Just wondering, how much more horsepower does 2.x require compared to the 1.3x betas?
I’m running Vista and upgraded mainly because I thought 2.x would be overall better for me, but if I’m doing other things on the computer I notice that 2.x will trash the audio from time to time while recording, which 1.3x didn’t do–with the same hardware and tasks.
So I’m rashly assuming 2.x needs more horsepower, and wondering if I can dl the old version and install both on my computer, to choose my poison?
Probably none, if you are comparing to the later Betas - it’s the same basic code in relevant areas.
Are you sure the tasks are the same? Have you installed a new security suite for example which may be scanning the recorded files as Audacity writes them?
Do you mean by “trash” there are little dropouts, and what are you recording exactly? If there are skips or dropouts have you tried this link: Missing features - Audacity Support .
Gale
Gale, it could be that I should be comparing to 1.2.x, but I hadn’t noticed the problem in 1.3x.
Of course, “everything” is always being updated. The security app (MSE) is among the less intensive ones. The email client is unchanged (I figured out the background fetches could be the culprit). But of course the OS and drivers are always seeing updates. Still, I don’t think think there’s been any BIG change in resource competition. I took a break for a long while, came back to find 2.0 had released (thank you!), and found the new problem.
If 1.3.9 and 2.0 are almost the same, I’ll have to try 1.2 again as well to see what’s going on. How does 1.2 compare to 2.0 in terms of the horsepower requirements?
Since I’m moving music to digital and “CD quality” is all that needs, I don’t think I’d lose anything by using 1.2 for that. No?
1.2.6 can crash on Vista when you press Stop after recording. It would be a shame to have to go back to 1.2 because it is much less full-featured than 2.x.
What are you recording, and how?
System requirements for 2.x are here http://audacityteam.org/download/windows#sysreq .
We never really wrote sensible requirements for 1.2 but it is more lightweight (it usually takes only about 1/5th of the memory 1.3 / 2.0 take when running empty and idle).
Gale
Gale, I’m digitizing high quality cassettes. Using two interfaces, a Behringer USB after a Creative in a laptop card slot seemed to be a problem. (Turns out the problem was Audacity being disrupted, regardless of the hardware choice.)
System is right on the specs, a dual-core 2GHz cpu with 4GB of RAM, although of course Vista/32 never actually can use all 4 of that.
Last year–using 1.2 or 1.3–I did dozens on dozens of recordings without any problem, on the same hardware, so 2.x would seem like the major change that’s bit me now. I did try bumping the priority but haven’t tried checking to see if that would stop the interference.
I’ve got a cheap (Acer) laptop, dual core 2 GHZ cpu with 3 GB RAM and Windows Vista 32 bit. It handles recording multi-track projects with Audacity 2.x just as easily as the 1.3.x versions using either the onboard sound card or an external Behringer UCA 202 USB sound card. Your system should easily have enough horsepower to handle digitizing high quality cassettes with Audacity 2.x. If it can’t then you need to find the problem on the system.
I suspect the problem lies here -doing other compute-intensive task on the computer can cause interrupts (not always but it vcn an does happen). I use my old XP desktop as my main recording engine - and do my other work on mt laptop so as not to disturb Audacity. You should be able to source a cheap 2nd-hand desktop PC fairly easily.
WC
" If it can’t then you need to find the problem on the system."
So I guessed. Now, as to just HOW to find the problem? Any ideas?
Waxy-
Throwing more money at it (buy another computer) is not the solution. Of course if you want to throw the money, I’ll give you a Western Union address.
Believe it or not some people throw away perfectly good computers when they get a new one -do you have any friends or work-colleagues like that (Mrs Waxcylinder is getting me a redundant older XP desktop from her work - it’ll come in nicely …)
Waxy
Process of elimination. Try all the ideas here:
Missing features - Audacity Support .
You could even try Audacity’s Audio Cache feature that causes crashes for some people:
Audacity Manual .
If you try it, I suggest setting Minimum Free Memory to 1500 MB and see what happens. Uncheck the Audio Cache box as soon as you have finished recording. This feature will be removed from 2.0.2, though.
Gale
Tried most of that, and the priority bump helped. But some parts of that page, i.e. putting hard drivesin DMA mode, are just not relevant to a six year old Vista laptop with SATA drive. The option to use DMA instead if PIO just isn’t around anymore.
The DPC latency checker seems happy, too. Which leaves…yeah, the fireax system of diagnostics. Rip it all out, see what can be replaced without making the software unhappy. I hate doing it that way, so many reboots, so many potential culprits.
And then, as I was typing here, DPC changed it’s tune: “Some device drivers on this machine behave bad” ergh, well, now isn’t that news.
LATER
I broke it! Enabled the cache, restarted the computer, was putting tags into a large concert recording (double LP) and Audacity went down in flames. On restart it generated a large error log which looks like it is telling me some parts of the music are simply gone, so I should start over from scratch?
=======================
16:49:51: Audacity 2.0.0
16:49:51: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘MainPanelFunc’ in a dynamic library (error 127: the specified procedure could not be found.)
16:49:54: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries…
16:49:54: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from system paths. File name is ‘avformat-52.dll’.
16:49:54: Looking up PATH environment variable…
16:49:54: PATH = ‘C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWindows Live;C:Windowssystem32;C:Windows;C:WindowsSystem32Wbem;C:Program FilesCommon FilesRoxio SharedDLLShared;C:Program FilesCommon FilesRoxio SharedDLLShared;C:Program FilesCommon FilesRoxio Shared9.0DLLShared;C:Program FilesCommon FilesLenovo;C:WindowsSystem32WindowsPowerShellv1.0;C:Program FilesThinkPadBluetooth Software;C:Program FilesGoogleGoogle Apps Sync;C:Program FilesWindows LiveShared;C:Program FilesCommon FilesAcronisSnapAPI;C:Program FilesPico TechnologyPicoScope6 Automotive;C:Program FilesGoogleGoogle Apps Migration;C:Program FilesQuickTimeQTSystem;C:Program FilesIntelWiFibin;C:Program FilesCommon FilesIntelWirelessCommon;C:Program FilesLenovoClient Security Solution;C:Program FilesUltraEdit’
16:49:54: Checking that ‘’ is in PATH…
16:49:54: FFmpeg directory is in PATH.
16:49:54: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘avformat-52.dll’.
16:49:54: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
16:49:54: Loading avutil from ‘avutil-50.dll’.
16:49:54: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avutil-50.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
16:49:54: Loading avcodec from ‘avcodec-52.dll’.
16:49:54: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avcodec-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
16:49:54: Loading avformat from ‘avformat-52.dll’.
16:49:54: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
16:49:54: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
16:49:54: Error: Failed to find compatible FFmpeg libraries.
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d00e000027c.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d00e00004d6.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e000100f.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e000109e.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e00011d3.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001274.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e00012bf.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001307.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001321.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001359.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e000135e.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e00013f6.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001408.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e00014fa.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001572.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001679.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e000174e.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e00019ec.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001a54.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001a82.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001c02.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001c69.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001c79.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001c83.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001d11.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001d18.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001ded.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001e2a.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001e8b.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001f06.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001f97.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d01e0001fe1.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d02e00020f9.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d02e0002366.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d02e00024f8.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d02e0002526.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d02e00027c1.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d02e0002c8d.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d04e00043f6.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d04e00048e7.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d04e0004b4f.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:Music from tapesMelanieLive at Carnegie HallLive At Carnegie Hall_datae00d04e0004ce6.au’
16:50:02: Warning: Project check ignored orphan block file(s). They will be deleted when project is saved.
16:50:02: Warning: Project check found file inconsistencies inspecting the loaded project data.
Probably a good indication that there is an intermittent problem, or intermittently too many other processes are going on for fast data transfer. For example, look at operations like defrag that are being done automatically. Look at the drivers for your audio device if you have not already ( Missing features - Audacity Support ). You can’t necessarily trust that Windows is finding sound card drivers made by the motherboard or sound device manufacturer, which is what you want.
Did you turn Audio Cache off after recording as I suggested? You should not use cache for editing. If you used cache for recording, did it help? Just be aware that if you crash during a recording and audio cache is on, the recording cannot be recovered.
That error log looks normal to me; the orphans were for undo/redo. Had you quit Audacity cleanly, Audacity would have deleted the orphans as they would then no longer be needed.
If you recover the project, you should be OK, just look at what you have recovered before quitting (or before saving a project with that recovered data).
Gale
OK, thanks Gale. So far–it looks like using the cache during recording is working. So far. No, i hadn’t disabled it during editting, which was mainly tagging.
The audio device is a Behringer USB, uses the Vista 2006 original USB audio drivers. There is no update for these.
I don’t defrag in the background, wasn’t running any malware scans on the background, etc. But there’s always something running in the background, you know, like Adobe Flash where you expressly disable checking for updates–but it goes out and checks for them anyway.
You could configure your firewall to block Adobe connecting outbound. It’s even possible to do that with the Windows firewall, just complex:
http://www.howtogeek.com/112564/how-to-create-advanced-firewall-rules-in-the-windows-firewall/
Gale
True, but then it would probably try to run a hundred times more often, not being smart enough to understand “No means No”.
That audio cache really seems to (knock wood) be doing the trick here. Will it simply be gone in the next release? Or just taking care of itself automatically?
It will be completely disabled I’m afraid. There are too many crashes with it - as you saw - unless you use it only for recording and/or set the “Minimum Free Memory” sufficiently high. I’d like us to have time to fix it so that it works properly - but short term, we don’t have time.
If sufficient people ask for it to be reinstated - as I think could happen - that will give us motivation to fix it.
Gale
Consider yourself asked. It does seem to make things work better. As an alternative, i know there are ways to create and use a ramdrive under all versions of Windows, even though they’re damned hard to find. Allocating some system memory to a ramdrive and using that as a buffer might be a good alternative.
Gale, while I’m looking for solutions…
If I use 1.2.6 to create 44k/16bit WAV files, or use 2.x to make the same files, can I assume that the files “recorded” and exported from either version will be of identical quality?
Or if a file is made in 1.2.6 and then opened and tagged, exported, etc. from the 2.x conversion of the AUP file, that it is still the same quality WAV file coming out? (Set for CD quality, not DVD.)
And again, thanks to all of you for all the help.
For 16 bit, yes.
For 24 bit Audacity 2.x is better due to a minor bug in older versions of Audacity.
Gale-
I’m uploading a slice of a recording which has wicked fenceposting in it. I turned on 2.x, set the priority to HIGH, engaged the audio buffer, hit RECORD and started the tape, which is transferring in via Behringer 222.
The computer is running no other programs, the antivirus (MSE) isn’t doing any background scans…yes there are services running but nothing in the foreground. The drive is an internal SATA with gobs of room, about 60GB free.
And yet, when I walked back into the room…WICKED. Sometimes I can go hours with no changes in the setup and no problem. Sometimes I can’t get rid of it for fifteen minutes.
Does the audio file tell you anything?
Even when I run the Resource Monitor and look for gremlins, I’m just not seeing anything that looks like it could cause trouble, or even anything co-incidental at the same timings.
fenceposting.aup (1.44 KB)