Importing data from file

Touni · July 12, 2017, 6:58am

Hello forum,

I have a noobie question which I am sure has been asked previously but I just did not find it with search. I have a device which will output audio samples to txt or csv file. With approx. 1kHz input signal I get following (below) data for one cycle. I want to import this data to Audacity for some further analysis but I just cannot find a correct way to to do it. Excel will plot this as ~1kHz sine (as these are simple data points) but in Audacity I get anything but nice 1kHz sine.

Do I need to convert this data first to some other format or is there a way to directly import just data points to Audacity.

Cheers and Thanks!

steve · July 12, 2017, 9:39am

To be valid audio sample values, the data needs to be normalized to the range +/- 1.0.

Your largest absolute value is 203913, so you could divide each value by this number prior to exporting, or, because Audacity works in 32-bit float format and can handle values over 0 dB, you could import the data first and normalize after.

Because these are text (ASCII) values and not actual audio data (binary data), normal audio import will not work, and neither will “import RAW”. You need to read in the values as numeric text, which you can do with the “Sample Data Import” generator: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/sample_data_import.html

If you want to import first and then normalize, use the “Normalize” effect after importing http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/normalize.html

Touni · July 12, 2017, 10:24am

Thanks! Now I managed to import that data. This was exactly what I was looking for