Hello, newbie here, learning to record and produce meditations on Audacity. I’m not very technically literate and need help understanding where to store files in AUP3 after recording them, until I’m ready to produce them. My plan is to record a few, then produce them all later. I recorded 2 files already and downloaded the projects in AUP3 onto my computer. Both my computer and email are now saying I’m out of storage. I believe my husband has my computer connected to the cloud somewhere (again I’m not so literate with this stuff) and I’m using a Windows computer. Google drive also fills up very quickly. I’m also worried about uploading to google and losing the quality of the file. Any insight would be appreciated and please communicate clearly so I can understand lol. Thank-you!
AUP3 files are somewhat “fragile” so it’s a good-idea to export WAV or FLAC files immediately after recording, whether you make an AUP3 project file or not. And if the files are critical keep multiple back-ups, etc., as you would with any important files.
You can’t use AUP3 files “live” on a FAT32 thumb drive and you shouldn’t use a cloud service that way either. You CAN transfer the files back-and forth like any regular file transfer/backup, but when you’re working in Audacity you should be working from a local internal hard drive.
The sound quality will be fine. AUP3 files use uncompressed 32-bit floating point audio. That’s one of the reasons the files are huge (compared to other audio files). WAV files are uncompressed usually 16-bit or 24-bit integer, but they can be 32-bit float. WAV files are limited to 4GB. It’s the only audio format I know of with an artificial limit.
FLAC is lossless compression (usually a little bigger than half the size of WAV). It supports 16 and 24-bit integer (not float).
MP3 and M4A are lossy compression and they throw-away data to make the file smaller. You don’t always hear the quality loss, but if you want a lossy format you should compress ONCE as the last step.
Thankyou for the feedback. Question though, in order to produce the files later in Audacity, do I need to keep them as AUP3 or can I change them to WAV?
It doesn’t matter which format you use UNTIL you start working on them (ie producing them). At that point, you’ll need to have the AUP3 file until you’re completely done. For safety’s sake, DVDdoug’s advice is good. If your AUP3 gets lost or corrupted, you can always start producing again if you saved a WAV file at the start. I hope that makes sense.
Mark B
Thanks to you both for kindly helping. I appreciate it and understand now. Have a good day.
You can push files around wherever you want as long as Audacity is off. Audacity doesn’t get along with non-internal drives.
Move files back to the internal drive and then launch Audacity to work on them.
Perfect Quality, Robust but Ordinary WAV files make good backups as long as the work is mono or stereo and smaller than 4GB.
If your production is large and complicated with multiple channels, then you’re more or less stuck with aup3 project files. As above, they’re delicate.
Search the forum for “My Project won’t open. What am I going to do?”
Koz
Maybe we should find out how you’re recording the work. Aup3 project files can be massive, but email services aren’t. It’s also not unusual to be surprised by how big production files can be (the video people get nailed regularly), and how much room your computer doesn’t have.
You should make sure Audacity is the only thing running when you do production. It’s fashionable to leave a bunch of applications running in the background and rapid switch to each one as you need it. Maybe not the best idea with a large sound production.
Have you ever done a clean shutdown? It’s a special way to shut down your Windows machine to make sure everything is closed and put to bed. Regular shutdown doesn’t always do that. It does take a little longer.
If you’re in Windows 10, it can be pretty simple.
Windows 11 is a little harder.
Koz