MacOS Monterey

Hi
Is there anybody who experienced a problem with Audacity after updating the macOS to Monterey?
Thanks

Other than the usual macOS nonsense to install an app that wasn’t purchased from Apple, Audacity 3.0.4 works fine for me on Monterey.

The biggest annoyance with macOS Monterey that I’ve had since upgrading (been running 3.0.2 through 3.1.0) is that the Save dialog file name field is pretty wonky. If I export as a FLAC file, the default value is “untitled.flac”. If I clear out the name and type in a letter or number, it automatically adds “.flac” and moves the text cursor to the end.

If I double-click on the “untitled” part of the name and start typing, it’s all fine. If I select “untitled” and hit the delete key, it will replace the name with “.flac.flac”. macOS Big Sur wouldn’t auto-append the file extension and no other application that I use in macOS Monterey behave that way.

Yes, I am having endless problems running Audacity 3.1 on my 2020 iMac with Monterey 12.1.
It takes on average 6 minutes to load before the Audacity user interface opens up and becomes accessible.

Somebody please help me shortening the load times to something more acceptable.

I have tested with older version as well and confirm that no matter what version I try to load it always takes
6 minutes or more before Audacity becomes usable.

This happens under Monterey 12.1 however under Big Sur I do not experience this problem making Audacity in
whatever version - from 2.4.2 to 3.1.0 unusable under Monterey.

Hoping someone will be able to assist to get it working the way it actually is supposed to.

Greetings Henties

Do you have “virtual” audio devices?

Since I updated my iMac 3,4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 to Monterey 12.0.1 I have got problems working on pre-recorded (wav-) audio-files.

The cursor doesn’t move fluent anymore, but in little steps like a seconds hand on a watch. And the cursor is always one or two seconds behind the sound. When I press “P” for a pause it makes one or two more steps, until it stops.

That makes it difficult to find the exact position, for e. g. cutting something out of the audio-file. I installed Audacity 3.1.0, but that did not solve the problem.

I also had that problem with Big Sur and I solved it by uninstalling Big Sur and going back to the previous MacOS. Which I would like to avoid this time … :wink:

What else could I do?

Thanks for helping and greetings,

Heiko

Hi Steve, thanks for responding but to be honest I do not actually know what “virtual” audio devices are, and can thus not answer your question.
Kindly enlighten me as to what "virtual? audio devices are within the context of Audacity of cause, and how to search and eliminate such items.

Greetings Henties

Apps like SoundFlower / Blackhole / Loopback …

Look in “Audio MIDI Setup” to see what devices are enabled.

Hi Steve, thanks for enlightening me but I certainly have got none of the gadgets/goodies that you listed, in my system. Some time ago I experienced this very long startup delay on an Ubuntu machine. I was able to fix it by doing a complete removal of all traces of Audacity and then re-install again from the command line after also having removed/disabled Ubuntu’s SNAP install manager.
I believe that I might now be suffering a similar problem which can be fixed by a complete removal of Audacity and thereafter do a new install from scratch, I just do not know where in macOS I can find all the Audacity files, a mere delete of Audacity through the trashcan does not help at all because a subsequent new install will continue to suffer this very long startup delay, at least that is what I am currently experiencing.

A file listing overview would be a great help to remove Audacity, or if available a proper uninstaller, alternatively I can just reinstall macOS, but I want to avoid that if at all possible.

Greetings Henties.

To do a full uninstall, delete the entire “App” from the Applications directory (/Applications/Audacity.app)
and also the “audacity” folder at:
~/Library/Application Support/audacity/
(Note that “~/” means your home directory)

I just upgraded my MacBook Pro to Monterey 12.0.1 and Audacity 3.1.1 runs fine on that.

Peter.

Footnote: Monterey took an hour to download and a further hour to install !

Hi Steve, thanks a lot for the Audacity removal hint, will follow that and see how Audacity 3.1.1 will be behaving.

Greetings Henties

Hi Steve. In the interim I have been able to discover that the 6 minutes long startup time of Audacity is directly related to an ESI MAYA44e add-on sond card which I am using in this particular machine. As soon as I disable the drivers for this sound card Audacity starts normally within seconds of invocation.
The platform is macOS Monterey 12.1 build 21C39b.
All other applications that interact with this particular sound card are functioning properly, therefore I am inclined to believe that the problem lies with Audacity and not the environment it is deployed in.
Is there perhaps a setting that one can apply to get Audacity to startup properly without me having to remove the drivers of the ESI MAYA44e sound card, without which the sound card obviously stops functioning?

Greetings Henties

Hi Steve. I have now relocated the ESI MAYA44e sound card to another similar computer running macOS Big Sur as the operating system.

In this particular Big `Sur environment Audacity starts within normal time frames together with the relocated MAYA44e sound card.

I subsequently upgraded this computer from Big Sur to Monterey 21.1 21C5039b. Lo and behold, the Audacity 6 minute start duration
has returned.

It therefore seems that Audacity is the problem because all other applications that I use for audio processing such as Logic Pro, VLC, GarageBand, Audio Highjack, Airfoil, Kodi, dBpoweramp Music Converter, Final Cut Pro, Compressor and Motion work well under macOS Monterey.

Hoping that the long startup problems of Audacity in combination with a MAYA44e sound card running on Monterey will be resolved in a future upgrade to Audacity.

Greetings Henties

Thanks for the update. It certainly sounds like Audacity is having some problems with the Maya drivers under Monterey.
Perhaps you could report the problem on Audacity’s discord channel (which some of the Audacity developers see). I could report it for you, but if the developers have further questions it would be better if they could ask you directly. The Audacity discord channel is here: https://discord.gg/audacity

Hi Steve. I am giving up trying to enter https://discord.gg/audacity, every time I am attempting to register as a new user I end up in a registration loop requiring that I start the registering procedure all over again.
In the meantime I have used up all my emails and can therefore not continue with my attempt to inform them on the anomaly that I discovered with the latest Audacity, and Monterey when MAYA44e drivers are active.

Request that you advise the developers on my behalf instead, and point them to this thread for details.

Greetings Henties

Sorry to hear that. I am a total discord noob myself, so unfortunately I’m not able to offer any help with that.

Certainly, I’ll be happy to.

Done.

ESI MAYA44e looks to be a PCIe card. I’m not sure if we will be able to get all the hardware required to check it out :frowning:

I think there are some driver issues with macOS 12 that result in slow device enumeration or so :frowning:

Hi Steve and crsib. Thanks for passing this on and also thanks to crsib for the response. Yes the MAYA44e is indeed a PCIe card, I am holding thumbs that a solution to this long start up time will eventually be found, which could very well be a problem resulting from a very long device enumeration phase during initial initialisation.

Greetings Henties