Erik's Problems With Audacity, or any other software Options

[Saoirse O'Shea]

if it's not a problem I would like to warn people here about audacity..
It is free for a reason, it keeps chrashing (especially the mac version). The PC version also chrashes, once me and the band lost hours and hours of recording because it chrashed during export.. I didn't want to save the project, because saving often causes problems in audacity.. So I would not recomend it.

As a suggestion EriK - contact Audacity and provide them with as much detail as you can. That way they may be able to bug fix and supply a hotfix if it is indeed an issue with Audacity. If they don't know about it though then they can't attempt to fix it. Working with the team will benefit other users by helping develop a more robust product.

This goes really for ANY software commercial, shareware or freeware. Indeed if you look at the forum boards of the majority (probably all) the commercial daws you will find people logging issues, particularly after a new version has been released. To put this in to some context - the number of possible hardware permutations that a pc can be made from is massive - get one bit wrong and you may not achieve compatibility between hardware and software. Add to that potential software (and user installation) clashes/issues and beta testing a complicated program becomes a massive endeavor and frankly pretty much impossible to ensure 100%.


I'm certainly not suggesting that Audacity is perfect, or that it might not be behind the problems that Erik has encountered - it may be - but give the developers information and try to let them work on a fix.

As to why Audacity is free - it is free because the developers believe in and support open source software and no other reason. By being free it has enabled many users to try out music and broadcast production who otherwise may never have been able.

Cheers,
Tony

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[erik]

yeah it is probably possible to fix it, but I've stoped using it a long time ago

But people who have recently innstalled it might think "if it aint broke dont fix it". And then a whole project gets destroyed and its too late. The Mac version has a bug wich makes all the different tracks move just a little bit away from eachoter when you open a saved project! I'm not shure but I think the PC does that to. In the Mac version the tools stop working after using the software for about 20 - 30 minutes or so and then you HAVE to save and open it again, and then the project is ruined..

We used this at school and it were bugged on all 30 Macs, so we stopped using it. I have also tested it on my school laptop (windows) and my drummer's PC (thats when we lost a whole day's work ) So my advice to new users of Audacity: get it fixed first!

but thanks for the reply though!

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[Saoirse O'Shea]

Interesting -
Installed the 1.3beta on 25 pcs of differing hardware configurations for a radio production course here in July Erik and had no issues. Suggest your school IT bod talks to Audacity as I'm sure they'd be interested in what the issue might be.

Cheers,
Tony

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[steve25]

I had a crashing situation with audacity. I had recorded a backing track and was just playing along with it and all of a sudden this horrible noise started coming out and the program died. It scared the life out of me as it was so loud but yeah extremely annoying

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[Saoirse O'Shea]

Sounds like you might have an internal feedback loop going on Steve. That would produce both the noise you're experiencing and crash the sequencer (it would crash any sequencer tbh).

Cheers,
Tony

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[RobM]

yeah it is probably possible to fix it, but I've stoped using it a long time ago

But people who have recently innstalled it might think "if it aint broke dont fix it". And then a whole project gets destroyed and its too late. The Mac version has a bug wich makes all the different tracks move just a little bit away from eachoter when you open a saved project! I'm not shure but I think the PC does that to. In the Mac version the tools stop working after using the software for about 20 - 30 minutes or so and then you HAVE to save and open it again, and then the project is ruined..

We used this at school and it were bugged on all 30 Macs, so we stopped using it. I have also tested it on my school laptop (windows) and my drummer's PC (thats when we lost a whole day's work ) So my advice to new users of Audacity: get it fixed first!

but thanks for the reply though!

My experience (and I was in the computer IT field for many years working on all kinds of computers, configurations including mac) is that when a program crashes over and over on certain people's systems but not on the majority of the people's systems then there is either A: Something in common with those systems, or B: the systems need to be either AA: Cleaned out and re-imaged or BB: upgraded to insure all drivers, bios etc are recent.

Just from a casual look here it could be that the PC's need to be upgraded on all drivers, and the Macs probably have so much crap on them that they are choking.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[steve25]

Sounds like you might have an internal feedback loop going on Steve. That would produce both the noise you're experiencing and crash the sequencer (it would crash any sequencer tbh).

Cheers,
Tony

I have no idea what that is, but how do i get rid of it?

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[Saoirse O'Shea]

If it's feedback Steve it's most probably because at some stage the inputs and outputs of Audacity have become connected causing an internal loop. You need to break that loop to stop it. Otherwise what happens is that the output signal is routed to the input, re-recorded and possibly amplified, sent back to the output only to reappear at the input - ad infinitum up to the point where the system overloads and crashes.

In the first instance I'd check how your recording input and monitoring output are assigned in Audacity and assign them to different channels. The detail in Audacity is in Preferences>Audio. If its not this then it may be how your soundcard is set up either in software or physically.

Cheers,
Tony

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!