should i always make output file after edit from audacity in only wav format? aside from wav all the other file types has built in distortion and can degrade my audio quality after edit?
One more thing, is there any way to put multiple markers on a track so that i can easily remember important parts to take/edit from a track? by markers i meant something to mark certain portion on a track during editing, suppose i have an 5 min audiofile from which i need to remove unwanted portions and keeps only important portions, so when i’m hearing the audio on audacity, i get first important portion 2min to2min30s , so i put 2 markers on 2min and 2m30s then i continue to listen next portion of audio to find another important portion. like that i found 2 more important portions 3m-4m15s and 4m-4m25s, so i give 4 markers on those too. So that after after completely hearing the audio i could just cut out those portions and add them to make my new audio file without any unwanted parts. so is there any way to put such markers on a track? i dont need those markers to stay on my result audiofile. if markers stay on result audio, thats not an issue either.
You can make a [u]Label Track[/u] which can be saved as part of an Audacity Project but it won’t be included if you export as a WAV file (or other audio file).
If you do create a project file, I still recommend exporting a WAV file as a back-up.
WAV and FLAC are lossless so they are good for temporary storage or as archive formats if you want MP3 or another lossy format as your final-format. FLAC is a better archive format because the files are smaller and metadata (“tagging”) is not well-supported for WAV. (Audacity projects are also lossless.)
MP3 isn’t necessarily terrible and it can often sound identical to the uncompressed original in a proper blind listening test. But when you open an MP3 (or any compressed format) in Audacity or any regular audio editor it gets decompressed. If you then re-export to MP3 it goes through another generation of lossy compression and some “damage” accumulates. You may not hear the quality loss but it’s something to be aware of and you should avoid unnecessary generations of lossy compression… If you want MP3, Ideally you should compress once as the last step.
FLAC is lossless compression so this is not a problem.
Floating-point WAV can go over 0dB (it essentially has no upper or lower limit) whereas “regular” (integer) WAV files are limited to 0dB and they will clip (distort) if you try to go over. Audacity works “internally” in floating point. But, your finished project shouldn’t go over 0dB because the listener can clip their DAC and there’s no advantage since DACs are integer and the data will be converted when it’s played anyway.
tyvm. by markers i meant something to mark certain portion on a track during editing, suppose i have an 5 min audiofile from which i need to remove unwanted portions and keeps only important portions, so when i’m hearing the audio on audacity, i get first important portion 2min to2min30s , so i put 2 markers on 2min and 2m30s then i continue to listen next portion of audio to find another important portion. like that i found 2 more important portions 3m-4m15s and 4m-4m25s, so i give 4 markers on those too. So that after after completely hearing the audio i could just cut out those portions and add them to make my new audio file without any unwanted parts. so is there any way to put such markers on a track? i dont need those markers to stay on my result audiofile. if markers stay on result audio, thats not an issue either.
Yes. If you press Ctrl-M while playing a label will appear at that point. I believe this is what DVDdoug was saying…
Markers on the waveform has bee a long-standong Feature Request - originally on the olf bug-tracker (Bugzilla) and now on the GitHub issue tracker:
Markers on Waveform #2587
https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/2587
Peter,
Tyvm. so currently there’s no way to put markers on audio track during editing?
Until such time as the Marker Enhancement can be implemented, you can create labels during recording and playback with Ctrl-M, and during editing with Ctrl-B.