After updating to 2.2.0 I’m experiencing frequent crashes. Audacity will stop responding, and leaving it alone doesn’t resolve the problem. I can’t tell what causes it. One time it occurred when simply pressing “play”, and another when using pressing the button to “trim audio outside selection”. For context, in the past couple hours it has crashed 3 times. After the 2nd time I restarted my computer and it crashed not long after, maybe 10-15 minutes.
I’m using Audacity 2.2.0 on Windows 7 64 bit.
Describe the show. What are you doing?
How long is the show? How Deep (number of tracks)?
Where are you doing it? Are you tightly integrated to Google-Drive, DropBox or other on-line service?
When you installed, did you do a plain install over another version? Did you install and tell the installer to reset Preferences and Settings?
Koz
update: I think it might be due to the number of tracks since it seems to only occur in my project with lots tracks (78 or so tracks). There is one big track that is a little under 20 minutes long, and then the rest are small (typically 5 seconds or less)
However, I do spend most of my time in that big project so I can’t say for certain. One time it crashed in a smaller project, but the big project was open in another window.
These projects are on my local hard drive, and there is no integration with online services.
I used the installer and (following instructions I saw on the wiki) I didn’t uninstall the previous version (which was 2.1.2 for me). I did not reset preferences during install.
I’ve had a crashing issue, as well. It usually happens when I use the trim tool and press it 5 to 6 times quickly.
Audacity does a couple of odd things it’s good to know about.
It keeps most if not everything in memory, so if you have an insane show, all the insanity has to fit. This is why some of the more complex effects don’t work well with super long tracks. I may have that a little fuzzy, but that’s close. The instant you have to shove things off to your slow hard drive, the show steps into sticky mud.
Audacity does UNDO by putting the whole current show aside and displaying the whole old show, and it will do that—keep opening old shows—for as many edits that you have. How big is your show (X) how many edits have you got? It’s a straight multiplier. This is also why Audacity Projects don’t save UNDO. A complex project would be as big as Cincinnatti.
Memory problems tend to pop up in media editors. They make generous use of what used to be called “High Memory.” The video people used to run into this all the time. “My machine ran perfectly for two years and it crashes constantly now that I’m editing Hi Def Video.”
Yes. It does. This is how to use a memory checker.
I know this is out of fashion, but I used to use a checker called “MemCheck” when I built my own Windows machines. You don’t just “run” MemCheck. You start it when you go to bed and run it all night.
“04:37 Pacific Time - MemCheck has detected a failure in memory bank 3, Row 2, Element 2. Continue?”
There’s no such thing as “sometimes” memory.
Also keep in mind Audacity is not a 64-bit application (that I know of). It’s 32. So all that fire-breathing power your machine has is a waste on Audacity.
Koz
I’m experiencing frequent crashes.
You don’t fall into the standard scenario for crashing, but here it is anyway. It’s always drivers. Device Drivers have hooks into the middle-brain of Windows and if you find yourself crashing every time you try to play or record, that’s a darn good place to look.
If you have a fancy-pants sound system, see if your machine continues to crash if you peel it off and use standard sound services, ordinary connections or the built-in sound card
Koz
I don’t have any fancy sound gear or special sound drivers. The project together with undo history probably is exceeding 2 GB sometimes, but the disk isn’t being accessed during the crashes so I don’t think it is crashing just because it is running out of RAM. I’ve had other projects that used more than available memory without any undo history, and it when it needed to load in tracks I could immediately tell that it was loading and not crashing.
I’ll try checking my memory.
undo history probably is exceeding the 32 bit limit of 2 GB sometimes
I don’t think that affects internal memory or swap space. That’s only a WAV file format limit.
There is another oddity. “Firefox Content is using 125% of system resources.”
I don’t have any good answers. As I said, Media editors use more system resources than other applications, so if you’re going to have problems, that’s the app to do it.
Then there’s the forum gauge. If this was a common bug, the forum would have filled up with similar complaints. This already happened with a less critical bug like the timeline loading problem.
Koz
Audacity can handle projects much larger than 2 GB, provided that there is sufficient available disk space. If disk space is becoming chronically short, then just about anything ‘could’ trigger a crash, though that ‘should’ not happen because Audacity should complain before the shortage of space becomes critical.
Win 7, 32 bit, build 2.2.0
I too have had 3 crashes today after upgrading to 2.2.0. Used previous version for years with no problem. Crashes occur when doing minor things like gluing 2 tracks together, or more importantly, exporting. Can someone help if I post the crash log here?
Thanks.
Tony
I can certainly pass the crash log on to the developers.