Hi everyone, I’m using Audacity 3.0 on [Windows, and I’m having trouble with audio exports. When I play the track inside Audacity, it sounds fine, but after exporting mp3, the audio quality changes – sometimes distorted or missing effects.
I’ve tried different export settings, but the issue persists. Any ideas? Appreciate your help!
That’s kinda’ old. 
It’s probably OK but sometimes it’s difficult to help because things get changed or moved around.
I can’t explain missing effects… Normally you apply an effect and it’s “permanent” unless you undo it before exporting.
But you can get clipping (regular-everyday overload distortion) when you export. Go to View → Show Clipping in Waveform and make sure it’s selected. Digital is generally limited to 0dBFS and Audacity will “show red” in the waveform if it goes over 0dB.
Audacity itself has no limits so internally/temporarily it can go over 0dB without clipping if you boost the bass or something like that. But your exported file can be clipped so you should run the Amplify or Normalize effect before exporting and the default settings will bring the levels down to a safe level if necessary.
Or… this probably isn’t the problem… but low-bitrate (low-quality) MP3 will sound distorted so make sure you’re using a good-quality setting (which will make a bigger file).