Hello, all. (If you don’t have time for the backstory, skip to the second paragraph). I have recently discovered that I could use audacity to increase the volume of songs made in GarageBand. I tried it out on a few demos, and it worked great. One day, however, my computer crashed, and Audacity was still open. I had already exported the demos I was working on, and didn’t come back to Audacity for another volume adjustment of one of my songs until weeks later. When I opened up Audacity, it asked me if I wanted to recover the files it saved. Not because I really wanted to, but rather because I didn’t care, I accepted, and Audacity froze. I force quit it, and then every time I tried to open it, it froze again. Thus, I uninstalled it, then installed a version of Audacity that may or may not be the same as the original I had (version 2.1.0). I never checked. It worked fine, letting me record and edit things, but it couldn’t do the single thing I actually needed it to do; it could not import audio. Well, it thinks it can, and tells me it’s importing for the duration of several seconds, and then nothing happens.
Long story short, I had to replace the Audacity I had installed, and now I cannot import anything. It pretends to import, but then nothing happens. Can anyone help me with this? It would be much appreciated.
I’m more interested in that. Do you know why it crashed? Did you have to hold the power button to get it back? It’s most unusual for a Mac to go face-first into the mud.
Can I re-word your sentence: “This time when it crashed, Audacity was open.”
I worded my sentence incorrectly. The application Audacity crashed (or at least gave my cursor the colourful spinning ball of death for a good six minutes before I force quit it). I don’t know how that even escaped my recollection. Anyhow, I fixed the problem by finding the original Audacity disk image I had downloaded and reinstalled it (version 2.0.5). Everything’s working normally now. Thank you for your concern, though.
Please provide a link to an example file, so we can see its name and examine its contents. How to post an audio sample.
Please state the full path to the file. If the file is in your own user space, there is no need to give us your user name, just say “” instead.
Show us the contents of Help > Show Log… after attempting to import the file.
If we can test an example file that shows no waveform on a user’s machine and shows none on our machines, then we can fix it.
If the same file does show a waveform on our machines then we know the problem is something not directly related to the file, perhaps some kind of memory issue.
Have you tried to refresh the window (like dragging it at bottom right, or use the green window button) or to refresh the non-existent waveform (by applying an effect)?
If you use File > Open… instead of File > Import… does it make any difference?
For the time being I have restored 2.0.6 so I have a working program. With 2.1.0 the problem occurs when I try to import a music file that is not wave format onto a screen. It seems to work fine if it is in a wave format but a music file purchased from iTunes whether by dragging it or importing it with “import audio” method. No problem with 2.0.6. I simply drag a file that I need onto the audacity screen and off I go. With 2.1.0, when I try to drag or import a file, it shows the count down on the screen but then the screen is still blank. I cannot provide a sample audio since I cannot import it to the screen, but here is some of the activity log. Hope this gives you some idea.
21:35:41: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries…
21:35:41: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from default path, ‘/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avutil from ‘’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avcodec from ‘’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avformat from ‘/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
21:35:41: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from legacy path, ‘/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avutil from ‘’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avcodec from ‘’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avformat from ‘/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
21:35:41: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from system paths. File name is ‘libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avutil from ‘’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avcodec from ‘’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Loading avformat from ‘libavformat.55.dylib’.
21:35:41: Error: dlopen(libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
21:35:41: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
21:35:41: Error: Failed to find compatible FFmpeg libraries.
Pages and pages of screaming about not being able to find FFMpeg is normal. The way I understand it, Audacity goes for the QuickTime libraries to open up odd formats. This is what makes not being able to open iTunes files odd. iTunes opens them up with QuickTime Libraries.
Unless you had the misfortune of buying copy protected shows. One of the “features” of AAC is support of FairPlay Copy Protection. The traditional way to get around this is to burn the song to an Audio CD using the iTunes tools and then rip the CD into sound files. You know that you got a protected file if you paid $.99 for it. The more expensive $1.29 songs are generally not protected.
As I mentioned before I don’t experience any problem using 2.0.6. The same piece of music opens fine with no problem with 2.0.6, but 2.1.0 won’t. I don’t know all the answers to previous questions but only thing that changed is the updated version. I tried opening other music purchased thru iTunes and the same occurs. If a piece of audio is in wave format, I was able to open. I see that some others are having the same issue on the forum.
I had an analogous error with Audacity 2.0.1 on ISX 10.4.11.
Unless you had the misfortune of buying copy protected shows. One of the “features” of AAC is support of FairPlay Copy Protection. The traditional way to get around this is to burn the song to an Audio CD using the iTunes tools and then rip the CD into sound files. You know that you got a protected file if you paid $.99 for it. The more expensive $1.29 songs are generally not protected.
Are these fairplay DRM files still around? I was under the impression that that ended years ago?
Could there be some other disturance to the OP’s OSX? Hence the question about VLC. Could be something like a corrupted Flip4Mac, too, IMHO.
Can you give us the exact name of a song and artist on iTunes store that if you downloaded it today, would show the problem on your machine?
We understand you can play the song you can’t see in Audacity by pressing SPACE. Did you try dragging the window or applying an effect to the song you can’t see?
Please note you can have 2.1.0 as well as 2.0.6 on your machine, as long as you don’t run them both at the same time.
It is possible the file would import if you installed FFmpeg, then used File > Import > Audio… and chose the “FFmpeg-compatible files” file type to make FFmpeg import the file instead of QuickTime. We’d appreciate someone trying that.
Hello all,
I was having the same problems as most of you when importing *.M4A files after upgrading to Audacity 2.1.0. I followed the instructions in Gale’s post on installing the FFmpeg libraries on my machine. I am now able to import all files again with no issues. Thanks, Gale! FYI - I’m running a 2007 Mac Pro with OS X 10.7.5 installed.