Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

rmcellig · Posted: Sun 16 Sep 2012, 20:39 Post subject: Audacity and my Save file

I have a frugal install of Puppy 5.2.8 on my HD. When I boot into it, the bars are all green in the lower right hand corner of the bottom bar. As soon as I launch Audacity and do something like export a file (to another partition, or normalize a file, the bar turns red. Top shows that Audacity is using quite a bit of memory. As soon as I quite Audacity, the bars turn green again. Is there a way around this without increasing the size of my save file which is already set to 3.3GB of personal storage. What are my options?

Actually, I don't think I have a save file yet. Would this be the problem?

SFR · Joined: 26 Oct 2011 Posts: 571

Have you tried to change settings (in Audiacity) under Edit -> Preferences -> Directories?
Probably altering the location of "Temporary files directory", to somewhere_outside_savefile (eg. /mnt/home) would help.

Greetings!

rmcellig · Posted: Mon 17 Sep 2012, 16:05 Post subject:

That's a good idea. I was trying to locate where that was in prefs. Thanks.

I created a 512k swap file after restarting my computer. I ran Audacity again without changing the directory pref. I opened a radio show to edit (57 minutes long, normalized it and exported it to mp3 format. The bars were green after saving to a save file so what have I learned here. When I didn't have a save file, the bars turned red while doing the above Audacity tasks and then after quitting Audacity, the bars went back to green. It looks like before saving the save file for the first time, Puppy or is it Audacity takes up all available memory and then releases when you quit the program. With a save file this isn't the case, the bars stay green. I'm just trying to learn what happened during this process.

don570 · Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Posts: 2465 Location: Ontario

When I install Audacity I always do two things in preferences

1) I reduce sampling to 16 bit
2) Set temp files folder to a partition that has lots of
space

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rmcellig · Posted: Mon 17 Sep 2012, 21:05 Post subject:

Thanks for the Audacity tip. What does changing the sampling to 16 do?

don570 · Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Posts: 2465 Location: Ontario

refers to converting analog to a digital representation

16 bit refers to the number of 'steps' or 'levels' that are used to
represent a given number.
2 to 16th power is the number of levels used in 16 bit sampling

Note that one bit must be reserved
for +/- sign

For example with 3 bits ---> 2 to power of 3 ---> 8 levels are possible
one bit is reserved for +/- sign
That leaves 2 bits ---> so the numbers that can be represented
can be -3,-2,-1,0,+1,+2,+3

The more bits --> the more numbers that can be represented.
and the better accuracy of the sound reproduction.

16bit is what Audio CD's use so it is very good quality.

Sampling frequency is the number of times the sampling is done
in a second --> 44.1 khz is what Audio CD's use so it is good.

disciple · Posted: Tue 18 Sep 2012, 19:20 Post subject:

Basically in theory using 32bit will be better if you use a whole lot of effects or whatever, as the rounding will be less each time. If you're just recording something and adjusting the volume 16bit is definitely fine. I suspect there wouldn't be an audible difference most of the time anyway.

rmcellig · Posted: Tue 18 Sep 2012, 19:47 Post subject:

Thanks so much for the info!