I have suddenly lost the ability to export files in .WAV format.
Without warning, I was unable to import a .WAV file this morning - of a 3-minute song. A message appeared suggesting I download FFmpeg, which I did.
I am now able to import .WAV files, but it appears to have defaulted upon opening in Audacity to .MP3, and the .WAV export option is now missing. I’m keen to get the .WAV export functionality back, and have no idea what has happened. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
I don’t know what’s going on…
You don’t need FFmpeg for WAV (1) or MP3.
You can check the actual format with MediaInfoOnline.
When you open an MP3, or any other compressed file, in Audacity it gets decompressed to PCM (similar to the WAV format) so once it’s open Audacity doesn’t know what format it was.
(1) It’s possible to have another format in a “WAV container” but that’s VERY unusual. Of course it’s also possible to have a file in another format mis-named as WAV or MP3.
Thanks for your reply - I’m grateful, but feel no further forward. To repeat (or at least paraphrase), I can import .WAV files - but there is no longer any option provided to export .WAV files (unlike .FLAC, .MP3 etc). The option has simply (and suddenly) vanished, and I don’t know why. I’ve tried to attach a screenshot of the full list of formats I can
currently export.
This issue is now resolved on my Windows 10 PC. I spent further time on trying to resolve my issue (an inability to be able to import .WAV files, and .WAV having vanished from my Audacity file export formats), and managed to sort it via the steps below. Hopefully my measures may be of use to others.
(In passing, installation of FFmpeg proved to be a red herring with regards this issue, and can be ignored - it appeared to have no bearing on the solution.)
To resolve the issue, I decided to uninstall Audacity and then reinstall the programme - in the hope that this might help. However, this didn’t fix the issue (the .WAV ‘export’ issue remained). I therefore uninstalled Audacity again, and did some further checking. As a result of these checks, I realised that there were further Audacity files still hidden away, despite the uninstall. I accessed these additional files via:
C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\Audacity
I manually cleared all the remaining additional Audacity files from this location, and then did (yet another) Audacity reinstall. This has resolved the issue - .WAV functionality has returned. I’m not sure why the glitch / issue appeared in the first place - it appeared very suddenly. Hope my suggested steps to resolve it may be of use.
Thanks for posting back with the solution.
Koz
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