System Requirements for Audacity

Introduction

Recording audio is a very resource-intensive activity for your computer, which is designed to cope with many different processes.

Audacity recommends certain minimum and recommended requirements for the various operating systems. The minimum requirements will allow you to make short recordings, but for longer or multi-track recordings, you will need the recommended RAM and processor speed.

Operating System Requirements for Audacity 1.3 and later versions

Windows

Windows version	Minimum RAM	Recommended RAM	Minimum processor speed	Recommended processor speed
Windows 98, ME	64 MB	128 MB	300 MHz	500 MHz
Windows 2000, XP	128 MB	512 MB	300 MHz	1 GHz
Windows Vista Home Basic	512 MB	2 GB	1 GHz	1 GHz
Windows Vista Home Premium/Business/Ultimate/7 (32-bit)	1GB	4 GB	1 GHz	2 GHz
Windows 7 or 8 (64-bit)	2 GB	4GB	1 GHz	2 GHz

NB. Windows 95 and NT are not supported in Audacity 1.3.
Windows Vista and 7 are not supported in Audacity 1.2.6.

Mac

Mac OS version	Minimum RAM	Minimum processor speed
OS X 10.4 or later	64 MB	300 MHz

NB. OS X 10.3 and earlier are not supported for the latest Audacity versions, but the previous 1.3.3 Beta (.dmg file, 7.2 MB) supports OS X 10.3.

Linux/Unix

Installation packages for Audacity on GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems are provided by individual distributions. However the Beta version has not yet been packaged for very many distributions. The following distributions are known to have Beta packages. Audacity recommends using the latest version of Linux/Unix from your distribution that is compatible with your hardware specifications.

Distributions	Minimum RAM	Minimum processor speed
Fedora, Gentoo, Suse, Ubuntu	64 MB	300 MHz

Managing Computer Resources and Drivers

Visit this page of the Audacity wiki for comprehensive advice on optimising your system for recording with Audacity.