The all-new "HELP! I have an Audacity problem" thread

[philchenevert]

I notice some people when posting pictures of audacity have red lines at 0.5 levels, to let them know their volume is in the right zone. How do I set those red lines to appear in my Audcacity screens? It would be helpful on an interface level.

If you click on the envelope tool it shows the 0.5 levels just fine. This is one of those six tools between the I beam and t he pencil.

[GraceBuchanan]

I notice some people when posting pictures of audacity have red lines at 0.5 levels, to let them know their volume is in the right zone. How do I set those red lines to appear in my Audcacity screens? It would be helpful on an interface level.

I think that the red lines were in an older version of Audacity. Now they are gray bars. They indicate that the "envelope" tool was activated. See https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/envelope_tool.html

[Kitty]

I notice some people when posting pictures of audacity have red lines at 0.5 levels, to let them know their volume is in the right zone. How do I set those red lines to appear in my Audcacity screens? It would be helpful on an interface level.

maybe what you mean is clipping ? Those appear as red lines and they should be avoided because they can distort the sound if they appear too much in bulk.

You can make your clippings show like this:

> go to "View" in the upper bar menu
> tick the "Show clipping" box

That should do the trick. Just try it out and scream into the microphone while recording, a red bar should immediately appear

Sonia

[ToddHW]

I had a problem this week. My computer crashed while Audacity was opening a dozen files so I could edit a play. I pressed reset on the computer, it seemed to come back alive just fine. I had only just been opening all the play reader mp3 files to start editing them together when the crash happened so no actual Audacity-created file had been damaged.

Audacity did have a minor post-crash trouble though - all the toolbars went back to their default settings (ie, they were all present again whereas I hide them all so as to gain more useful space on the screen to be able to have more files open at the same time). So I had to hide them all again. Audacity was now apparently working fine.

But when I went to make a correction to a file I had submitted on another project - adding in a missing line - the sound quality of the new recording was terrible. Hollow, echo-y. Could not get it to match what I had recorded before at all. Certainly glad I had not recorded more than the few words I had missed: not a full role or chapter!

Anyway, deciding after a few days that my New Year's cold could not be making things sound this bad, I tried all sortsa things to get my Blue Yeti to sound better than the hollow voice I was hearing - switch from cardiod to other patterns, play with the gain knob, with/without pop-screen. (Also turned off my furnace, ensured the washer and dryer weren't running, no planes overhead, etc etc.) Finally I noticed that not only was nothing I did making things better, it actually was having NO effect at all. So I opened the Audacity device toolbar and saw that I was not connected to the Yeti anymore, but to the computer's built in mike. Changed that selection to Yeti again, undid all the things I had done on the Yeti in my trials, (oh, yeah, and turned my furnace back on!), and all was well again

I knew about the Audacity "plug in microphone first before starting Audacity" thing, but what was strange here was that I had not physically changed anything during/after the computer crash - my Blue Yeti stayed plugged in as always. So I had ignored that possibility.

Lesson: if Audacity was looking strange after the crash, what with bringing back all the hidden toolbars, the recording sound problem was probably in Audacity too.

Thanks, Todd

[lurcherlover]

Maybe something Is trying to tell you that that you need a better and more stable DAW!

I use Reaper and it has never crashed in 10 years or more. Just a thought.

[Peter Why]

Todd; I have my OS (Windows 10) on my SSD C: drive ... plus a few other programs that I can't relocate to my conventional hard drive D:

Audacity is installed on D:, and its temporary files are supposed to be stored on the D drive, too. However, the few times that I've tried to edit a DR, with multiple instances of Audacity open, I received warnings about lack of storage space and found that the SSD (C:) was absolutely full. I lost files and had some corrupted when this happened (for example, one mp3 that I created from a final edit had a couple of areas which were overwritten with loud noise ... luckily, I always keep a FLAC before creating the mp3, and was able to recreate it without any trouble).

So it looks as if some part of Audacity still uses the C: drive for storage, despite the program being on another drive.

I can't be certain that Audacity itself is the cause of this overfill in C:, and so I've installed a free program called "TreeSize Free", which shows how space is allocated on a drive. I'll run it the next time I get the storage space error message, to find out ... but I'm reluctant to cause the problem deliberately.

I wondered if you might have the same problem.
Peter

[ToddHW]

I supposedly have 50 Gigglebytes free on my C: drive - but no D: drive. No idea of course if 50 is a big number for Audacity or not.

I guess I could erase old Audacity files for items that have been cataloged (~100 projects on this computer, I think) and see if I get more space. If more space is important.

Thanks, Todd

[philchenevert]

The .aup files and data files do use lots of space. I delete them once I've made my MP3.

[GraceBuchanan]

The .aup files and data files do use lots of space. I delete them once I've made my MP3.

Phil,
I came across something at the Audacity forums about being careful about deleting and renaming .aup and data files a certain way, but now I can't find it. Do you take any special precautions?
Thanks.

[KevinS]

I save everything perfectly expendable on an external drive. Someday I'll realize that no one is going to PM me asking for Section 3 of Brown Brethren. (And if they do, they'll get the .mp3 file, I guess, but the external drive is like a poorly managed auto junkyard.)

The key to moving the .aup and data files is to do them in pairs and to never re-name them.

So, .aup and data files go from my In Progress folder, to my Audacity folder, and then to the auto junkyard. They progress from one to the other rather naturally.

All the .mp3 files are supposed to go into the LivriVox folder, but they end up with my Beatles .mp3s and Caetano Veloso album rips.

[GraceBuchanan]

the external drive is like a poorly managed auto junkyard.)

Kevin, I love your humor!

The key to moving the .aup and data files is to do them in pairs and to never re-name them.

So, .aup and data files go from my In Progress folder, to my Audacity folder, and then to the auto junkyard. They progress from one to the other rather naturally.

Yes, I, too, do something like this. My Audacity folder contains an In Progress folder, Submitted folder, Completed folder, and Published folder.

I ought to rename my Published folder AutoJunkyard. That might inspire me to clear out the broken glass, slashed tires, and food wrappers, but as long as I have 50 or 100 or more "Gigglebytes" (as ToddHW said), I don't bother. Some day, I'll delete the pairs of .aup and data files. I have them all backed up as space-saving 32-bit WAV files anyway.

Regarding renaming Audacity projects, I (too often) find that I accidentally give projects the same name. For example, I accidently save the raw file simply named with the date, forgetting to specify in the file name that it is the raw data. Then I copy and paste from that file and put the new file (with the same name) in the Edited < Book-Title < InProgress folder. Then, I get the two confused when I have both of those files open at the same time while I'm editing, even though I keep the raw file at the top of my computer screen, and the editing file below it.

Must I make a copy of the editing file, and name it properly, and delete the previously poorly-named editing file? And do the same with the raw file? I suppose that would rescue me from confusion. Thanks for helping me think through this.

[mightyfelix]

Once you have a PL ok on your submitted mp3 file, there's really no need to keep the aup and data folders. You're not going to keep tinkering with it after you have a PL ok, are you? You can safely delete them both to save space and just keep the final mp3 in case of future emergencies.

Although I am beginning to realize that I probably don't need to keep copies of sections that were uploaded and catalogued there years ago. Still, I can't quite bring myself to throw them away.

[Jmbau13]

... Someday I'll realize that no one is going to PM me asking for Section 3 of Brown Brethren.

But... you never know...

[KevinS]

... Someday I'll realize that no one is going to PM me asking for Section 3 of Brown Brethren.

But... you never know...

Hahaah! I still have it!

[Jmbau13]

Hahaah! I still have it!

Now, why am I somehow not surprised??