Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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Foire Aux Questions (FAQ) Flag of Germany small.png

Tip: To find your answer more easily, try using CTRL + F ( COMMAND + F on Mac ) to search this page.

The following are the FAQs copied in from the main SF site. They need re-reading and updating for 2.0 where appropriate.

22Sep09: (Peter) FAQs in manual updated to be in line with those on the main Audacity site (which had themselves been updated).

24Sep09: (Peter) FAQ page broken into one page per section - based on the pre-existing section headers in the FAQ. This page probably needs its layout changing now - maybe to just be a simple index with pointers to the relevant FAQ pages?

Gale 25 Sep09: I do want this page to link to both the index page for each FAQ section and to the individual questions in that section. But having the headings in this page as links to the pages for the FAQ sections is very non-standard. That means if we have headings on this page they need a link to the FAQ section index underneath (as per the "Recording" section here now). In that case we keep the Table of Contents (__TOC__) . Or, we use (__NOTOC__) to hide the Wiki-generated table of contents and mimic the Wiki TOC by having no headings, so it looks like "Opening and Saving Files" and "Editing" here now. I prefer mimicking the TOC.

About Audacity


Installation and Plug-Ins


Recording



Playback


Opening and Saving Files


Editing



Ideas for new FAQs

  • 'Peter 14Feb12: ToDo I plan to start work on these (the ones that are within my technical scope anyway) once 2.0 is out of the way i.e from 1Mar12.
ToDo develop responses for these proposed FAQs and migrate them to the published part of the page.
Steve 26Jul11: Perhaps there could be a section for using Audacity with other applications, such as Skype, YouTube, DAWs and Games
  • Why do I get the following error message when I hit the record button: "Error while opening sound device. Please check the input device settings and the project sample rate." What does that mean? (this comes up soooo... many times on the forum)


  • How do I avoid the echo when using my USB microphone? (software playthrough)
  • First track is being recorded onto the next track (Windows sound card set to record Stereo Mix).
  • Why is there a very low level hiss on Exported files? (dither)
  • How can I import WAV files from portable players?
  • How can I make my recording so it plays back in both speakers?
  • I recorded my tapes/LPs in stereo so why do I get only the left in both speakers?
  • Why does my recording keep pausing automatically, or pressing Pause has no effect?
Most likely you have enabled Sound Activated Recording by mistake and the recording input is below the threshold level at which recording is set to start (you will notice that the blue Pause button is depressed after you press Record). The "latency correction" message will only appear when you stop a recording that you were trying to start from time zero.

You can uncheck Sound Activated Recording either in the Recording Preferences as above (click OK to save the change) or in the Transport Menu.

May be better to generalise this as a "stalled recording" FAQ drawing from http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Troubleshooting_Recordings#stuck and http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/USB_turntables#freeze and also mentioning the Linux stall when recording from pulse with Software Playthrough.

  • When I try to record I get only a flat line and no sound. Why?
  • Can I use parts of Audacity source code in my school project?
  • Can I include screenshots of Audacity in my book, or link to Audacity on my web site?
  • How do I record Skype or other VoIP programs with Audacity?
  • I'm overdubbing vocals but my voice gets more and more out of step with the music track
  • Why does Audacity hang when I launch it?
  • Why do I have to ask questions on the Forum instead of getting help by e-mail?
  • Why do my longer projects always crash but not the short ones?
  • How do I prevent the computer rebooting when I play or record in Audacity?

Gale 02Apr12:

Example of [email protected] response below:

Audacity does not have the kernel privileges to reboot the computer. Forced reboots or "blue screens of death" are almost always caused by driver issues.

Make sure you do not have "Play and/or record using RAM" enabled in Audacity's "Directories" Preferences. If that is enabled there will be no recovery of recordings that crash in progress, because no data is written to disk.

The only general advice we can give is to update the drivers of the sound device you are using, and to examine the memory dump for any further information as to the faulting module or library.

Audacity 2.0.0 probably has a later version of the PortAudio Audio I/O interface that we use than your previous Audacity version. Therefore, updating your sound device so that it has the latest drivers for your particular computer model and particular operating system is very likely to help. The drivers should be obtained from the motherboard or computer manufacturer, or from the sound device manufacturer if you are using a PCI or external sound card. See: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Updating_Sound_Device_Drivers .

If you are on a Windows computer, you can analyse the memory dump fairly easily by downloading WhoCrashed: http://www.resplendence.com/downloads .

The first time you click the Analyze button in WhoCrashed to look at the dump, WhoCrashed will ask you to select the path to the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows. This is usually in: 

  C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows .

If you don't have the tools then you can download the required installer by clicking “Download the required file from Microsoft site now”.

If you are not sure where the memory dump is, right-click over My Computer or Computer > Properties, which should bring you to "System Properties". Click the "Advanced" tab, and then click "Settings" under "Startup and Recovery".

If updating sound device drivers as described above does not solve the crashes, we probably won't be able to take any direct action, but do let us know the exact make and model number of the device, model number of its drivers and the exact operating system you are using, including the Service Pack if you are on Windows.

  • "Error not well formed (invalid token) at line x"

This means that the .aup project file contains a foreign, or accented or control character at the line quoted in the error message. This means either you have an ANSI build of Audacity (you can check this at Help > About Audacity), or you have a Unicode build but

the .aup file you're opening was created by some other ANSI build of Audacity.

It could also mean that there is a problem with the metadata of the file (information like artist or genre). In particular, projects created in Audacity 1.3.12 or earlier could acquire invalid characters in the .aup project file, causing an error when re-opening the project, if the projects contained files imported from iTunes. To fix the issue, open a back-up copy of the .aup file in a text editor, turn off word wrap, then in the line indicated in the error message, remove the string of characters that starts with &# and ends with a semi-colon (;).

If you want to save Projects with accented or foreign characters, they must be both created and re-opened in a Unicode build of Audacity. That has always been true with the proviso that in Audacity 1.2.6 on Windows you could save extended ANSI characters like é in the .aup file. As far as I can see if you have a project saved in 1.3.13 ANSI that has an é in the track name, 1.3.13 Unicode should open it correctly. But from Audacity 1.3, even those characters are far better stored in projects created by Audacity Unicode because that gives you extra flexibility. Windows 2000 upwards supports Unicode, so a Unicode build of Audacity is what you want.

To solve the problem, make a copy of the .aup file then open it in a text editor like Notepad. Make sure word-wrap is turned off, then remove the foreign or accented characters from the line in the .aup file that is indicated in the error message. Save the changes to the .aup file.

If you had to rename "projname" in the .aup file, rename both the .aup project file and the corresponding _data folder so that they have the same name as "projname" in the .aup file. Audacity should then be able to open the project OK.

If you want to save Projects with accented or foreign characters, they must be both created and re-opened in a Unicode build. This would be the build marked on our Beta download page: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_windows

for Windows 2000/XP/Vista. Other Beta builds and all Stable (1.2) builds are ANSI.


Non-Latin characters are stored as UTF-8 in an .aup file saved by a Unicode version of Audacity. é should appear as é in the .aup file if you read it in an editor that can read UTF-8. Non-Latin characters are stored as ANSI in an .aup file saved by an ANSI version of Audacity Beta. The é will appear as "é" in the .aup file. Unicode builds of Audacity will be looking for UTF-8 encoding for anything other than extended ANSI so won't understand an .aup file produced by an ANSI build of Audacity if it contains exotic characters like symbols.


On Windows: save accented char in Unicode stored as UTF 8 in .aup ("Thème appears as "Thème") opens in ANSI but appears incorrect in app after re-opening save accented char in ANSI stored as ANSI in aup ("Thème" appears as "Thème") and displays incorrect in ANSI app after re-opening; opens and displays correct in Unicode

If save accented char on Mac in ANSI ?? stored as ANSI in aup but "Thème appears as "Thème" and won't open in Unicode

In Notepad++, to convert your "Test 4 ANSI created.aup" which contains:

Code: Select all <tags> <tag name="GENRE" value="Drei Violinen und Klavier"/> <tag name="TITLE" value="Caldara Sinfonia 4-3 Cembalo V1 V2 und Cembalo"/> <tag name="YEAR" value="2011"/> <tag name="ARTIST" value="Dieter Fleischmann und MIDI"/> <tag name="COMMENTS" value="20110413; H2 90°, Dieter Grünke und MIDI"/> </tags>

to ANSI as UTF8, you would choose Encoding > "Convert to UTF-8 without BOM" then save the .aup file, That would give you the same result in ANSI and Unicode Audacity as you had with the file Steve converted for you.

In gedit: 1) Open the .aup file in GEdit 2) Save the file and select "UTF-8" as the character encoding.

However the real issue is how you got the above (i.e. the "°" appears as "°" in the .aup file and "ü" appears as "ü") in the .aup file that 1.3.13 ANSI saved. You should have got "°" for the "°" and "ü" for the "ü" in that .aup file, then it would have opened in both versions of Audacity, albeit with incorrectly displayed characters in 1.3.13 ANSI.

  • Do I have to uninstall the stable version of Audacity to use the Beta? How do I upgrade Audacity to a newer version? (or Do I have to delete the old version first before upgrading?)
    • Gale 18 Oct11 pasting verbatim answer just given on [email protected]:

      By default, 1.3.13 http://audacity.googlecode.com/files/audacity-win-unicode-1.3.13.exe will install into a different "Audacity 1.3 Beta (Unicode)" directory in Program Files. This gives you the option to either retain 1.2.6 or uninstall it from the "Audacity" directory in Program Files.

      As 1.2.6 no longer supports Windows 7, it is recommended to uninstall 1.2.6 and install 1.3.13 to its default "Audacity 1.3 Beta (Unicode)" directory. However the two versions have different groups of settings so in principle if you install them to different directories you can run one version or the other.

      We do not recommend installing 1.3.13 over the top of (in the same directory as) 1.2.6 because it will leave three duplicate plug-ins and two different uninstallers (unins000.exe for 1.2 and unins001.exe for 1.3) but it is not harmful if you really want to do it.

  • How do I find which Audacity version I have, and if this is the latest version?
    • Click Help > About Audacity (Audacity > About Audacity on Mac) to check the version of Audacity you are running, then visit our Download page to view the latest releases. You can subscribe at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/#announce to receive an e-mail whenever we release new versions of Audacity.
      Whenever asking for help or reporting possible bugs, please quote Audacity's full three-section version number (for example, 2.0.0) and your operating system (for example, Windows 7 64-bit).
  • When I install Audacity the language is in Arabic (or whatever) - how do I change it back to English?
    • To change the language
      1. use: Edit>Preferences - Edit is the second command in from top left, then Preferences is the bottom selection in the drop-down list.
      2. Then you need the Interface tab, which is the fifth item in the list
      3. In the dialog box there should be three wide drop-down selector boxes. The middle one enables you to select the language – select English
      4. And then click the OK button – which should be the left-most button at the bottom right.
    • Gale: But we already have #language. And the 1.2 scenario of knocking the First Run dialogue onto Chinese won't happen in 1.3 because that dialogue has gone.
    • Peter 19Oct11: Ah yes, so we do. The reason I didn't spot it before was that I was looking in FAQ:Installation and Plug-Ins, as I regard it as an installation issue - whereas it currently lives in FAQ:About Audacity. Can I move it to the installation issues section please? This would also have the advantage of balancing out the two sections somewhat.
    • Gale: I understand the user logic of looking for this in "installation" but I don't think we should encourage the misapprehension this is to do with "Installation". Also users who decide later they want to change the language won't look in "Installation". I agree that "About Audacity" is less than ideal. How about a new "Interface" section? As well as the language FAQ we could move into it:
      • 5.1.1 Why can't I use the effects or other menu items?
      • 5.1.2 Why can't I select less than one second or click between whole seconds?
      • (TBC) Why does Audacity hang when I launch it?
      That leaves the "Editing" section short but we could add to it (TBC) "Why do my longer projects always crash but not the short ones?".
    • Peter 23Oct11: The immediate reaction of a lot of posters who unwittingly get the foreign language interface with Audacity is to straight away try re-installing, and they usually do that even before they post a query on the forum. That's one of the reasons why I tend to associate it in my mind with installation issues.

      I wouldn't really want to move 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 out of editing - nor do I really see the real need for a new Interface category.

    • Gale 26Oct11: These are the 1.3/2.0 FAQs, not 1.2. So there will not be lots of first-time users of Audacity who get a "foreign language interface" in 2.0 because 2.0 has no first run dialogue; Audacity simply uses the language the OS is running in. Even if 2.0 had this first run dialogue, by the time the user saw that dialogue they have already installed Audacity; the user's mistake is that they think the language choice in the Windows Audacity installer selects the Audacity language. It doesn't, as explained in the FAQ. We could rename section 2 of the FAQ "Installation, Configuration and Plug-ins" which is then suitable for the language FAQ and also lets us add a FAQ there about audacity.cfg if we want. But it would be wrong IMO to put the language FAQ in an "Installation and Plug-ins" section.


Old - need merging or deleting

    Old - need merging or deleting ToDo we need to merge or delete ...
    • I plan to start work on these (the ones that are within my technical scope anyway) once 2.0 is out of the way i.e from 1Mar12.
    </div>
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