Placing Windows 10 voice recorder files in audacity drastically lowers audio quality

[ssthrowaway]

Title. Files are all .m4a and have strong sound quality, having been recorded on a Blue Yeti microphone, before placing the raw files in audacity to remove background noise at which point audio quality drops significantly. Is it something to do with the file formatting? Is it automatically compressing the files and if so is there a setting to reduce/remove it? Is this just the fate of all files placed in the programme and if so, how do I recover their quality?

Examples of audio before and after can be given- I’d just rather not share my voice for privacy reasons unless it becomes necessary to fixing this.

Thanks!

[kozikowski]

@ssthrowaway

all .m4a and have strong sound quality

How do you know that?

A Yeti can record in either stereo or mono. Which did you use?

Describe the damage. Muffled? Harsh and Distorted? “Essy?”

You know the Yeti “front” is the side grill just up from the company name, right? Not the rounded top?

Has any of this ever worked?

Koz

[ssthrowaway]

The recordings are all listed as .m4a files- I believe it’s all recorded in stereo. The recordings when moved to Audacity gain qualities similar to a file that’s been ridiculously compressed i.e. the audio is suppressed and harsh on the ears- though I can’t confirm if this is because of compression or due to something else.

I have vague memories of using Audacity previously, so I wouldn’t necessarily jump to saying that it’s worked before- though I have no recollection of this issue.