Hello, I’ve just finished a fresh Ubuntu and Audacity 3.7.5 install. If I click and drag an mp3 file into Audacity, I get an error message: “Audacity did not recognize the type of the file.” This sounded like an ffmpeg issue, but I checked in the Preferences and Audacity is seeing the library. What’s more, if I import the file by going to File > Import > Audio, I can import it with no trouble. Dragging and dropping is a lot faster though, so I’d really like it if Audacity would work as expected. What settings can I change to make drag and drop work?
In previous versions of Audacity, LAME was needed to export .mp3 files, not ffmpeg. So I do not think that .mp3 requires ffmpeg. For some time now (I think somewhere in the “middle” of Audacity 2) .mp3 can be exported without installing LAME, because the patent for .mp3 has expired.
I have tried to drag an existing .mp3 file into an empty Audacity window and had no problem. I am using 3.6.4 on macOS.
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Audacity has a mode where you can drop any kind of file into it and the program will display it as if it were audio. That is what you are doing. In that mode, you do not want the data to be changed by conversion through ffmpeg.
The word “mode” is probably wrong here. It is not a mode like a setting in Audacity. It is a mode like a way of thinking.
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