Audacity Forum

So you can record a vocal track into an empty project and it works fine, but if you import another file into the project, then try to record, it sounds bad. Could you tell us a bit about your computer - what's the hardware, sound card, operating system, how much free disk space, other programs runni...

Some of the data is missing from the Audacity project.
Where are the originals of these "years old recordings"?

Something stopped working? Not enough information to start guessing further.

Check your recording level - you should have a clearly visible waveform, but it should not reach the top or bottom of the track or it will cause distortion.

The USB connections on USB turntables are frequently a cause of problems. Try a different USB socket if you can, and ensure that the USB connector is securely seated in the socket. Avoid using other USB devices at the same time.

Will I need any additional software to use my Firepod with Audacity at this point? You will need to have "Windows Drivers" installed for Audacity to recognise the sound card - Audacity does not support ASIO drivers. Can someone explain (and/or help to locate tutorials) how to get the fire...

Make sure that it really is an MP3 and not a WMA file or some other unsupported file type.
You can use the free "SUPER" format converter from erightsoft to convert most media file types. Downloading Super is a bit of a "link jungle" but it is worth the effort.

You can have Audacity 1.2 and 1.3 installed at the same time, but can not run them simultaneously (one at a time only).

Audacity 1.3 can open files that have been saved in Audacity 1.2,
but Audacity 1.2 can not open files that have been saved in Audacity 1.3.

Let's try and eliminate some of the possibilities. First, try updating Audacity to he 1.3.7 version (the old 1.2.6 version is almost obsolete now).

Try using Audacity 1.3.7 - it is reported to work a lot better on Vista than the old 1.2.6 version. There is a (not quite complete) on-line manual for Audacity 1.3/1.4 available here http://audacityteam.org/manual/index.php?title=Main_Page (looking for volunteers to help complete the manual). I beli...