Preferences
From Audacity Manual
The Preferences dialog is split into fifteen sections:
Section What it controls Devices Select audio devices and their properties. Playback Set playback behavior when previewing audio, or seeking. Recording Settings for playthrough, latency, and sound-activated recording. Quality Select sample rate and format, conversion trade offs between speed, size and quality. Interface Interface behavior, hide and show additional information, preferred dB display range, choose language. Tracks Tracks display and behavior, behavior of the Solo button. Import / Export Whether imported audio is copied into projects, if tracks are normalized, how audio is mixed upon export. Projects What to do when saving a project that depends on other audio files, turn auto save on or off and set auto save interval. Libraries Locations of the LAME MP3 and FFmpeg libraries. Spectrograms Settings for presentation of spectrogram. Directories Location of the temporary files directory, play and/or record using RAM (useful for slow drives) Warnings Choose to show or not show warnings when saving projects, mixing down, and when disk space is getting low. Effects Enable or disable effects by type: LADSPA, Nyquist, VAMP, Audio Units, VST. Control display of Audio Units and VST effects. Keyboard Keyboard shortcuts for commands. Mouse Mouse shortcuts for commands.
Where are Preferences stored?
Starting with version 1.3 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 (except Vista and 7) : Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Audacity\audacity.cfg
- Windows Vista and 7: Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\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.
Resetting Preferences
Resetting preferences to factory defaults by editing audacity.cfg can sometimes fix freezes, crashes or unexplained behavior.
- Exit Audacity
- Open audacity.cfg in a text editor such as Notepad and remove all the content except the line NewPrefsInitialized=1 (should be the very first line)
- Save the changes to audacity.cfg and restart Audacity
The above three steps will reset Audacity version 1.3 and newer Preferences in all cases. If you still use (or have ever used) Audacity 1.2, this will not affect your 1.2 Preferences.
Merely exiting Audacity and deleting audacity.cfg will not completely reset Preferences if you have ever previously used a 1.2 version. Audacity 1.3 and newer Preferences which also apply to 1.2 will revert to their current 1.2 settings, which may not solve any problems you were trying to fix.
A less recommended way to completely reset Audacity version 1.3 and newer References on a machine which has previously run 1.2 is to delete the old 1.2 settings file as well as audacity.cfg. This will completely remove your 1.2 settings which may not be appropriate if you plan to continue using 1.2. 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\.
