OK, here’s the deal. I won’t be getting a Mac nor Pro Tools for a while because I’m moving and blah blah blah. But, I have lots of 30 second ditties that I have been recording on Audacity. I basically write a ditty a day and I am starting to get worried about how to save these so that I can just use them as a base for proper versions in the future. In the future I will want to hire musicians to take these demos, use them as a base, and add all the instruments. In the end, you typically won’t hear any of the original demos. But the musicians and especially the singers will just be able to play and sing along with these demos as they figure out and record their parts. Is there anyway I can take Audacity tracks (assuming I record them with a click track) and transfer them to Pro Tools when I finally get a Mac?
Export As WAV. Microsoft WAV format is pretty universal. It plays well on all three computer platforms.
But. The default Audacity bit depth is 32-floating, not 16. There are systems out there that have no idea what to do with 32-floating even thought you did everything else right.
You can change the Audacity default in preferences and change your existing clips to 16 before you export. If you’re in Audacity 1.3, I think you can do it as you’re exporting.
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/bit-depth-conversion/9010/7
Koz
On Audacity 1.3.9 (and later) the default Export format is “WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM” (which, as Koz says, is pretty universal).
You might want to make your recordings as stereo tracks with the “ditty” panned all the way to one side, and the click track panned all the way to the other side. It is then very easy for the musicians to adjust the volume balance of music:click.
wow. very helpful. thank you both so much. so i will just import the wav files into propokertools when that day comes?
Or do it all in Audacity. Do be fooled by Audacity’s simple appearance - Audacity 1.3 is surprisingly powerful. At work I have access to ProTools, Sonar, Cubase, Audition and Audacity (1.2 and 1.3) and find myself using Audacity 1.3 more frequently than any of the others.