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

[LaurieJW]

As per my Editing technique- I recently became comfortable with the Multiview button- After I record- I hit "multi view" so I can see my breaths better in the waveforms- I click a "silent" section, hit copy then paste over my breaths... and it works beautifully for the first 10(ish) minutes of finished recordings. Then it starts to sloooowwww down and then the spinny wheel of death appears... its only happened in the last few days though. So I am hoping it fixes itself??

I am not familiar with a mac, but I can tell you that audacity takes a lot of memory from a computer, so maybe overdoing this process is starting to confuse audacity and it needs more time to process it.

But something else I want to suggest here. Do not cut out or paste over your breaths ! Breathing is normal for humans and we don't want to sound like robots, right A good example I'm always giving: Imagine you are on the phone with someone and you notice that he is never breathing in your ear between sentences. Wouldn't you start to get an uncanny feeling soon, wondering who really is on the other side of that phone ?

I understand that some huge breath intakes may sound disagreeable to readers or listeners, but hearing none at all is creepy. My suggestion here, and they way I do it, is to highlight big breaths, which you can see in the audacity wave window if you know what to look out for, they are a big roundish part of the waves between sentences. So highlight one, go to Amplify and put in -10. That way you'll keep your natural breath everywhere but it will be subdued and agreeable to the ear. And I can guarantee that at least on my Audacity it never uses up many memory resources and I never had the spinning wheel like that.

Maybe it's something you want to try with a short text and see how you like it. You probably don't need to do it with every breath anyway. And the end result will indeed sound more natural than with silence between the sentences.

Sonia

Thank you Sonia for the tidbit on breaths and using the amplify button! HUGE! ~ Laurie

[Winnifred]

Hey!! Just installed audacity linux version.. But my application seems completely different.
First of all I am unable to record audio and the record button isn't working properly either. My host is ALSA and I have no other options to change that. I am also not getting any frequency options on my audio settings drop down...
Help please!!!

Can anyone who knows Linux help Tanisha?

Thanks,

[barbara2]

I'll have a go, Tanisha, till the rest of Librivox wakes up and you can get answers from people with the same software as yours. And who know more. I didn't set Audacity up, my distribution did. It also installed up to date audio software, pipewire.

These are my settings. I'm still using Audacity 3.3.3 (I have not updated the Audacity program itself).

Audio Settings menu:

Interface ALSA
Using Port Audio v19.7.0
Playback Default (that would be pipewire if you have pipewire)
Recording Default (also would be pipewire)
Channels 1 (Mono)

Best,

Barbara

*openSUSE Tumbleweed, a rolling distro

[Urhuru]

My audacity's waveform is on 0.0 even though it is audible. I saw that it should get to 0.5

[Rapunzelina]

Is it as audible as a normal Librivox recording, like from the catalogue? If so, it could be a display issue. If it's quieter than a normal Librivox recording, then you probably need to make it so that the waveform peaks around the 0.5 mark, either by increasing the microphone's input volume before recording, or amplifying after recording.

[Urhuru]

In Audacity 3.4.2, I can't see where to constant export nitrate at 128 kps. There are only ranges and I didn't find 128 among them.

[TriciaG]

In Audacity 3.4.2, I can't see where to constant export nitrate at 128 kps. There are only ranges and I didn't find 128 among them.

Select "Constant" as the mode. That will get you to the pick list with the constant rates on them:

[Winnifred]

In Audacity 3.4.2, it looks like this:


Cheers,