John is correct, especially concerning RB.

When you add tracks or edit a track the newly created data gets stored in the Temp Audio Directory.
Then RB plays as normal and jumps over to grab the new data from the Temp Directory as needed.

Once the song gets saved, the Temp data in use gets written to the main SEQ file.
This gets written in such a way that RB can simply read it start to finish linearly afterwards. (interleaved tracks etc). This is by design as it makes it easier on the machine (no disk thrashing type motions, smoother buffer, etc) and the program.

This is also why people who use the same drive for their Temp Audio Directory as they use for their OS and RB take a harder hit on performance and possible problems than those who use a second drive for the Temp Audio Directory. Especially as more and more edits get done and more and more tracks get added.

Save often.
It not only cleans things up but does help with performance.
The thing to remember is saving wipes out the current undo options .. so you have to consider that also .. but saving also creates a backup of the previous file, so you can always get back to that previous version at worst.

Personally OS is on C:, as is RB
The SEQ files are on E: or G: and F: is my Temp Audio Directory.

One drive handles the program
One drive handles the disk read operations for the SEQ file
One drive handles the disk write operations (for Temp Audio) and the Temp Audio playback.

Once saved, the interweaved file is all on the Read disk again (E: or G: in my case). And the Temp Audio drive gets a fresh start.
Granted it may be overkill for most users, but we record multiple tracks simultaneously all the time (usually 8, sometimes 16 at a time).
For us this setup has helped with stability/performance.
So I thought I'd mention one tip I always try to use; separate drives.

When I find this option in other DAWs I'll do much the same thing by the way. Just seems to make sense. If they let me select the Temp Audio Directory I think it through and keep it separate if possible.

I don't think the Temp Audio directory is actually 'cleaned up' of the chunks of data until you close out of RB. They just aren't used anymore once the song is saved. They get deleted when RB is closed.
I wonder if this is one reason some people swear by restarting RB every hour.
With the setup above we do 2-3 hour sessions of multitrack recording regularly (at least twice a week) and don't have many issues.

If you are crashing often, open your Temp Audio Directory in Windows File Explorer and see what kind of audio files are there.

Last edited by rharv; 06/06/19 12:38 PM.
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