Saving a file to MP3 - why is my sound so different?

I have created a meditation with music and have edited it etc. I exported the audio to create a MP3 file and now the audio sounds a lot louder and muffled, and is vibrating. I am using the same headphones and computer.

Could you please advise why this is happening and how to fix this.

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I have created a meditation with music and have edited it etc.

if you made it louder, as the last step before exporting, run the Amplify or Normalize effect and accept the defaults. That will bring the volume down to a “safe” level. Audacity doesn’t have any limits internally but exported files should not exceed 0dB.

If you are mixing voice & music, the sounds are literally summed together when you mix, so that can make it “too loud” and cause clipping (distortion).

Normalizing (with the Normalize or Amplify effect) as the last step before exporting is generally a good idea no matter what you are doing…

Probably not the issue… but MP3 is lossy compression. Data is thrown away to make the file smaller. Using a high-quality setting (a high bitrate) will give you very good results.