(I’m using Audacity 2.03; I think I installed from the dmg, but am not sure.) I have a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard.
I transferred reel to reel audio tapes to Garageband on the Mac, and saved as .AIFF files.
Then I used Audacity to convert AIFF to .WAV. (I’m new to both programs, Garageband and Audacity and audio editing, too. What little I know, I’ve learned from YouTube and other internet videos & Audacity tutorials.)
Now I’m trying some editing of the .WAV files.
I opened the WAV file in Audacity. When I do anything to the waveform, I can’t undo it, either by edit–undo; or by control Z.
I must be missing something basic here.
First we should know that the difference between AIFF and WAV is bookkeeping and environment. They have the same quality of audio, so you could have saved yourself a step right there. Audacity doesn’t use either one inside itself.
If you intend to go outside the warm/fuzzy Mac environment, you’ll want WAV, but otherwise, you’re good to go.
I like to split the show work from the problem. Start a clean Audacity. Generate > Noise. Almost any values. Now do something radical like select half of it and Edit > Delete. If you go back to Edit, does it offer to Undo Delete?
Yes it did let me undo.
Undo seems to be working now. I thought it was because I hadn’t pressed ‘stop’ first, but if so, why did it let me edit? So, I’m not sure what I was doing wrong.
Can I ask another basic question? If I duplicate a section of the waveform, it makes a second track right below the first.
I see where I can mute one and play the other, but how do I edit them independently? I want to select the whole lower track.
If I ‘select all’, both tracks are highlighted and I don’t want that.
I know I can use the cursor and drag all the way to the end, but isn’t there a faster way to do it?
Again, thanks
PS By way of explanation: I want to put these files all on one DVD, and I can only burn CDs. My daughter has a DVD recorder, but only for a Windows PC. That’s why I converted the AIFF to WAV. If I had known about Audacity when I converted the reel to reel, yes I could’ve used it and saved myself a lot of time!
