How to get Audacity to operate ?

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hello ,

Using these downloaded files :

audacity-win-2.0-ansi.exe
FFmpeg_v0.6.2_for_audacity_on_Windows.exe
LADSPA_plugins-win-0.4.15.3xe
LAME_v.3.99.3_for_Windows.exe

(1) How to get Audacity to load an audio track from a CD into the wave form screen for editing ?
My attempts so far are returned with an “Error Importing” message of “Audacity cannot open CD’s directly. Rip the CD tracks into an audio format Audacity can import such as .WAV or AIFF”. I assumed downloading the .exe file would provide file conversion ability.

(2) How to get Audacity to recognize the other three related executable files which were downloaded and installed ?
The Audacity software is not automatically converting .cda files into mp3 , wav, or wma format , and attempts to “Export File” save an mp3 file (an mp3 loaded into the wave form editing screen from a separate program which ripped a .cda file from a CD and coverted to mp3 format) as .wma are returned with a message of “Properly Configured FFmpeg is required to proceed. You can re-configure at Preferences / Libraries.”
Clicking EDIT/Preferences/Libraries returns boxes of (a) “MP3 export library not found” and icons to “Locate MP3 Library” or “Download LAME Library”, and a box of
(b) “FFmpeg Library not found” and icons to “Locate FFmpeg Library” or “Download FFmpeg Library”.
In both cases of boxes (a) and (b) clicking “Locate” finds the location of the necessary files ------ “Lame_enc.dll” for MP3 and “avformat52.dll” for FFmpeg ------ but then clicking “OK” in each case does not seem to link the Audacity program to the files. Further attempts to “Export” and “Edit/Preferences/Libraries” show continued “Library not found” messages. Searching the computer with Windows “Find/Files” shows that these .dll files do indeed exist.

How to get Audacity to operate ?

Thanks ,

dlxreverb

2

The music on a Music CD is a pile of digital stuff and an index file to point to the songs. The CDA is the index file. It’s not sound. You have to Rip a Music CD to individual songs to get them in a form for importing into Audacity. Even though the CD has sound in a perfect WAV quality, you still have to put the song packets together with the index file to make them useful.

I’ve been known to use CDEX and I think you can do it in Windows Media and I know you can do it in iTunes for Windows.

Did you miss the instructions for installing lame and FFmpeg?

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#lame

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#ffdown

Koz

3

Also, unless you are on Windows 98 or ME (in which case 2.0 ANSI is the final Audacity version), please use the latest 2.0.3 from here http://audacityteam.org/download/windows .


Gale

4

Yes , I am using a Windows98 machine

5

Koz ,

Thanks for reply.
The files were installed but Audacity does not seem to be linking the main program to the files, as described in the original post.

Does a song from a Music CD have to be ripped from the CD by a software program like AudioGrabber before loading into Audacity, or can Audacity itself rip the song from the CD ?

6

No, Audacity does not rip audio from CDs. Use a CD ripper of your choice to rip the CD to WAV format, then import the WAV file into Audacity. (Ripping to MP3 or WMA format is not recommended as that loses some sound quality).