u/Laughing_Scoundrel

Title says it all. Been using Audacity without issue for years now for audiobook production. Even managed to record a track and save/send it off just this morning. Then as usual, I opened a new file, recorded a chapter and as soon as I went to save it, it opened the file directory as normal and just crashed.

Kept trying and same thing now, every time. Uninstalled and reinstalled it and it's still happening. I can still save word and video files to the drive and all diagnostics say it's working fine, but for some reason Audacity, whether the same one I've been using or a fresh install keeps crashing whenever I go to save the file. Anyone have any experience with this?

Problem report states:

exception code 0xc0000005
Crash reason: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION_WRITE

Crash address: 0xc6a61fb730

Process uptime: 150 seconds

When I click "send" for the crash report, it flashes an error message saying it can't send it which disappears before I can even read it. Any thoughts?

Been getting a lot of work through ACX lately, with even a couple projects searching me out to ask me to audition. Recently I got a DM there from someone I know I had not auditioned for, first requesting I reach out to speak to one of their people via Telegram, which is an app I don't use.

I responded asking if there was an email I could reach out to instead and was given a gmail address to write to. Wrote to them asking if they could provide any further information about the project. They responded almost immediately offering me $3k to read an ad for Volt Energy. The text of the email itself is just below.

I looked up the company "Oligvy" and it is a real and legitimate marketing company, however the name on the email doesn't appear in the team masthead on their website, and I then wondered, why a gmail, on a Friday with a requested 24 hour turnaround time. I'm not sure how this could be a scam as there's none of those paper check deposits, etc, so I'm curious if it is bogus, what could be the goal? Samples of my voice for cloning? Which wouldn't make sense as there's plenty of samples out there already and this is just two pages of ad copy.

Any thoughts? Here's the email copy itself for consideration. Thanks in advance for any thoughts or insight.

Good day. We got your response regarding your inability to use Telegram. Here's the project attached. 

Project Title: VOLT ENERGY DRINK – POWER EVERY MOVE

Project Compensation: $3000 USD

Payment Method: Ogilvy Company Bank Transfer

Project Deadline: 24 Hours

Project Status: ACTIVE – START IMMEDIATELY

Instructions:

You are hereby assigned to begin work on the VOLT ENERGY DRINK – POWER EVERY MOVE script.

Requirements:

• Complete assigned tasks within 24 hours.

• Maintain professional commercial production standards.

• Ensure high-quality voice-over recording and audio editing.

• Delivery Format- High-quality MP3 or WAV format.

• Submit project deliverables before the deadline.

Payment Terms:

Project compensation of $3000 USD will be processed via Company Bank Transfer upon successful completion and submission.

Do you accept the offer?

One of the first ACX gigs I landed was an odd one. I'd just posted a new demo and a book about building an "online coaching" business was offered as a straight RS project. I hadn't even auditioned for it, just got an offer. I took it, as I wasn't doing anything else at the time.

The text itself was really strange. Basically chapter after chapter of "you need to get a website" and "you'll want to use email to communicate with clients" and "communicating with clients is important." It read like a ChatGPT essay. Later, the cover that went on it was very clearly AI slop and a fellow narrator friend said he was pretty sure the entire project was just clanker slop.

Now I'll see lots of series of short novels or novellas all populate from the same RH on the Find Projects tab, all nearly identical in length, usually with the classic abbreviated name, like J.S. Smith or G.M. Jones all at once and wonder, is that AI?

Could just be the sort of paranoia they felt in The Thing, where you know it's there somewhere, could be almost anywhere, because you came across it already. But I'm curious what portion of projects that go up do some of you think are clanker or clanker adjacent (meaning the RH "edits" the clanker manuscript before posting?)

Recently wrapped a 12 hour thriller project with an RH. Book was actually rather good and lent itself well to characterization throughout the text. Lots of madness, fear, etc.

On their first, sadly slow review, I'm starting to get what are more akin to directors notes, asking to re-do or re-edit chapter sequences, not out of any technical or copy issues, but more to fit the RH's ideas of what he feels he'd like to hear in them.

I'll often afford a bit of this for non-studio/non-directed projects, but I'm curious what your levels and limits to such are. I previously had an RH send me a 90 line spreadsheet for his "directors notes" after his 11 hour project was wrapped and submitted and had to explain that that's not how that works. While I've had others happily leave creative control of the adaptation of their work up to me.

Thoughts on this?