stops.

Here’s my complaints:
1- The new 3.0.4 version will not load older Audacity files.
2- The new 3.0.4 version keeps changing the latency (The old version never needed any changes or settings - it was automatic upon re-scanning input devices)
3- It has some serious level problems compared to the older XP2.1.2 version but can be dealt with
4- I never had good luck using the older version on win7 so I tried the new one and it seemed fine until many messy things happened.
5- I should have stuck to the older version on XP. I always got mad at myself for not rebooting into XP so I tried and tried but it never worked very well at all in Win7 because of the cheap win7 audio drivers. I really tried to make it work for recording in Win7 but could only edit/mix etc.

I like to do a quick take but now I’m losing all my new takes because of the new messy thing in win7.

At least the older version could still play and edit the same files from XP.
I think I will dump the new version and go back to recording in XP and maybe do some editing in Win7 with the older version.

What a lovely mess someone has made of this previously easy to use software.
I hope someone can fix the newer version.
If there are no plans to do this please let me know asap or I’ll have to go back to a hand held recorder to keep my new ideas.
ONE QUESTION:
How to I put the older version back on Win7 without screwing up anything else?

Windows 7 is obsolete and no longer supported.
Audacity 3.0.4 “may” work on Windows 7, but there is no official testing on that platform, so no guarantees.

Similarly Windows XP is obsolete and not supported. As far as I’m aware, Audacity 3.x does not run on Windows XP.

First, uninstall all versions of Audacity from your computer.
Then download an old version from here: Old Audacity versions download (Audacity 2.4.2 may be a good one to try) and install it.

It certainly does - I did extensive QA testing on 3.x to ensure that it would load (actually “import” technically) projects from the 2.x series.

It imports and converts to a 3.x AUP3 project - so once you save that in 3.x then you cannot reopen it in 2.x

WC

but all bets are off for Windows 7 and Windows XP.

I meant to say you can’t open 3.0.4 files in the older Audacity version.

The strange part is I was able to set the latency by just recording guitar clicks and adjusting the latency by trial and error.
I was able to add new tracks in sync.

Then the next time I used Audacity it was extremely out and I couldn’t record tracks without extreme latency and nothing I did would fix it.

The only thing that happened since the last time I used it that maybe could affect it was a Windows 7 update and those always create a restore point. I’m sure I didn’t use the restore point as the update didn’t affect anything.

Could the Windows update affect the latency setting?

Yes, that’s correct.
Prior to Audacity 3, projects were saved as a “.AUP” file plus a “_data” folder.
Audacity 3.x saves projects as a single “.AUP3” project.

Audacity 3.x can import old “.AUP / _data” projects, but older versions do not support the new “.AUP3” format.
More details on this page of the manual: Managing Audacity Projects - Audacity Manual

Yes.
Also,

  • Changing the recording and/or playback devices can affect the latency.
  • Changing the sample rate can affect the latency.
  • Changing between mono / stereo recording may affect the latency.
  • Changing the drive that is being written to may affect the latency.

The “latency” is how long it takes for audio data to be read from the hard drive, pass through the computer, out through the sound card (playback latency), plus the time for audio to enter the sound card, be converted to digital, pass through the computer and get written to disk (recording latency).