Any Way to Recover "Orphaned Files"?

[machineghost]

Have you said what you're trying to do (specifically)?
What are your settings in the device toolbar?

I tend to either be in "initial recording mode", or "fixing the audio" mode.

In the recording mode, precisely because of the crashes, I just record one track after another (I used to edit as I went but I don't anymore). I'm usually able to get an entire 15 minutes or so of audio recorded by doing that.

Then I edit to fix stuff. By far my biggest editing operation is using the Noise Reduction effect or just manually deleting tiny bits of tracks, to remove "clicks" that seem to naturally get added (unless I'm extremely careful with my mouth movements as I speak). I also use Normalize and Amplify some to make the audio of each track be the same, and sometimes when I amplify a given track too much I then have to go back and remove noise from every silent part of the track, to get rid of general background noise.

I also rearrange tracks (I align them pretty frequently), but that rarely seems to cause problems. It's more like I'll be "fixing" a track, with noise reduction and manual deleting, and then I'll hit play (maybe for the thirtieth time, maybe for the three hundred and thirtieth ... it's hard to predict), and when I stop playing Audacity freezes.

EDIT: I just froze now after doing some editing, restarted Audacity, and it froze after just playing a part of a track once. So unless it's possible for me to break things in a way that they stay broken even in-between runs of Audacity, it doesn't seem like I have to do anything at all special (just play part of a track and stop ... it's always the stop that's the problem) to get a freeze.

Because of the freeze, there appears to be no way to get any kind of debugging info, which makes it all the harder to figure out what's going on.

As for my device toolbar, it's set to ALSA, microphone icon, "default: Line: 0", "1 (Mono) Recording Channel", volume icon, and default. I don't even have any other options instead of ALSA, which seems a little odd since I think I use PulseAudio for everything, but then ALSA (being older) seems like it should be more stable.

Really the only at all unique thing about my setup is that I have an external USB sound card (which only records in mono) ... but the whole reason I use that is that I get better audio quality on my recordings than with my built-in sound card.

This isn't a help desk although it can seem like one because of the resident Elves Who Have Seen Everything.

And as a programmer the last thing I want to be is a burden. At the very least as a very technical user I should be able to take even the slightest "you can learn more by doing X, or you might have luck with trying Y" suggestion here and run with it myself.

But as I said, a huge part of how I debug as a programmer is to look at the error output, and there is literally none in this case. If someone could point me to a log file or something somewhere I would be all over it, but right now all I have is command line output, and when Audacity freezes and I have to kill it that leads to nothing useful at the command line.

[kozikowski]

And as a programmer the last thing I want to be is a burden.

Hardly that. The support record goes to Ian in Hollywood (a real place) who wanted to read for audiobooks in his apartment. Just over a year and 39 forum chapters—and we succeeded. But he had a ton of interacting conventional problems and he was on Windows. Even I had a passable idea what he was doing.


You are missing the one sentence job.

Such as: "I'm reading for audiobooks."

-or-

"I'm creating a music radio show for the public library."

You can use more than one sentence, but you get the idea. This sounds so far a lot like one poster in Maine who created actual broadcast radio shows in his living room and then shipped them to the station.

I have an external USB sound card (which only records in mono)

Whose name is?

Koz

[kozikowski]

Linux has logs. What do they say?

Screen Shot 2019-07-01 at 18.44.46.png (50.97 KiB) Viewed 354 times

Koz

[steve]

As for my device toolbar, it's set to ALSA, microphone icon, "default: Line: 0", "1 (Mono) Recording Channel", volume icon, and default. I don't even have any other options instead of ALSA, which seems a little odd since I think I use PulseAudio for everything,

PulseAudio uses ALSA as it's back end.

The problem is probably due to an old Audacity/PulseAudio problem.

Which version of Audacity do you have?
Please post the output from "Audio device info" (it's probably in the "Help" menu).

[machineghost]

First off, thanks everyone for all the help! Wall of text incoming (a mix of quotes, replies, and audio diagnostics at the end).

You are missing the one sentence job.

I am recording (approximately) 15 minute lessons for an Introduction to Web Development course. Once the audio file is assembled I then output a WAV file and use FFMPEG to combine it with a screen capture of a Google Slides presentation.

I have an external USB sound card (which only records in mono)

Whose name is?

Sabrent ... is the companyname/name on the USB device. I could probably find the specific model number with some arcane Linux command or by rebooting and checking the BIOS (if the audio diagnostics below don't provide that; let me know).

Linux has logs. What do they say?

The problem is, even though I 100% believe you that logs exist, I'm still no closer to getting them to you than before when I wrote:

If someone could point me to a log file or something somewhere

As a side note, it seems like a Help => Logs menu item would solve this, and probably wouldn't be hard to implement, but I have no idea how often this comes up (and therefore whether it would save effort or not).

I did find two "log files" at the command line:

/usr/share/doc/audacity/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/audacity-data/changelog.Debian.gz

... but I highly doubt they're what you're referring to. So if you could just give me a menu path, a command I could run, or a system path (or even a relative one like ~/.audacity-data/logs) or something I would love to provide you with logs (and would be curious to see what they say myself).

PulseAudio uses ALSA as it's back end.

The problem is probably due to an old Audacity/PulseAudio problem.

Ah, that makes sense (and based on my very limited experience with Linux audio systems, I agree ).

Which version of Audacity do you have?
Please post the output from "Audio device info" (it's probably in the "Help" menu).

There's an About, which tells me I'm using Audacity 2.3.2, and then under Help => Diagnostics => Audio Device Info it tells me ....

Code: Select all

==============================
Default recording device number: 10
Default playback device number: 10
==============================
Device ID: 0
Device name: HDA Intel PCH: ALC892 Analog (hw:0,0)
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 2
Playback channels: 0
Low Recording Latency: 0.00870748
Low Playback Latency: -1
High Recording Latency: 0.0348299
High Playback Latency: -1
Supported Rates:
==============================
Device ID: 1
Device name: HDA Intel PCH: ALC892 Digital (hw:0,1)
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 0
Playback channels: 2
Low Recording Latency: -1
Low Playback Latency: 0.00870748
High Recording Latency: -1
High Playback Latency: 0.0348299
Supported Rates:
    32000
    44100
    48000
    88200
    96000
    192000
==============================
Device ID: 2
Device name: HDA NVidia: HDMI 0 (hw:1,3)
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 0
Playback channels: 8
Low Recording Latency: -1
Low Playback Latency: 0.00870748
High Recording Latency: -1
High Playback Latency: 0.0348299
Supported Rates:
    32000
    44100
    48000
    88200
    96000
    176400
    192000
==============================
Device ID: 3
Device name: HDA NVidia: HDMI 1 (hw:1,7)
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 0
Playback channels: 8
Low Recording Latency: -1
Low Playback Latency: 0.00870748
High Recording Latency: -1
High Playback Latency: 0.0348299
Supported Rates:
    32000
    44100
    48000
    88200
    96000
    176400
    192000
==============================
Device ID: 4
Device name: USB 2.0 Camera: Audio (hw:2,0)
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 1
Playback channels: 0
Low Recording Latency: 0.00870748
Low Playback Latency: -1
High Recording Latency: 0.0348299
High Playback Latency: -1
Supported Rates:
==============================
Device ID: 5
Device name: USB Audio Device: - (hw:3,0)
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 1
Playback channels: 2
Low Recording Latency: 0.00870748
Low Playback Latency: 0.00870748
High Recording Latency: 0.0348299
High Playback Latency: 0.0348299
Supported Rates:
    44100
    48000
==============================
Device ID: 6
Device name: sysdefault
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 128
Playback channels: 0
Low Recording Latency: 0.0213333
Low Playback Latency: -1
High Recording Latency: 0.0213333
High Playback Latency: -1
Supported Rates:
==============================
Device ID: 7
Device name: iec958
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 0
Playback channels: 2
Low Recording Latency: -1
Low Playback Latency: 0.00870748
High Recording Latency: -1
High Playback Latency: 0.0348299
Supported Rates:
    32000
    44100
    48000
    88200
    96000
    192000
==============================
Device ID: 8
Device name: spdif
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 0
Playback channels: 2
Low Recording Latency: -1
Low Playback Latency: 0.00870748
High Recording Latency: -1
High Playback Latency: 0.0348299
Supported Rates:
    32000
    44100
    48000
    88200
    96000
    192000
==============================
Device ID: 9
Device name: pulse
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 32
Playback channels: 32
Low Recording Latency: 0.00870748
Low Playback Latency: 0.00870748
High Recording Latency: 0.0348299
High Playback Latency: 0.0348299
Supported Rates:
    8000
    9600
    11025
    12000
    15000
    16000
    22050
    24000
    32000
    44100
    48000
    88200
    96000
    176400
    192000
==============================
Device ID: 10
Device name: default
Host name: ALSA
Recording channels: 32
Playback channels: 32
Low Recording Latency: 0.00870748
Low Playback Latency: 0.00870748
High Recording Latency: 0.0348299
High Playback Latency: 0.0348299
Supported Rates:
    8000
    9600
    11025
    12000
    15000
    16000
    22050
    24000
    32000
    44100
    48000
    88200
    96000
    176400
    192000
==============================
Selected recording device: 10 - default
Selected playback device: 10 - default
Supported Rates:
    8000
    9600
    11025
    12000
    15000
    16000
    22050
    24000
    32000
    44100
    48000
    88200
    96000
    176400
    192000
==============================
Available mixers:
==============================
Available recording sources:
0 - Line:0
1 - Mic:0
2 - Internal Mic:0
==============================
Available playback volumes:
0 - Master:0
1 - Headphone:0
2 - Speaker:0
3 - PCM:0
4 - Front:0
5 - Surround:0
6 - Center:0
7 - LFE:0
8 - Line:0
9 - Line Boost:0
10 - Mic:0
11 - Mic Boost:0
==============================
Recording volume is native
Playback volume is native

[steve]

There's an About, which tells me I'm using Audacity 2.3.2

That surprised me. Is that from Panda Jim's PPA? (not important, just interested).

Re. Audio device info and the device toolbar settings:

"default" is the system default sound system, which on Ubuntu (and most other modern Desktop distributions) is PulseAudio (same as "pulse").

Do you use the USB Audio Device for recording and playback? If so, try setting the device toolbar to use "Device ID: 5 USB Audio Device: - (hw:3,0)".

A bit of background:
The "hw" devices in the list represent physical hardware devices. By selecting "hw" devices in the device toolbar, you tell Audacity to use the device directly through ALSA, bypassing PulseAudio.

The main benefit of doing this is stability. ALSA drivers are usually rock solid stable.
The downside is that you lose the advanced mixing options that are provided by Pulse Audio. This usually means that only one application can access the device at a time - if any other application is accessing the device, then Audacity will not be able to access the device (and will show an appropriate error message.

[machineghost]

There's an About, which tells me I'm using Audacity 2.3.2

That surprised me. Is that from Panda Jim's PPA? (not important, just interested).

It's from the PPA: http://ppa.launchpad.net/unbutuhandbook ... ity/ubuntu enial main (ubuntuhandbook1/audacity). I have no idea where I got that repository from; I think I was trying to solve my problems a few months back, and figured "maybe a newer version would help", so I found some random repository with a newer version and used it.

I have absolutely no attachment to that repo and will happily try any other.

Do you use the USB Audio Device for recording and playback? If so, try setting the device toolbar to use "Device ID: 5 USB Audio Device: - (hw:3,0)".

A bit of background:
The "hw" devices in the list represent physical hardware devices. By selecting "hw" devices in the device toolbar, you tell Audacity to use the device directly through ALSA, bypassing PulseAudio.

The main benefit of doing this is stability. ALSA drivers are usually rock solid stable.
The downside is that you lose the advanced mixing options that are provided by Pulse Audio. This usually means that only one application can access the device at a time - if any other application is accessing the device, then Audacity will not be able to access the device (and will show an appropriate error message.

I do use the USB device, and I've tried changing that to "USB Audio Device: - (hw:3,0)" (and that background was interesting, thank you).

However, I don't think that can be the cause of the problem, because it's never (or almost never) recording that causes the crash, it's playing back the audio (and specifically stopping the playback which causes the freeze).

Also, the only other app that uses sound that I run while doing Audacity work is Chrome (sometimes I also have a game in WINE, but testing has shown that whether the game is up or not I have the issue). It's certainly possible that Chrome could be "colliding" with Audacity somehow, but it'd have to be on a background level (ie. I'm not playing Youtube videos while I record or anything).

[kozikowski]

Thank you for the complete details.

Wall of text incoming

Instead of quote tags for long passages, you can use code tags instead. The shortcut key is left arrow, slash, right arrow, but of course, you can type it manually.

Screen Shot 2019-07-02 at 10.47.54.png (15.6 KiB) Viewed 329 times

Close the tag at the end. I patched your posting. I hope you don't mind. We don't normally do that, but this seemed appropriate.

Koz

[machineghost]

I patched your posting. I hope you don't mind. We don't normally do that, but this seemed appropriate.

Thanks for doing that for me. I'm actually familiar with these tags from a similar vBulletin forum ... I just didn't think to use code in this case

[steve]

ubuntuhandbook1/audacity

That's here: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntuhandbook1/ ... u/audacity
This is a long established PPA. I've used it myself in the past.

The one thing to be wary of, (with any PPA), is that the PPA builds are not official releases, and no-one tests them, so you can easily end up with buggy pre-release versions.

A good way to use PPAs, is to enable the PPA when there's a release build that you want, then disable the PPA. Your installed app will then remain at the same version, until either you re-enable the PPA, or the official Ubuntu release version catches up.

However, I don't think that can be the cause of the problem, because it's never (or almost never) recording that causes the crash, it's playing back the audio (and specifically stopping the playback which causes the freeze)

Which playback device do you use? Look for the "hw" device in the Audio Device Info that corresponds to the physical device that you use for playback.

"Freezing on stop" is a classic symptom of the Audacity/PulseAudio problem.