Very bad bug: Noise is introduced when converting aif to wav

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

I happened upon a very bad yet hard to notice bug
When converting .aif to .wav, a small amount of white noise (hiss) is introduced to the resulting .wav file. It’s a really bad bug because it took me a long time to figure out audacity’s fault. My first instinct was to assume the source file was already noisy and it was my mic’s fault, but this was not the case.

Steps to reproduce
Load a .aif file in audacity
play it back and see that it has no noise
save as: .wav
play back the wav and see that it has a small but noticeable amount of noise

Please be aware, thanks

2

If all you’re doing is converting a 16 bit AIFF to a 16 bit WAV, you should be able to turn off dither.
Edit > Preferences > Quality > High Quality Conversion.
If you add effects or apply filters, you’re dead. You have to leave it in there.

There is a bug in earlier versions of Audacity that the hiss level would be too loud. That’s gone in 2.0.5.

Koz