A new Instance of Audacity on every new file load? WTF?

[angry000]

Hello I recently downloaded this software and I am horrified, absolutely horrified to discover it opens new instances of itself every dam time I want to open an audio file. What on earth where the devs thinking? Do you realize how infuriating this is? To make this horrific situation ever worse the software has absolutely no option, no option whatsoever to stop it from opening new instances of itself. Are you (and I am asking the devs here) seriously OK in the head? What drugs where you on when you consciously came to the decision to purposely have software keep opening new instances of itself BY DEFAULT, and further more provide no option at all to stop this craziness. Have you ever used computer software yourself? You give me the impression you have not worked with software ever in your life, which leads me to the curious question on how did you ever have the competence to produce this software to the level it is now?

I am in the situation where I have to open 100`s of individual audio files to normalize them, I assumed quite wrongly that this software would work like this:

I open the software, then choose File/Open, I select the first of many audio files to be processed, I process the first file, and hit "save".. great

I then navigate my mouse to File/Open again and select the next audio file to be processed. This action aught to close the previous audio file (WITHOUT CLOSING THE SOFTWARE) and load the new selected audio file ready to be processed.


Now doesn't that sound sensible?

Instead we have a situation with Audacity where after editing and saving my first file and on attempting to open the next file to edit, low and behold it opens a completely new instance of itself. Why? explain why this happens?

So I get thinking, perhaps dragging into audio files directly into once instance of the software might do what I want it to do.. oh god no, no no no, no.. what dose it do? it opens the new audio file and inserts it under the audio file that was already there, I mean WTF?

This should not be a default situation, ideally you SHOULD have an option to turn this off if you insist on having it as a default.

Yet I am still thoroughly bewildered with this developer decision, and I would much like to hear an explanation, a line of thought.. as to how you concluded this is OK to have in this software, any software in fact.


Just to be clear, I do see the advantages of having multiple instances of something running, I have used such feature in other software many times, however ALL of them, bar none!... had options to not have it open in multiple instances, and I as far as I can remember they all had it OFF by default even if they had the option to have it on.



This looks like a wonderful fully featured tool, and I am sure its solid in all its other areas, but really guys? what where you thinking?

Kudos for deving open source, and best of luck with the future dev despite my frustrations against this particular issue.

[steve]

Audacity does not operate directly on audio files. Audacity works with "Audacity Projects".

When you "open" an audio file, what you are actually doing is opening a new Audacity Project, and "importing" an audio file into it. Data from the audio file is copied into the Audacity Project as a new "track".

You can import multiple audio files into one Audacity Project by using the "Import Audio" command from the "File" menu.

Similarly, "Save Project" does not save a normal audio file - it saves an "Audacity Project", which has a "project file" (the name ends with ".aup") and a data folder containing the audio data (the folder name ends with "_data").

To produce a normal audio file, you need to "Export" in the required audio file format. This will mix down the tracks in the project to stereo or mono, and export an audio file in the selected format.

To export part of a project (such as one track of a multi-track project), select what you want to export, and then "Export Selected Audio". (see: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/fil ... xport.html)

If your project has multiple tracks and you want to export each track as a separate audio file, use "Export Multiple" (see here for details: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/exp ... tiple.html)

[angry000]

Thank you for the prompt feedback, also sorry for my furious post.

I note what you are saying, So its more like a mulitrack session tool? I assumed this was much the same as something like Cool Edit Pro which I use however it has issues loading certain formats which I need to process. I have found another free tool called Oceanaudio which for what I need to do seems better and I can get through the files quicker.

I will leave Audacity installed because I was looking around for an alternate to Cool Edit anyway for general audio editing and Audacity dose seem fully featured.

For the batch work I need to do however I don't think its suitable.

Thanks again for the reply / explanation

[steve]

So its more like a mulitrack session tool?

I guess you could describe it like that.

I assumed this was much the same as something like Cool Edit Pro

That was a great tool in its day. I used CoolEdit for many years.

For the batch work I need to do however I don't think its suitable.

Have you looked at Audacity's "Chains" feature? https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/cha ... ation.html