I’m editing together two people’s audio, but on of my actors’ audio sounds much worse quality after importing it to Audacity. It sounds excellent on my laptop played through Media Player and on my phone, but the exact same file sounds low quality when imported into Audacity. I’ve tried importing it into a completely new project, and I’ve tried deleting the track from the existing project, closing the Audacity session, and re-importing it.
Both actors recorded at 24 bit/48khz. My Audacity project settings are the same. The other actor’s recording sounds absolutely fine, the only difference between the two is that the first one (with the problems) is recorded in mono and the other in stereo.
I haven’t edited the audio in any way apart from clipping bits out, and the issue persists even when I freshly import the original, completely unedited WAV file.
Did you try importing it into a mono project? Just to do it. Still damaged?
I have a SWAG. (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess). Audacity is trying to import a Mono performance into a Stereo show and it getting it wrong.
Double the mono files and convert them into a stereo performance. Import the new stereo file into your stereo show. Work OK now? When you import the mono performance into your show, does it only appear on left or right?
No difference using stereo or mono. I have definitely found some of the problem though! Turns out for some reason Windows turned the ‘audio enhancements’ setting back on and it’s having a huge effect on his audio specifically? Which I don’t really understand but at least it’s part of an answer?
I don’t know why Enhancements is back on, but unless you’re producing Zoom, Skype or other work like that, it should be off.
Google “Enhancements Turning On By Itself.”
That’s a standing joke on the forum. Whenever someone complains of sound quality we take a deep breath and say: Make-Sure-Windows-Enhancements-Is-Turned-Off. Many times, that solves the problem and we never hear from the poster again.
Since you’re on Windows, you might try another global solution. Do a Clean Shutdown. It’s not unusual for applications to leave effects and tools running even though the app is turned off. Shut down windows so that everything really is off and your production starts over clean.
Not sure if I’d say anything “worked”, but I do think now that the unenhanced audio is at least the raw, actual sound I’ve got to work with rather than hearing the enhanced version. And fortunately (for me!) it’s someone else’s job on this project to make it all sound good, so as long as I can get him clean, raw audio, that’s good enough for me. I think the enhancements either got turned on from a Windows update or possibly by Zoom, which I used recently for the first time in a long time. They’re off again now but I’ll be keeping a closer eye on them for sure! Thanks for your help!