Audio cutting and and out after exporting

[dwdellinger]

I am having a problem where my audio looks and plays perfectly fine in Audacity, but after exporting to mp3 the audio cuts in and out at random. I have tried exporting in different audio formats, and strangely the cut outs still happen but are in different places.

These cut outs are present in Audacity, You can see in this screenshot. The top line is the original audio (copied over from the original Audacity project). The 2nd line is what comes out when I export as an mp3. The 3rd line is a wav, and the 4th is an m4a. I’ve circled places where the audio cut out. As you can see, they don’t even line up.

I am using Audacity 3.5.0 on Windows 10. I have been using Audacity for years, recording and exporting files in the exact same way with the default settings (Sample rate 44100 hz, bit mode rate preset, quality 192 kbs), and this is the first time I have experienced this problem. It is also only this file, I’ve exported other recordings made before and after and they are just fine. Does anybody know why this is happening or how I might fix it?

[dwdellinger]

Just in case anybody else has this problem and finds this forum post, I still have no idea what caused this problem. But since the different file formats had different blank spots, you can just mix and render them. If you really want to preserve audio quality, you can have the best sounding track as your main, and silence the audio on the other tracks when the main track has audio. Then when your main track loses audio, use the audio from one of the formats that does have it. It will take time and the final product will be pretty inconsistent , but at least it will all be there.