Don't know whether this can be fixed but I thought I'd ask.

Okay - here’s the situation.

I and a friend of mine have been enjoying recording together for some time as a duo/band. Now tha we’re both at university (both studying music as it happens) we really want to continue this. However, studying at two SEPERATE universities about 150 miles apart makes jamming in a studio nigh on impossible.

So one day, shortly after each getting Audacity, we get this great idea. “HEY - why don’t we just record our own bits at home - then use E-MAIL to send the Audacity files back and forth??? We could make the first ever album produced entirely by e-mail!!!”

Which sounds great. But the only trouble is this: We can’t send the files. Or rather, we can send them, but they simply will not open on another computer. It’s just not happening.

Now yes, in theory we could remix everything done each time, export it to WAV, and then e-mail it back - but that would mean remixing the same track over and over again every time we want to share our results!!! And so much disc space would be lost to WAV files too…

So, is there a way of sending project files from one computer to another? Can we acheive our goal of recording an album by e-mail? Complete newbie here by the way - so if anyone can explain in newbie language, that would be great!

Thanks for your time - and additional thanks if you can help…

Best Wishes,

The Metal Fiddler.

Welcome to the confusion that is the Audacity Project.

The Audacity project consists of:

The .AUP file (no surprise there).
The -data file and all its little puppies inside.
Every capture file you used to start the show and have recorded since.

—in the right order.

So you can probably do this, but you need to be surgically careful where you put things. Did you send the _data folder with the project? You may find that it will be about the same size as an exported WAV file.

Koz

As Koz said, the problem is that you’re likely not sending the _data folder (which has all the Audacity Project’s audio data in it). And that _data folder is going to be huge for multi-track projects (some of mine are 500+ MBs). There’s no way you can email 500 MBs.

If you can set up a private server for this stuff, you can do it that way (but it will take a long time to download all of that data.

Really the best thing to do is to buy a hard drive to share between the two of you and use the post office to send it back and forth. Make sure you each keep a copy of the newest data for each project in case the hard drive doesn’t survive the mailroom. It’ll be much slower going, but it will work.

<<<the _data folder (which has all the Audacity Project’s audio data in it).>>>

Most of the time.

“But wait,” I can hear you saying. “That’s only if we send top quality WAV files back and forth. What happens if we send MP3 quality?”

Then your performance will suck, not to put too fine a point on it. MP3 is a destructive compressor and the destruction happens every time you go in or out of the file type. By about the third pass, you will all sound like gargling monkeys.

Of course, if your intention is to sound like gargling monkeys, then this is right down your alley.

Koz

Hey Koz, not a bad name for a band …

Ah. That is unfortunate. Ah well, maybe we can try sending the folders back and forth and see whether broadband - ad our email addresses - can cope with sending that much…

Have just had a thought strike me: Is it possible to send individual tracks from a project as WAV? If so, maybe we could send each part seperately and edit as normal…? Don’t know whether that might be possible, but I put the question to you guys… Still very much a newbie lol. :confused:

Thanks for your replies!

And P.S. Gargling Monkeys… Maybe a tribute to their cousins from the Arctic? lol. Good name!

Wouldn’t it be much simpler to burn the .wav and/or Audacity files (.aup, data folder, .bak, etc.) to CD or even DVD with an application that will let you burn a DVD/R as a data disc? Even just USPS 1st class should get them there in 3 days tops.

Oops, didn’t notice at first that you’re across the pond from the US, but your surface mail (not US Postal Service!) should still get CDs back and forth at reasonable cost in reasonable time.

Possibly - I just really like the thought of sending the whole thing back and forth over the Net. I mean, I’m sure people have recorded stuff in various locations before, but I highly doubt anyone has ever recorded an album by e-mail… And I’d like to see if it can be done.

More of an experimental idea than anything else, but I can get a bit obssessive at times… :laughing:

Yes, but if you are working on multi-track Audacity projects this won’t work - as when you export to WAV Audacity mixes/renders down to a single track stereo pair - and re-importing into Audacity will not restore the multi-tracks.

WC

I’ve actually done this with a friend (and guitar player).
We passed the modestly sized Audacity project backwards and forwards on a USB key (2gb if I remember rightly).

It could be important to point out that we’re running the same versions of both WXP & Audacity.

Result is here:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=664656&content=music
(play ‘Don’t Get Caught’ in hi-fi mode)

You can’t see the join!!