First application of effect is being unnecessarily delayed

[Trebor]

Audacity 2.1.2 on Windows Vista.

Animation shows two applications of same equalization:
the second application, via "Ctrl"+"R", (at 14.17 seconds), only takes 1/24th of the time of the first application

#1 The equalization window takes 3.2 seconds to appear after being selected from effect menu, (too slow).
#2 The first application of this equalization takes 4.3 seconds to render, (way too slow).
#3 The second application of same equalization, via "Ctrl"+"R", (at 14.17), takes 0.18 seconds , (that's more like it).

There should not be an ~24x difference in the time taken to apply the same equalization to the same track.
Something is slowing down the first application of the effect,
(the time taken for the effect selected from the menu to appear is also too slow).

click on this image to see animation in its entirety (i.e. to see the on-screen timer).

Animation (with timer) to illustrate delay problem.gif (1.07 MiB) Viewed 2471 times

[steve]

Does this only occur when the track spectrogram view is selected?

[Trebor]

Does this only occur when the track spectrogram view is selected?

No, it happens on waveform display too.
I just used spectrogram display because it is better at showing that the equalization had changed.

If this problem is specific to the Vista version of Windows just forget about it : Vista is only ~1% of current Windows users.

[Trebor]

That selections from the effect-menu are taking about 3 seconds too long to appear may be a clue : the delay could be in the GUI ...
When using "Ctrl"+"R" there is no change in the GUI, and there is no delay in the effect being applied.

[Gale Andrews]

So this happens with all effects you tried?

Did 2.1.2 always do this and 2.1.1 does not? Or has the problem only just started in 2.1.2?


Gale

[Trebor]

So this happens with all effects you tried?

Now you mention it, the delays* are only in Audacity's native equalizer.
[* plural: a ~3 second delay for the equalizer window to appear once selected from the menu,
& similar delay before equalization is applied ].

Did 2.1.2 always do this and 2.1.1 does not? Or has the problem only just started in 2.1.2?

Sorry I can't remember when this delay first appeared. When equalizing a long track, a 3 second delay could go unnoticed.

I usually use VST plugin effects in Audacity, they all take 1-2 seconds to appear after being selected from the effect menu.
So that the native equalizer, (which I rarely use), was taking 3 seconds to appear wasn't too conspicuous in that context.

Only when using "Ctrl"+"R" to repeat the native equalizer did it become apparent that something was amiss.

[steve]

Now you mention it, the delays* are only in Audacity's native equalizer.

That's a relief.
The Equalization effect needs a substantial rewrite, so this should not be a problem after that has been done.

[Trebor]

I just tried "Audacity 2.1.3-alpha-Dec 17 2016"
That also has the same equalizer delay problems.

[Trebor]

This equalizer delay problem has not been addressed in Audacity 2.2.0
When selected from the effects menu, the equalizer-GUI takes several seconds to appear,
during which the CPU goes to the max. When the OK button on the equalizer-GUI is pressed, again there is a delay of seconds and CPU is maxed-out...

CPU graph is on the left.gif (1.03 MiB) Viewed 1733 times

The actual equalization of ~100 seconds of audio uses less CPU-cycles than the equalizer-GUI [!].
( That's analogous to the dashboard on a Tesla using more battery power than the electric-motor driving the car ).

IMO there is a pointless loop somewhere in the equalizer-GUI which is slowing it down and wasting CPU.

[waxcylinder]

Fires up very quickly for me on W10 CE on first use- but I do have a fast laptop with 256 GB SSD non-spinning disk

Peter