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guitardude37
Participant
September 27, 2011
Answered

Audition will load tracks, but will not play them

I can load tracks into audition, but when I try to play the tracks the cursor will not move and no audio will play. Anyone know what the problem could be?

    SteveG_AudioMasters_
    SteveG_AudioMasters_Correct answer
    Community Expert
    May 2, 2020

    Invariably when this happens, it is because the transport has become disconnected from your sound device - that's the only reason that it stops. As several people have demonstrated, sometimes this is caused by a fault in the preferences folder that you can 'cure' by having Audition reset it. That really isn't the first thing you should check to cure this problem though,  simply because it will also reset any other preferences you have set up as well. So before trashing your preferences, it's always worth carefully checking out your sound device settings first.

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    derrellc2894648
    derrellc2894648
    Participant
    June 1, 2018

    I've had this problem since first installing Audition.  I could never get it to play, when I did noise reductions, I had to do them blindly (or, "deafly?" idk, you get what I'm saying.)  I just guessed the levels and exported the files back to Premiere hoping they were good enough to slide by.  Today, I opened up the Preferences menu.  I didn't really change them, I just scrolled through and double checked my settings and when I exited out of the menu, suddenly it was playing when I hit the space bar!   I will double check the next time I use Audition, but I am willing to bet that perhaps it just takes time to "load" the media file in the program since usually I am not hanging around in Audition very long.  Or maybe surfing through the menus actually fixed a glitch in the system. 

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    zidar
    Participant
    June 4, 2018

    If mine doesn't play I plug in headphones and then it plays. I spent a

    lot of time trying to understand it all with no luck. But this fix

    works!

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    planobrickhouse
    Participant
    July 31, 2017

    Glad I didn't uninstall Soundbooth CS4.  It at least works.  Come on Adobe you should be able to create software that will find the current sound driver.  Good Lord!

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      Randgalf
      Randgalf
      Participant
      April 10, 2017

      I've stumbled upon the same issue, although during slightly different circumstances. I can load and play the files just fine but then, without any concievable reason whatsoever, it just stops working. I press play (or Space), it says "playing" on the transport bar, but it's just not. It starts working again if I reboot my computer, but then after working in the program for a while it stops yet again. Tinkering around with the selected hardware have no effect at all, and it really shouldn't either since it all starts out working just fine. Anyone else encountering this?

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      ryclark
      ryclark
      Participating Frequently
      April 10, 2017

      If you are working on a Windows PC make sure that you turn off System Sounds. Anything that causes Windows to try and play a sound like Email arriving will cause Windows to grab the audio device from Audition. So when Audition next tries to play audio it can no longer find the connection to your audio interface. Of course when you reboot the PC and open Audition it can find the audio interface once again.

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      Randgalf
      Randgalf
      Participant
      April 13, 2017

      I don't have any system sounds turned on, and in addition, I recall being able to use multiple applications simultaneously with Audition running before just fine. The thing is though that I recently assembled a "new" computer which meant a complete re-installation of everything and its granma, and this problem did only surface since then. Now I think I've solved it though. Here's how it went down:

      After reading another thread where once again the proposed issue was centered around the default output device, I started thinking that Audition maybe was confusing the audio devices. See, for recording I use an external device and for mere playback I often use the internal onboard device. In addition I also have another sound card installed but which I currently don't utilize for anything, which means it shows up in the audio preferences.

      So I simply deleted all the inputs and outputs in the Control Panel sound preferences that had anything to do with this additional card (this might be superflous though), as well as disabling it in the Device Manager. This forced Audition to only concentrate on the onboard sound device and what do you know, that did the trick for me. It seems that Audition is easily confused with multiple devices so my two cents here would be to disable every sound device bar the one you will use with Audition.

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      jbspear
      jbspear
      Participant
      January 7, 2017

      I stumbled across this solution:

      1. Close out of Audition

      2. Restart Audition while holding down the shift key.

      Basically this restores the default settings -- worked like a charm for me.

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        wc3
        wc3
        Inspiring
        August 9, 2017

        "I stumbled across this solution:

        1. Close out of Audition

        2. Restart Audition while holding down the shift key.

        Basically this restores the default settings -- worked like a charm for me."

        Thank you.

        I am on a MAC. This worked for me .

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          Benny25639126ty9g
          Participant
          August 13, 2022

          Worked perfect for me, Thank you!

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          luke_jensen_84
          luke_jensen_84
          Participant
          October 25, 2016

          Also, take the time to double check input devices as well, as if your dealing with this issue like myself you may have recently reformatted or changed OS'es, or maybe an audio update (guessing this one) reconfigured, orrrrrrrrrr maybe check your OS settings in hand with AA settings.

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          DJ CRISTYLE
          DJ CRISTYLE
          Participant
          October 25, 2016

          I had the exact same problem. I tried all of the forum's ideas and had no luck. The only thing that seemed to resolve my issue was when I went to EDIT (in Audition), then to PREFERENCES, then to MEDIA & DISC CACHE and added a second/backup location. Maybe there was too much CACHE/DATA in the original location. I'm not a comp tech but this resolved my problem. p.s. I set my DOCUMENTS folder on my computer as the 2nd location. I'm running Windows 7. Hope this helps musicians! Happy editing

          INSTAGRAM: @djcristyle04

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          luke_jensen_84
          luke_jensen_84
          Participant
          October 25, 2016

          this is MY FIX, < Goto EDIT tab, <prefrences < Audio Hardware. Make it "playback" through the approximate channel. Your speakers are plugged into your monitor then select monitor, if its through your MoBo, then select that, if you have a soundcard added into your PC build then select that choice.

          Q- Will load, no playback

          P.s you will notice when you hit play that the icon lights up a green tint and the timeline indicator will not move, no sound obv.

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            nyamaae91771508
            nyamaae91771508
            Participant
            December 20, 2016

            thank you

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            Laura-Jean
            Laura-Jean
            Participant
            February 23, 2016

            Hello I am also encountering this problem have tried everything on this forum with no luck....

            Any ideas?

            Everything was working fine until a few days ago.

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            Laura-Jean
            Laura-Jean
            Participant
            February 24, 2016

            ok my co-worker just fixed this problem by plugging in logitech headphones then going to system preferences >> Sound >> output logitech headphones

            Then back to Audition >> Edit>> Preferences>> Audio Hardware >> Output to the otehr option that was now available to select,

            This seemed to fix the problem

            We think what happened was those headphones had been plugged in whilst using ausacity and then pulled out and so the settings just needed to be figured.

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              zidar
              Participant
              May 4, 2018

              You solved my problem. I normally work with Sony headphones. Lately I'd been working without them. When I plugged them in everything returned to normal. Thanks!

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              trbgolf
              Participant
              September 15, 2014

              I have same problem. Audio file loads but will not play. Pressing space bar does nothing, using curser to "play" button does nothing. I am using a MACBook Pro with OS X 10.9.4. This doesn't happen all the time but when it does there seems to be no solution. Then all of a sudden it might start working. I've got all the hardware settings set to "built-in" input and output. Buffer set to 512 Sample rate 44100 and am using Adobe Audition CS5 for Mac.  I have also uninstalled and re-installed the program several times, booted & re-booted and anything else I can think of.

              I love using Adobe Audition and have been doing so since the Cool-Edit days, but this is so frustrating...not dependable...I just don't know when it will happen or not. Often happens in the middle of an editing session.

              Thank you and Please advise.

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              ryclark
              ryclark
              Participating Frequently
              September 15, 2014

              If neither the space bar nor play button do anything then Audition has lost it's connection with the Mac's audio device. So something else on the Mac must be stealing the audio driver away from Audition. Make sure that you are not running any other program that may try to send audio to the audio out and that might change the sample rate and/or bit depth.

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              trbgolf
              Participant
              September 15, 2014

              Thank you

              Sent from my iPhone

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              meharter
              Inspiring
              December 11, 2012

              I was able to fix by unplugging my USB webcam.  Looked like Audition was trying to output to it even if I changed in settings.

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                Matt McFaul
                Participant
                September 17, 2012

                I had the same problem and solved it - but I had different origins to you - I'm on Mac 10.7.4 and Audition had failed transport after I used a Griffin iMIC with my laptop.

                I reset the Audio Hardware preferences in Audition ( for which I needed the iMic plugged in, btw) to 'Built-In output'

                The problem persisted until I realised I also needed to set the 'Master Clock' in that preferences pane to 'Out: ~Built In Output'

                (I may have changed this when diddling about before.)

                As soon as I made the change, I could hear the track playing back behind the pane.

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                SteveG_AudioMasters_
                Community Expert
                SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
                Community Expert
                September 17, 2012

                Matt McFaul wrote:

                The problem persisted until I realised I also needed to set the 'Master Clock' in that preferences pane to 'Out: ~Built In Output'

                 

                As soon as I made the change, I could hear the track playing back behind the pane.

                It won't be this - the OP already has the sync set to internal, which is the same thing.

                But what isn't clear is whether she is trying to play these files in waveform view or multitrack. We can only see what the device settings for multitrack are, and not waveform. Strange as it may seem, you need to set this in both windows...

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