Preferences
The Preferences dialog is split into eight sections, each of which have their own clickable tab:
| Select audio devices and their properties. | |
| Select sample rate and format, conversion trade offs between speed, size and quality. | |
| Location of the LAME MP3 library. Whether imported audio is copied into projects, if tracks are normalized, how audio is mixed upon export. | |
| Interface behavior, hide and show additional information, preferred dB display range, choose language and help/solo button behavior. | |
| Presentation of spectrogram. | |
| Where temporary files are stored, whether/how often to autosave project data. | |
| Keyboard shortcuts for commands. | |
| Mouse shortcuts for commands. |
I've started reorganizing the Preferences pages to match version 1.3.9. I'll work on it bit by bit inside this editornote, and when we feel the new pages are ready for prime time we can move them up to the live section. - Bill Wharrie
| Select audio devices and their properties. | |
| Set playback behavior when previewing audio, or seeking. | |
| Settings for playthrough, latency, and sound-activated recording. | |
| Select sample rate and format, conversion trade offs between speed, size and quality. | |
| Interface behavior, hide and show additional information, preferred dB display range, choose language.. | |
| Tracks display and behvior, behavior of the Solo button. | |
| Whether imported audio is copied into projects, if tracks are normalized, how audio is mixed upon export. | |
| What to do when saving a project that depends on other audio files, turn auto save on or off and set auto save interval. | |
| Locations of the LAME MP3 and FFmpeg libraries. | |
| Presentation of spectrogram. | |
| Choose to show or not show warnings when saving projects, mixing down, and when disk space is getting low. | |
| Enable or disable effects by type: LADSPA, Nyquist, VAMP, Audio Units, VST. Control display of Audio Units and VST effects. | |
| Keyboard shortcuts for commands. | |
| Mouse shortcuts for commands. |
Where are Preferences stored?
Audacity Preferences are stored in a configuration file called audacity.cfg. It is a text file and can be edited with any text editor. The file is stored at:
- Windows: Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Audacity\audacity.cfg
- OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/audacity.cfg
- Linux: ~/.audacity-data/audacity.cfg
However if you a create a directory called "Portable Settings" in the same directory as the Audacity executable, "audacity.cfg" will be stored there instead. This facilitates transfer of the user's customized settings (for example, via a USB stick) if Audacity is used on another computer. Note: a workround is needed where audacity.cfg is on a computer running OS X.
Resetting Preferences
Resetting preferences to factory defaults can sometimes fix freezes, crashes or unexplained behavior. To reset Preferences if you have never used a previous Audacity 1.2.x version:
- Exit Audacity
- Delete audacity.cfg
- Restart Audacity
If you have previously used Audacity 1.2.x, deleting audacity.cfg will roll back those preferences common to 1.2 and 1.4 to their current 1.2 settings (even if you have since uninstalled 1.2.x). To reset 1.4 preferences to factory settings where you have previously used 1.2:
- Exit Audacity
- Open audacity.cfg in a text editor and remove all the content except the line "NewPrefsInitialized=1"
- Restart Audacity
Another way to completely reset 1.4 preferences on a machine which has previously run 1.2 is to delete the old 1.2 settings file as well as audacity.cfg. The 1.2 settings are stored in the "audacity" file in your Library (OS X), the file ~/.audacity (Linux) or the Windows registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Audacity\. Note: Modifying the Windows registry is dangerous - always back it up before modifying it.
