I am new to using Audacity and recorded nine tracks, about 13 minutes each just fine for my audiobook. I thought I’d keep going and put three in one file, then just edit everything. It was going okay, kept condensing, normalizing to get ACX right. Now the sound suddenly went to hell. Everything is loud, screechy, in the red zone – but it didn’t start there. Is there any way to save this?
If you have not closed the file you can Undo until the damage goes away.
In real life, reading a presentation or chapter goes something like this.
Read your chapter in a quiet, echo-free room.
Stop.
File > Export the work, errors and all, as a WAV (Microsoft) protection file.
Edit the work to get rid of word-o’s, stumbles, stutters, tongue ticks, and other errors. No effects.
Tools > Apply Macro > 36Audiobook-Mastering-Macro.
ACX-Check. If it passes and you like the way it sounds, Export WAV (Microsoft) Edit Master and go on to the next chapter.
Koz
Are you doing all this work on your local drive? Audacity doesn’t much like non-internal drives.
You should know that each time you commit an edit, Audacity saves a copy of the Whole Show. That’s how it does Edit > UNDO later. So estimate the length of the active timeline, count up the number of edits and I bet you ran out of space.
Koz