Crashing on Yosemite

cmac185 · Post by **cmac185** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 4:00 pm

Split from http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 12#p265012

You still have not said what device you are recording from. Is it line-in to the Mac or a USB or Firewire external device? If it's a USB device, connect it to an empty USB port on the Mac. Do not connect it to a USB hub connected to the computer.

Perhaps if rates are mismatched as they currently are, you should enable the "hardware rate converter", but I would very strongly suggest that you make rates match if you want to solve this. If you only want to record at 22050 Hz, it's probably more convenient to change both the input and output rates of this device to 22050 Hz in Audio MIDI Setup. If there is no option to set it to 22050 Hz then I suggest setting Audacity sample rate to 44100 Hz instead.

Earlier on this thread I specified that the problem originally occurred when recording from a wireless lapel mic. The actual connection is an analog output from the wireless receiver to the line-in port on my MBP. Thus there is no external recording device, only Audacity recording via the line-in connection.

In testing I have recorded from an external tape player via line-in as well as using Soundflower between iTunes and Audacity. Nothing I have been able to or load the system with has caused any problems here at home, even with 2.0.6. Seems really strange that I can't duplicate it so far.

If you provide the Mac crash reports for Audacity we can see what they say. To do that, open Finder, then choose Go > Go to Folder and type (assuming you are using Yosemite):

Code: Select all
/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/

See attached zip file of 2 crash reports.

Cliff

Post by **Gale Andrews** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 7:41 pm

cmac185 wrote:
You still have not said what device you are recording from. Is it line-in to the Mac or a USB or Firewire external device? If it's a USB device, connect it to an empty USB port on the Mac. Do not connect it to a USB hub connected to the computer.

Perhaps if rates are mismatched as they currently are, you should enable the "hardware rate converter", but I would very strongly suggest that you make rates match if you want to solve this. If you only want to record at 22050 Hz, it's probably more convenient to change both the input and output rates of this device to 22050 Hz in Audio MIDI Setup. If there is no option to set it to 22050 Hz then I suggest setting Audacity sample rate to 44100 Hz instead.
Earlier on this thread I specified that the problem originally occurred when recording from a wireless lapel mic. The actual connection is an analog output from the wireless receiver to the line-in port on my MBP. Thus there is no external recording device, only Audacity recording via the line-in connection.

Thanks, the actual connection is what we need to know. I still suggest you change Audio MIDI Setup for line-in to 22050 Hz, or change Audacity project rate to 44100 Hz.

cmac185 wrote:See attached zip file of 2 crash reports.

Thanks, they seemed to have identical symptoms in the crashed thread. I passed them on for a developer to look at.

Gale

Post by **Gale Andrews** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 2:51 pm

Gale Andrews wrote:
cmac185 wrote:See attached zip file of 2 crash reports.
Thanks, they seemed to have identical symptoms in the crashed thread. I passed them on for a developer to look at.

Have you matched rates yet? If so, does Audacity start crashing again if you make the rates different again?

Had you used any Audio Unit or VST effects before the crashes started?

The crash reports seem to indicate it might be a drag-n-drop or window drawing issue. Had you used drag & drop to move something into Audacity?

Gale

cmac185 · Post by **cmac185** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 9:24 pm

In some of the recording I did the other day trying to recreate the problem I had matched rates and crashes still occurred. Those crash reports I sent you were with nothing else running on screen and rates unmatched.

The computer had been running for maybe a week or two at the time, but had been put in suspend mode during transport to the church to record the sermons. Once there it was awakened and Audacity started. Audacity defaulted to 44100 sample rate so I changed the rate to 22050 and did the first recording which went fine. At the end of that I saved the recording and closed the current session using the menu item "close" then opened up a "new" session for the second recording and again set the sample rate to 22050. When it was time to start the recording I clicked on the record button and had an immediate crash. At that point I selected "reopen" from the OSx crash dialog box and Audacity opened and I was able to start the second recording. Audacity nightly Jan 4 was used the first week and version 2.0.6 was used the second week with identical results other than 2.0.6 started messing up the second recording data after about 5 minutes and the Jan 4th nightly took almost 50 minutes to start it messing up.

Both times nothing else was in the foreground. FireFox, MacMail, and a couple of other smaller programs were minimized and doing nothing. There was no wireless available there so FireFox or Mail couldn't have been trying to access the Internet. No editing of the first recording had taken place.

My impression was it could be a display/redraw issue partly from how it crashed and partly because on Yosemite Audacity sometimes seems like it is doing lots on unnecessary screen redraws. I see this usually in that the menu bar at the top of the display will often flash rapidly 10 - 15 times when saving a file and sometimes doing some other things which I don't remember exactly what they were now. Since nothing is changing in the menu bar why would that redraw at all? Could there be changes in the OSx display interface that are contributing to this issue? I don't have other programs crashing as a rule.

I'll do some testing with matched and unmatched rates this evening and see if I can make any sense out of it.

I've uploaded a crash report from one of the recording sessions that ended up with a messed up recording. This one used the Jan 4th nightly.

Cliff

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 10:14 pm

cmac185 wrote:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6606703

This may not be a simple Audacity problem.
Interesting thread. I reset the PRAM a month or so ago for another reason.

Cliff

Hi Cliff,

I'm one of the Audacity devs and, so far, I've not been able to recreate your crashes. So, I was wondering if you have time to try the latest "debug" versions we have:

http://audacity.homerow.net/index.php?d ... 1.11-04.15

It "may" help me to figure out what is going on because it may include extra information in the crash report.

Oh, and I know what you mean about the menu redrawing...that is definitely eye catching. Not sure there's something we can do about it until we upgrade to wxWidgets v3, but I will be taking a look into it.

Thanks much,

Leland

cmac185 · Post by **cmac185** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 10:57 pm

I'll give it a try. If I can get it to crash do you want the same crash reports I've been uploading?

FWIW, I haven't been able to recreate the crashes that happened a week or two ago, but other crashes have happened. Knowing the propensity of software to cause frustration, getting it to crash when I want it to could be a challenge. It seems as if it usually happens at the most unexpected times.

Cliff

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:18 am

cmac185 wrote:I'll give it a try. If I can get it to crash do you want the same crash reports I've been uploading?

FWIW, I haven't been able to recreate the crashes that happened a week or two ago, but other crashes have happened. Knowing the propensity of software to cause frustration, getting it to crash when I want it to could be a challenge. It seems as if it usually happens at the most unexpected times.

Cliff

Yes, please...I'll take any new crash reports that you produce while running the debug version.

Thanks again,

Leland

cmac185 · Post by **cmac185** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:31 am

Will do.

BTW, this Sunday I need to do another recording and was planning to have two laptops, one with Yosemite and one with Mavericks both recording to make sure I get a good recording. What version would you or anyone else recommend for the Mavericks laptop? For Yosemite, use the debug version or the latest nightly?

Cliff

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 3:27 am

cmac185 wrote:Will do.

BTW, this Sunday I need to do another recording and was planning to have two laptops, one with Yosemite and one with Mavericks both recording to make sure I get a good recording. What version would you or anyone else recommend for the Mavericks laptop? For Yosemite, use the debug version or the latest nightly?

Cliff

For the Yosemite, please use the debug version. For Mavericks, I should think that even the latest night should be okay, but I'd recommend whatever version you used last that worked without crashing.

I'd hate for you to get another bogus recording.

Leland

cmac185 · Post by **cmac185** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 3:02 pm

Well, this weekend's recording went with out any static so hopefully that is a done deal, BUT after the last recording, before I had saved the file, I clicked the button to display the whole recording on one page width and Audacity crashed. Thankfully upon restart it recovered the files and all was well as far as the recording went. Sure had a couple of moments of concern though. Moral - Save as first thing if possible.

I've attached the crash report. Used Jan 18 debug version so hopefully it will have some good info for you.

Cliff

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