I have never used audacity before and just downloaded today. I am trying to combine two mp3s to one so they overlap/merge. The audios are both 8 hours long but audacity is playing them way too fast.
First off in the audio position audacity thinks the hours are minutes (eg - 8hh is coming up as 8mm)
Secondly audacity plays the whole thing in seconds not hours (not even in minutes). I’ve tried slowing the tempo but that does nothing.
I’d guess they are not actually MP3s. Unless something is “wrong” with the MP3, Audacity should be able to open and decompress it.
If a compressed file doesn’t get decompressed, of course if will be shorter (play faster) and it will usually sound like noise. Compression is a lot like encryption so the raw-compressed data sounds like noise/garbage.
Check the files with [u]MediaInfoOnline[/u] (or there is a MediaInfo application that you can download to your computer).
You’ll get a lot of information but if it’s an MP3 you should see “MPEG Audio” as the Format and lower down you should see “Layer 3” as the Format Profile. (You should also see the correct playing time, even if it’s a different format.)
If it’s NOT an MP3, try installing the optional [u]FFmpeg import/export library[/u]. With FFmpeg you can import/export most audio formats and extract the audio from most audio/video formats.
Also, I can’t exactly prove this, but it’s possible to have speed issues if you try to combine two WAV files at different sampling rates. For example if one was recorded at video rate of 48000 and the other at CD rate of 44100, Audacity won’t always be able to figure out what to do.
