Audacity uses 100% CPU on opening any file dialog

[Vanessa Dannenberg]

Binary package hint: audacity

In Hardy, when I try to save a project or export a file in Audacity (1.3.4-1.1ubuntu1), I get a file dialog with somewhat abridged content (empty where the file listing should be, no directory selector header, etc) and my CPU jumps to 100% of one core. It appears that Xorg (1:7.3+10ubuntu10.2) is the process eating the CPU, rather than Audacity itself.

Steps to reproduce (some of which may not be strictly necessary but this is what I did):

1. Open Audacity, navigate to the Preferences dialog and turn off the "play while recording" checkbox.
2. Open a mixer such as kmix and set your capture options as needed to record a known sound source.
3. Use Audacity to record about 4 minutes from your chosen source.
4. Trim a couple of seconds off each end of the recording.
5. Click on File -> Export... Change the filetype to OGG and change the "Options" to set the quality to 10.
6. Try to navigate to the "Filesystem" via the link on the left of the dialog.

Somewhere around step 5 is when I noticed my CPU being rather heavy. By that point, my pointer had changed to the "busy-wait" spinning icon. I can enter a (path and) filename at the top, but clicking "Save" does nothing. If I hit Escape at this point, the dialog closes, but the CPU remains pegged at 100% of the one core. It stays there until I kill Audacity (though I didn't try to "close" it, I got frustrated and killed it from the command line).

What should happen:

The program should default to the user's home directory, and let me enter my details and save the file or project out. :-)

[Hal (halbower)]

The 8.04 Hardy Heron release seems to have a problem with Audacity. I cause
it to become unusable on a variety of systems by simply editing a WAV file.
Since I use this feature quite regularly for cleaning up my old vinyl
records (see http://mysite.verizon.net/hal.bower/music.htm), it is rather
important to me. This problem exists with the audacity_1.3.4xxx package but
is absent under earlier 1.2.4 and 1.2.6 packages on Hardy (although my crude
efforts to make them work broke the package system), and all efforts to
configure with different options were fruitless.

The symptoms can be seen by the following procedure:
 1. Edit a 2:30 to 4:00 minute WAV file
 2. Remove (or add) a few tenths of second leadin
 3. Go to end of file and cut 0.5 Secs or more from end
 4. Try to save the file (Export as WAV). Sometimes it will, others not
At this point, CPU usage (from gkrellm and top from another window) goes to
100% with about 2/3 attributable to X and 1/3 to audacity, yet nothing moves
or seems to refresh in the audacity window. I have left things this way for
20 minutes (with the CPU getting gradually hotter) with no change. The rest
of the system is usable and audacity can be killed from a terminal window.

This had been verified on:
 - Biostar Turion 3200 Motherboard with ATI AIW 7500 video, CF 8GB hda
 - Biostar Sempron64 3000 Motherboard (as above w/onboard VIA video)
 - EeePC 4g (Mobile Celeron 900 MHz, Intel 915 graphics)
 - EeeBox (where dual-threading altered CPU loads but similar results)
            Intel Atom 1.6 GHz, Intel 945 graphics.

As a result, I still keep a Dapper Drake system in daily use.

[Andres Monroy-Hernandez (andresmh)]

I have the same problem with Audacity v1.3.9 (Unicode). Totally unusable, Audacity makes Xorg use a lot of CPU

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

I have the same issue as Andres with Audacity ® 1.3.9 (Unicode) on Karmic, making Xorg use 80% CPU or more.

Often when I try and edit any section of audio (though typically one that touches the end of the audio file), the CPU jumps to 100%, and Audacity becomes largely unusable - most menu items and controls are disabled. The file I am working on can not be saved and although it may offer to save on exit (even though it doesn't exit), the file becomes corrupted meaning that when you open it again in a fresh instance of Audacity it is either lacking sections of audio or it forces the CPU back to 100%.

Before anyone asks, I have experienced the same when I used it before Pulse was installed, and now with a working Pulse configuration. Same with Compiz (previously used Metacity). I think the file handling of the Audacity is just dead on Linux.

I feel that I have stuck with this software too long and need to find something new (or maybe go back to Windows, where it used to work beautifully).

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

A quick update to this, as I continue to struggle through the project I have in Audacity. I find that if I am editing and the CPU rockets, I can normally recover by undoing the last change I made (Ctrl-Z), then the CPU returns to normal. I think there is an issue when I delete large sections of audio, although sometimes just crossing some little boundary seems to be a problem.

When I have a damaged project, I've been able to reassemble all the parts by pasting them in the order listed in the project file, manually one by one into one complete file. The audio data itself does not seem to be damaged. The project file does not look strange either, but on opening it will force the CPU to 100%.

If you have the same problem as me, try the Ctrl-Z trick to see if you can recover from an editing problem that forces up the CPU and damages the project.

[Garazi (garazi111)]

I have desktop hangs up while using audacity on ubuntu karmic koala.
Some guys saw that starting audacity from a terminal removed their problems.
I'll try it.

[Garazi (garazi111)]

Finally, it is the same for me even starting Audacity from a terminal.
It is still using a lot of CPU while doing nothing and it hangs up sometimes.
No messages appear in the terminal.

[Willi Burkhardt (wbu)]

I have this issue with Audacity as far as I can think back. I even remember having similar problems back on Windows 98. I'm currently using 1.3.9 Unicode on Kubuntu. The problem was always there throughout the years. sometimes it would let me work on 2 or 3 consecutive soundfiles and then it would just not work.
Starting from the commandline did not help.
I've tried to install ESD and use this -but this caused complete havoc on my installation, so I revertet back to ALSA/Portaudio.

Steps to reproduce:
1. load a soundfile. I usually load wav files of about 25-45 min length
2. either:
    - cut a few seconds or minutes off the end
    - select a section and perform an effect on it
3. export the whole file. It does not matter wether you save as mp3 or wav

I usually see 100% cpu after step 2, then I know it will die in the next step. The export function lets me see both dialogs, the one to set the tags and the one to select the file location. but after this ...
Sometimes it had helped if I start up audacity and close it without actually changing a file. But since recently nothing seems to help. Advice?

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Can you test if the package from audacity daily are affected too?
https://launchpad.net/~audacity-team/+archive/daily

[Gregory Gleason (gsgleason)]

I did not have an issue using audacity from the ppa. The CPU usage for Xorg still goes up, but stays under 20% for me.

[Andy (andy-xillean)]

I Just install Audacity from the PPA and the problem still persists in Karmic. I am thinking this may have something to do with Pulse Audio but not sure.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) reached end-of-life on May 12, 2011.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

This version of this package will receive no further updates. Please test against a currently supported version of this package and report a new bug against that version of if the bug still exists.