static after exporting

I am importing mp3s into Audacity 2.0.3, and mixing them in different tracks, it sounds fine until I export as wav, aiff or mp3s, they all have 4 seconds of loud static at the beginning of the six minute file. I have tried mixing and rendering the 7 tracks or not, it doesn’t make a difference. Thanks in advance for your help!
Macbook OS 10.6.8 Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Memory: 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

they all have 4 seconds of loud static at the beginning of the six minute file.

As played on what? Do they have the static when you pull the file back into Audacity?

Koz

as played as a .mp3 or .aiff or .wav in itunes; the file sounds fine when audacity plays it

for example, this .aup file sounds fine in Audacity but has static in itunes after I export it as an mp3
High Hat test.aup (885 Bytes)

An AUP file is not an audio file. We can’t play that.
An AUP file is one part of an Audacity Project. Please read this article so as to avoid problems in the future: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audacity_projects.html

Did you try importing the WAV file back into Audacity and playing that?