Consider a project of only unmodified tracks to be "clean"

That “everyone else” definitely includes me

And that is why I have always been adamant and purist that Audacity should not really have an open command that works on audio files. Open should be purely restricted to Audacity projects - and Import should be the only command that brings audio files into Audacity. Drag&drop would be fine too, but only into an already open project (as then that is an implicit Import) - NOT onto Audacity icon/shortcut/.exe

It is clear, yet again, from this thread that allowing Open > creates confusion and misunderstanding.

As you know I always like things that “does what it says on the tin” - and Open > is somewhat a sleight-of-hand, hiding what is actually going on from the user :nerd:

Peter.

UPDATE: see also this thread re open/import confusion … Audacity opening up in every time I open a single file