Audacity does not perform mapping of the channels in exported files to specific playback channels. In addition, 5.1 files in OGG and AC3 formats are often FL, FC, FR, SL, SR, LFE. There is no guarantee that a sound device or any particular file will follow recommended channel mapping for the format. Audacity lacks dynamic equalizer controls and real time effects while recording. Audacity does not natively import or export WMA, AAC, AC3 or most other proprietary or restricted file formats; rather, an optional FFmpeg library is required. Language support.
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An AUP file can only be saved and used in Audacity. It is just a small text file that tells Audacity how to work with the audio you see in the project window. It lets you resume working on that audio in Audacity at a later time if you need to.
Whenever you want to use your audio in other applications, choose the File > Export sub-commands to export a standard audio format like WAV, AIFF or MP3.
To export an MP3, add LAME to your computer. To export M4A/MP4, add FFmpeg to your computer. |
Before saving the exported file, click in the Export Audio Dialog to see if there are choices for the quality and size of the file.
To learn more about working with AUP files, please see Audacity Projects.
Audacity breaks long tracks into small pieces so it can edit them more efficiently. When you save an AUP project file, Audacity stores all the pieces in a _data folder that has the same name as the AUP file. For example, saving 'song.aup' saves the required data pieces as AU files inside the 'song_data' folder.
To open the project, open the AUP file then Audacity will load the AU files in the correct sequence automatically. A project you saved recently can be opened from File > Recent Files.
Long projects contain a lot of data. Be sure the project is fully saved before exiting Audacity or shutting down the computer. If there is a progress dialog for saving the project, wait for it to complete before shutting down. The Status Bar at the bottom shows a message when the project has been saved. |
You should not move, delete or rename the _data folder or any of the AU files inside it. |
To learn more about working with Audacity projects, please see Audacity Projects.
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In the event of a crash while Audacity has unsaved data (such as a recording that has not yet been saved as a project, or an existing project with unsaved changes), Audacity will attempt to recover that data on next launch of Audacity. See Automatic Crash Recovery for full details.
If the computer itself crashed, see Why does the computer reboot or show a blue screen message when I play or record in Audacity?.
Audacity as shipped can import or export the following audio formats:
You can install the optional FFmpeg library to import and export a much larger range of audio formats including AC3, AMR(NB), M4A, MP4 and WMA(on Mac only, Audacity can import unprotected M4A, MP4 and MOV files without FFmpeg). Audio files that are DRM-protected to work only in particular software cannot be imported. FFmpeg will also import audio from most video files or DVDs that are not DRM-protected.
You can export to iTunes by exporting to any location on your computer then add the file to the iTunes library.
See Importing Audio and the Export Audio Dialog for more help with importing and exporting.
Audacity does not natively support Opus. If FFmpeg is installed, Audacity will attempt to use FFmpeg for importing Opus files. |
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If you install the optional FFmpeg library you can use the (FFmpeg) choices in the Export Audio Dialog to export M4A (AAC), AC3, AMR (narrow band) and WMA. If you do not see a choice for one of those specific FFmpeg formats, then the build of FFmpeg you are linking to was not compiled to support encoding in that format.
The most flexible method to export to more formats is to choose (external application) in the Export Audio Dialog which opens the dialog for Audacity's command-line encoder. Point your command to an encoder that supports the format you want to write to, which could be FFmpeg or some other encoder (for example, an alternative AAC or MP3 encoder). On Windows, the recommended EXE installer of FFmpeg includes an ffmpeg.exe which you can use for this purpose. On Mac, you can download a standalone 'ffmpeg' binary if you search online.
Alternatively you can export to some additional formats supported by your build of FFmpeg by choosing Custom FFmpeg Export in the Export Audio Dialog.
When you export a file, by default Metadata Editor pops up where you can add, delete or change embedded information about the file. Metadata is well supported by many audio formats, especially the ID3 tags used by MP3, but less well supported in WAV.
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Audacity cannot import tracks directly from an audio CD. You must use a separate application like Windows Media Player or iTunes® to extract (or 'rip') CD tracks into a format that Audacity can read, like WAV or AIFF. Then you can import those WAV or AIFF files into Audacity.
The only exception is that on Mac computers with optical drives, CD tracks are mounted in Finder as AIFF files so can be imported directly into Audacity.
For more detail see the tutorial Tutorial - How to import CDs.
After making a recording or editing a file in Audacity, follow these steps to save your work on an audio CD.
To make a disc you can play in all CD players, make sure to create a 'music' or 'audio' CD (not a 'data' CD). Use CD-R discs, because some players cannot read CD-RW. You can burn only 74 minutes to an audio CD in most cases, but possibly up to 80 minutes depending on the CD-R. This is a limitation of the audio CD format.
Some CD software will burn only 16-bit, 44100 Hz stereo audio files. If your CD recording software will not open your file, export the file again after choosing the following settings in Audacity:
See the Burning music files to a CD Tutorial for tips on CD burning with Windows Media Player or iTunes® and on burning 'gapless' CDs or longer 'data' CDs.
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Follow these steps to create a separate audio file for each song or segment of a long recording. This is particularly useful if you are creating an audio CD, since after burning each file to CD there will be a separate CD track for each song which you can skip to in the CD player.
Alternatively, Audacity can attempt to detect the silences between tracks and label them automatically. See the full instructions at Splitting a recording into separate tracks.
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However Audacity will show a warning if you type a name ending with a period and characters that are the extension for any common media, document or image type and this extension is unexpected for your audio format. Press 'Yes' in the warning if you really want to export with this file name, or 'No' to return to the export dialog. This gives you the flexibility for example to export an M4A (AAC) (FFmpeg) file with M4B audiobook extension, if that is your explicit requirement.
More Windows examples(do not type the quotes in the examples given)On Mac and GNU/Linux if you export an audio file that has any period in the file name, Audacity will warn you (unless the implied extension is a recognised alternative extension for your chosen format). If you answer 'Yes' to the warning, Audacity will not add the standard extension for the format. So if you need a period within the file name you must answer 'No' to any warning, then add another period followed by the correct extension at the end of the name. Otherwise the file may not be playable.
When exporting and when saving an Audacity project, Audacity may also warn you (or not respond correctly) if you type a file name that includes characters that are forbidden by the operating system.
Forbidden Characters: | |
On Windows, all of the following | / : * ? ' < > | |
On Mac OS X/macOS, colon only(1) | : |
On Linux, forward slash only | / |
(1) | '/' in saved file names appears as a colon in Audacity. |
Apart from operating system restrictions, Audacity has full support for printable Unicode characters in file names. However, if you want to send your file to someone else, use it on another operating system or make it available on the internet, only use A to Z or a to z characters, whole numbers (0 to 9), underscore or hyphen-minus (or use the NUMPAD_SUBTRACT key). This will ensure the file name will always be compatible.
There may be additional restrictions such as maximum permitted characters in the path to the file, or some file names may be reserved for the operating system. Full details for Windows can be found here.
Showing file extensions on the computer: When you look at the file you saved or exported in Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac, you may only be able to see the file name itself (for example, '92.3 FM capture' ) and not the extension following it. This is not an Audacity bug, rather you need to set your operating system to show file extensions.This is because you have opened a project created in an earlier version of Audacity where the project depends on one or more external audio files.
See this page: On-Demand Loading.
To use a standard Audacity project on another computer, you have to include the _data folder that has the same name as the project. This makes the size very large. The _data folder has the small .au files that contain the uncompressed audio data.
Also if your project contains imported WAV or AIFF files, you must choose Help > Diagnostics > Check Dependencies... and if necessary copy in those files to the project before using it on another computer.
See Audacity Projects for more about the structure of Audacity projects and Sending your work to others for why you would probably need to export an MP3 audio file to make your audio small enough to email.
Alternatively, if you have a broadband internet connection and you package your .aup file and _data folder into a zip file, there are many free file transfer services that allow upload and storage of large files. Try for example DropSend or mailbigfile. Audacity also has a feature at File > Save Project > Save Compressed Copy of Project... to save a much smaller project using OGG files (this will however give you a slightly lossy project).
Audacity has very robust crash recovery and in many cases can recover most or all of your work in the event of a power failure, computer crash or crash of Audacity itself. However it is a wise precaution to backup the project periodically to separately named AUP files in case Audacity is unable to recover correctly. This also gives you the flexibility to reopen the project as it was at different points in time, because Audacity cannot restore a project's history once that project's session is closed.
The best way to make a copy of an already saved project is to use File > Save Project > Save Lossless Copy of Project... and save to a new name. This makes a copy of the current project in its current state, leaving your current project open for continued working. See Managing Audacity Projects for more on how to work with Audacity project files.
Do not use the operating system's copy and paste to make a copy of the project AUP file and _data folder in the same folder as the original project.
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Remember that computer hard drives can fail, destroying all data. Therefore regular backups should if possible be made to one or two devices other than the device the current project is stored on. For example, backups could be made to another internal drive on the computer, or ideally to an external USB drive or uploaded to an online (cloud) storage service.
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Notes to myself!
Suppose you want to create a surround sound file using Audacity. The app is a little obtuse, so this may clear up some confusion.
When exporting, Audacity defaults to mixing down to stereo. You must adjust these settings:Edit → Preferences → Import/Export → Use Custom Mix
Lay out your audio. Keep each track as mono. You can have as many tracks as you like and then downmix them later.
File → Export
If you choose a surround compatible format, like .ogg, you will be able to assign each track (on the left) to an output channel on the right.
The channels don’t have names – which is really unhelpful. Here’s how they map according to the OGG Specification.
If you want to test it for yourself, here’s a simple multitrack ogg.