How Many Tracks Have You Used /w Audacity?

[launched]

I haven't ever been shot down completely with Audacity, but once I get to 40 something tracks I experience a 2-4 second delay when I click on play or use the track position marker. Sometimes I get playback scrambling but a restart of the program fixes it. And an effect process on a single track can take up to 3 minutes.

I have older hardware with 2GB of ram and single core processors - One runs XP SP3 and the other runs Win 7 SP1. I've found that the Win 7 machine seems to work better.

Maybe a few of you could share your usage experience?

[Hook]

Thats some serious tracking you got going on. On audacity I have only used 7 or 8 & surprisingly had no issues. Jeepers I haven't done a tone with more than 20.  You are the multi track man!
Rock On!

[Geir]

I normally just use Audacity to trim/normalize my final mastered mix, but I have a time or two, to save time, done a mix of the vocal-tracks in audacity. Never more than 8-10 tracks tho. Never had any problems with that (if I make sure not to run to many other programs simultaniously  )

I've been wanting to do a remix of some of the bigger projects I've done tho, so when I get the time and if I find the backups I will give it a try ..... and yes, there will be some 40+ tracks on a couple of those and you're responsible for quite a few of them too

[launched]

Yeah, all I have is the MBR still - It takes too long to bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce so I started using Audacity. Sometimes I'll take a subgroup and then tweak it in the MBR but I'm hooked on DAW now because it's so much faster.

Thats some serious tracking you got going on. On audacity I have only used 7 or 8 & surprisingly had no issues. Jeepers I haven't done a tone with more than 20.  You are the multi track man!
Rock On!

You would be a deadly weapon if you used any more than you did now. All your tunes sound great.

and yes, there will be some 40+ tracks on a couple of those and you're responsible for quite a few of them too

Ha, same here with you - We don't know when to stop, do we!

[phantasm777]

ahhh, something i have experience in, finally! i've done a few 40+ tracks on audacity. many 30+, and tons of 20+ tracks.
one thing i noticed is it will be slower to load the more tracks you make. but that seems to be normal. BUT the better pc you have the less issuess you have if you make this many tracks. with my laptop it wold take 30+ secs to load a 40+ track song. it had 3 gb ram 2 core. about a week ago i went to my desk top which has 16 gb ram and 4 core with 3.2 ghz. and i assume a better sound card as it does sound better. with this desktop it doesn;t take as long to load.
one thing to remember is if you record and it freezes for any reason, after you just recorded a few tracks, if you delete it and go right back it will ask if you want to save or recall what you just lost, and of course i do. so your work can be retrieved IF you hurriedly click back on audacity after a freeze! it doesn't happen much, but does on slower pcs a bit more often.
when using my laptop sometimes if i recorded too many tracks at once in one sitting and tried to save it, it would not. it would say not enough memory, which is bullshit. i know i had enough. so what i do is make sure not to record more than 3 to 5 tracks at a time and save, then call it back up again fresh and continue. better than losing my work. now that i use my desk top, i don;t know if that would still occur but i am in no hurry to find out.
i use the generate silence - a lot, it helps clean the background especially where emtry spaces are.
so i am guessing that it slows or stalls less, with more ram. are your pc's capable fo more ram, then i'd say go for it. better yet a newer pc. but sometimes that's just not in the budget. luckily i have a good one now cause i couldn;t afford a better one at the moment.
i've been using audacity for about 2 yrs, i dont know everything about it, lots of things i dont know what they do.

[bruno]

wow guys - I rarely go over the 14 tracks on the BR1600 (2 tracks always required for mixing) - and I forget which tracks are what in any case :-)

[launched]

Thanks Frank - It appears that I'm not doing too badly considering the hardware I have. I don't record with Audacity, just with my Micro BR so no probs on the input end. I might try to commandeer another 2.5" drive and install Debian or Ubunt, or a maximized configuration of Win 7 and see if I can squeeze a little more out. I have been building custom configs of Embedded 7 that might come in handy for testing.

wow guys - I rarely go over the 14 tracks on the BR1600 (2 tracks always required for mixing) - and I forget which tracks are what in any case :-)

I think half my problem is not having a recorder that can do lots of tracks. Only having a two track bounce with my MBR was getting frustrating, and I always try to make my equipment last - The end of this year will be my fourth year with an MBR which I'm not sure is long enough to justify an upgrade in my mind. I guess DAW will be the deal, and Audacity for now because it's free and will run fine on old hardware.

[64Guitars]

I haven't ever been shot down completely with Audacity, but once I get to 40 something tracks I experience a 2-4 second delay when I click on play or use the track position marker. Sometimes I get playback scrambling but a restart of the program fixes it. And an effect process on a single track can take up to 3 minutes.

I have older hardware with 2GB of ram and single core processors - One runs XP SP3 and the other runs Win 7 SP1. I've found that the Win 7 machine seems to work better.

Maybe a few of you could share your usage experience?

My recent recording of Hand Guns has 42 tracks mixed in Audacity, although six of them were muted because I decided not to included them in the mix. I didn't notice any difference in performance compared to projects with fewer tracks. I'm running Audacity in Ubuntu 12.04 on a desktop computer with an AMD Athlon dual core processor and 2GiB RAM.

[launched]

I haven't ever been shot down completely with Audacity, but once I get to 40 something tracks I experience a 2-4 second delay when I click on play or use the track position marker. Sometimes I get playback scrambling but a restart of the program fixes it. And an effect process on a single track can take up to 3 minutes.

I have older hardware with 2GB of ram and single core processors - One runs XP SP3 and the other runs Win 7 SP1. I've found that the Win 7 machine seems to work better.

Maybe a few of you could share your usage experience?

My recent recording of Hand Guns has 42 tracks mixed in Audacity, although six of them were muted because I decided not to included them in the mix. I didn't notice any difference in performance compared to projects with fewer tracks. I'm running Audacity in Ubuntu 12.04 on a desktop computer with an AMD Athlon dual core processor and 2GiB RAM.

I did forget to mention that I'm using laptops, which would have a considerable perfomance impact.

Looking for a spare 2.5" drive as we speak. Will compare Ubuntu with Win 7 Embedded and see if I can get a modest performance increase.

[phantasm777]

i seem to be one of few here who actually record on audacity as well and mix and master. if you do decide to use audacity for actual recordings of tracks, i'd be glad to answer any question about it that i am capable of doing.