Audio skips during playback

I’m currently experiencing an inconsistent issue where the audio will sometimes skip when I start playback. It’s not always present, but when it is it makes Audacity really difficult for me to use.

When playback starts, it will sometimes skip through the track I have loaded before playing at some future point in the track other than where I started playback. Describing it is a little difficult, so I’ve recorded a video exhibiting the behaviour here.

I’m not sure what could be causing the issue. Sometimes Audacity will be working just fine for at least an hour before the problem suddenly appears. Sometimes the problem appears as soon as I open Audacity after a fresh boot. Sometimes the problem suddenly disappears (although this is rare, as I tend to try rebooting or give up soon after the problem appears). I have noticed that the problem doesn’t happen when I select default, sysdefault, or dmix as the playback device instead of pulse, but in those cases while the playhead moves correctly I don’t hear any audio.

I’m using Xubuntu (Ubuntu 20.04), Audacity 3.0.2 (installed from snapcraft.io).

Is there an “apt” version that you can try?

Thanks, I installed the apt version which installed Audacity 2.4.2 and I used it for a few hours without noticing any issues. Do I need to do anything in particular to file this as a bug report for Audacity 3.X?

You could report it to Snapcraft. The bug is probably in the packaging, not in Audacity 3.x itself. I’ve not seen or heard of this issue other than in the Snap version.

Thanks, I’ve reported it to the Snap here.