The Preferences dialog is split into sections and sub-sections. The description page for each section (accessed by the links below) shows an image of the default preferences settings for that section.
Audacity Preferences are stored in a configuration file called audacity.cfg. It is a text file which saves all your settings when you exit Audacity normally. The audacity.cfg file can be edited with any text editor and changes to it can be saved if Audacity is already closed. You can find audacity.cfg inside Audacity's folder for application data as follows:
How To Reset Audacity Settings
Download: https://urlca.com/2vG5xd
Windows: In the tree on the left of Explorer, double-click "Users" then double-click your username, then on the right, double-click the AppData or Application Data folder and navigate through that. If necessary, show hidden files and folders on Windows or type %appdata%\audacity or shell:appdata\audacity into the Explorer address bar then press Enter on your keyboard.
By default, Audacity settings are not changed when you upgrade from a previous release of Audacity or explicitly uninstall or reinstall Audacity. This allows you to upgrade from a previous Audacity version (legacy 1.3.2 and later) and retain your previous preferences wherever current Audacity still has an equivalent setting.
You can create a folder called Portable Settings in a special location relative to the directory you installed or extracted Audacity to, so that audacity.cfg and Audacity's other settings will be stored in that "Portable Settings" folder instead. The permitted locations are:
The audacity.cfg file can become corrupt leading to unexpected behaviours in Audacity that can only be fixed by "initializing" the contents of that file to NewPrefsInitialized=1. Trashing the file is not an option as Audacity may read previously-installed 1.2.x preferences and that preferences file may be corrupt. So the user must edit the audacity.cfg in a plain text editor and overwrite the file in its original location without changing the file extension. On Windows and Linux the user must show hidden files in order to open audacity.cfg.
An easy way for users to reset the audacity.cfg file to a clean state - in effect setting the contents to "NewPrefsInitialized=1" or filling it with the default values that Audacity would use on first launch when it finds an audacity.cfg file that contains only "NewPrefsInitialized=1".
Alternative configs are a feature for advanced users. They are set up by going into the config directory and making a copy of the existing audacity.cfg files but with a new name. Extra directives can be added into these that also take plug in information.
Audacity may need to be restarted for those preferences that are already 'restart required'. Over time we would like to fix all cases of 'restart required'. The manual should mention this and explain what is not reset until a restart.
A small app that we can ship alongside Audacity that the user can run to force a total reset (needed sometimes as explained above "Display preferences can leave Audacity not appearing") and thus the user would never see Audacity running, let alone get access to Preferences.
As of 26 November 2014 there are two configuration files which seem to have the possibility of causing Audacity to not launch (or launch in an unusable condition): audacity.cfg & plug-inregistry.cfg. These configuration files can be stored in either or both of two filesystem locations (the default or in a Portable Settings folder).
The original design criterion was a single button which deleted the default location (e.g. C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Audacity) audacity.cfg file; at that time there was no such thing as plug-inregistry.cfg. This design (as well as an expansion to three buttons: "both", "audacity" & "plug-inregistry") with two wxWidgets-based applications to test is discussed in this forum thread: =20&t=63514 Until page 10 of that thread no consideration was given for Portable Settings.
This external application could also be made more "surgical"; an early example was given which had panes for each of the Preferences pages allowing the user to reset only specified items to default. This was considered way too complicated, especially for an external application. However, given that one of the easiest ways to cause Audacity to be unavailable even though it launches successfully is to close it while its last open Project is on a secondary monitor then disconnect that secondary monitor, having a button which does nothing but cause Audacity to open in its default size and location might make sense.
The avoids adding another menu command at the expense of a new prefs pane. What would this pane look like? What would it say and what steps would the user need to perform in order to reset preferences.
Gale 28Dec14: A patch has been attached to Bug 363 that provides a "Reset" button in all Preferences panes. This asks for confirmation of reset, exits Audacity on "Yes", asks for "Save Changes?" then after Audacity is quit, rewrites audacity.cfg to "NewPrefsInitialized=1". If there is a "Portable Settings" folder then audacity.cfg in that folder is initialized.
The only workaround available is for the user to save the audacity.cfg file somewhere on the their file structure. Then subsequently copy this saved audacity.cfg back into the ...\Appdata\Roaming\Audacity folder (Windows file structure, similar exists on macOS and Linux). This may be deemed a little too technical, too inaccessible to many of our users. Furthermore it "restores" more than just the Toolbar layouts it also "restores" the user's Preferences. The other issue with this workaround is that you must close all open Audacity projects before you can copy back your saved audacity.cfg.
Introduce commands for Save and Restore for Toolbar layouts, to enable the user to create named configurations of Toolbars. A "Factory Settings" for restore to default to be included. This is like saving presets in effects.
Uninstallation retains your Audacity settings in case you want to install Audacity again at some time in the future. If you want to remove your settings as well, delete Audacity's folder for application data whose location is given here.
Uninstallation retains your Audacity settings in case you want to install Audacity again at some time in the future. If you want to remove your settings as well, delete Audacity's folder for application data ( /Library/Application Support/audacity/).
Should it remain unclear which effects are responsible, it may be useful to reset Audacity to load only the enabled effects that it had on first installation. To do this, go to Audacity's folder for application data as follows:
In that folder, delete the pluginregistry.cfg and pluginsettings.cfg files and restart Audacity. Then you can use the Plug-in Manager dialog to selectively enable effects to find the possible culprit.
Conflicts with other applications such as security or anti-virus applications can occasionally cause Audacity not to launch. Try turning off some of the more advanced behavior detection settings in the security application, or add an exception to its settings to make Audacity a trusted application. Conversely if you have not run a virus scan for a while, update your security application to the latest virus definitions and perform a thorough scan in case a newly acquired virus is the problem.
Uninstalling Audacity does not automatically repair or reset your configuration settings in Audacity Preferences. If you are trying to fix a problem with Audacity, take one of the following actions.
Find the Sound setting in the Control Panel. You can press the Windows logo key and I. Then, choose the microphone option in the list of audio input devices, and right-click it. After that, click Settings to access the input and output settings of the audio.
For the first method, check the Audacity's properties settings. Sometimes you may ignore essential options, and the recording could be affected. To enable the functional button, click the Edit button and choose Preferences. Then, find Recordings and enable the buttons as followed. After that, perform Audacity again to capture sound from sources like a microphone.
Step 3. Click "OK" if you have finished the settings. Then, back to Audacity and apply the audio capturing feature again. Also, as mentioned above, remember to set the audio host of Audacity to MME.
Find the Sound setting in the Control Panel. You can press the Windows logo key and "I". Then, choose the microphone option in the list of audio input devices, and right-click it. After that, click Settings to access the input and output settings of the audio.
Find and make note of the index of the corresponding sink input. The properties: application.name and application.process.binary, among others, should help here. Ensure sane settings are present, specifically those of muted and volume.If the sink is muted, it can be unmuted by:
Instructions below will cause PulseAudio to use a fixed size and number for audio fragments. These settings directly affect latency and power consumption. The latency is determined as default-fragments * default-fragment-size-msec, and the interrupt rate (i.e. how often the application is notified that some sound has indeed been played) is 1000 / default-fragment-size-msec. The considerations are:
Using paprefs, simply select "Add virtual output device for simultaneous output on all local sound cards" from under the "Simultaneous Output" tab. Then, under GNOME's "sound settings", select the simultaneous output you have just created.
Starting with version 1.3 Audacity Preferences are stored in a configuration file called audacity.cfg. It is a text file saved on each clean exit of Audacity and can be edited with any text editor. The file is stored inside Audacity's folder for application data: 2ff7e9595c
Comments