Audacity 2.2.2 crashing- Cannot open anything

I downloaded Audacity 2.2.2 for Windows 10 and now it will

a)Crash when I am trying to open a file and say I shouldn’t have two Audacity programs open at the same time
b) Crash when I am trying to open a file while processing data file
c) Just straight crash when I am trying to open a file
d) On the rare instance I do opn a file, crash when I’m trying to highlight a track and/or zoom in or out on a track

I am at a loss. I’ve tried reinstalling. I’ve tried restarting my computer. Nothing is working

You can only have one instance of the Audacity application open at a time.
It is possible to have multiple Audacity windows open simultaneously (you can use “File menu > New”), but generally I would not recommend doing so. Audio processing is very demanding on computers, and there are many ways that one open project can interfere with another open project.

How are you doing that? Audacity should not allow a file to be imported while processing. On my computer, the menus are greyed out during processing.

Also, on my machine, processing is generally too quick to be able to even attempt importing. Are you working on a very low spec machine, or working with huge files?

That problem thankful stopped

The laptop is a couple years old and there are some fairly large files due to one of my cohosts saying he could convert his audio from Audacity onto an MP3

convert his audio from Audacity onto an MP3

That’s not the best idea. MP3 creates sound damage.

An Audacity Project contains format and positioning information and holds the audio in super high quality 32-bit Floating to avoid distortion when applying filters, effects and corrections. That may be overkill for simple podcast production.

MP3, on the other hand, has compression distortion added to the sound to make smaller files—and the file contains only the sound. It’s not recommended to do production in MP3 because the compression distortion increases as you go. By the third edit you may be able to hear honky, wine-glass voice distortion and there’s no way to fix it.

What is recommended is Export WAV (Microsoft) files and push those around. That should be the happy mid point. It’s perfect quality WAV format and sound only. They’re larger than MP3, but smaller than Projects.

Those will stand up to multiple edits with little or no damage.

Someone will point to ACX for their audiobook requirement of submitting work in MP3. True, but if you pay attention to the instructions, it’s a nose-bleed high quality MP3 and that will survive post production editing. So their file sizes are going to be higher.

They recommend Mono production at 192 MP3 constant bit rate quality or higher. Stereo doubles that.

Koz