Audacity Forum

Firstly, thank you for making this program- it is so useful and easy to use.

I have just done some home recording (acoustic, no effects at all) with a view to putting the tracks as mp3 on a website.

I exported the tracks as mp3 and burnt them to CD for backup.

Playing the disc on a cd player is fine!

BUT playing them on a computer either from the CD, or straight from the mp3 file saved on the machine, it sounds like its underwater, it wobbles and there is squishy sounds with every note which don't appear on the cd player. It is unpresentable in this state, and I spent so long working on the tracks!

How can I fix or prevent this?

I still have the original AUdacity files so I can export them again if need be.

(By the way, trying to export them as Wave files results in Windows Media Player saying it can't burn the cd.)

Yours slightly frustrated
Blokeman

Using WIndows XP.

First question, what bit rate are you exporting to? At the very least it should be 128, and 192 is quite a bit nicer.

Some of the artifacts from exporting to a low bit rate MP3 are described as "underwater", so that's my first guess.

It's very odd that the tunes sound different when played on a CD than they do when played on your computer. This makes me guess that the program you're using to play those files is doing something odd to the songs.

Second question, do they sound ok when played on Audacity?

If they sound ok in Audacity and you export them to a high quality format, they should sound the same when played back everywhere.

I'm not sure why your wav files won't burn to disc. One thing you need to do is make sure the wav file is at a 44100 Hz sample rate. That's the CD-audio standard. Also, have you made sure you're burning an Audio CD and not a Data CD? I've never used Windows Media Player to burn a disc, so I can't really comment there.

One thing to try, export to wav (16-bit, 44.1 KHz) and play that file on a variety of different program on your computer (including re-importing it to Audacity and playing there). Does that file sound wrong?

alatham wrote:First question, what bit rate are you exporting to? At the very least it should be 128, and 192 is quite a bit nicer.

Some of the artifacts from exporting to a low bit rate MP3 are described as "underwater", so that's my first guess.

It's very odd that the tunes sound different when played on a CD than they do when played on your computer. This makes me guess that the program you're using to play those files is doing something odd to the songs.

Second question, do they sound ok when played on Audacity?

If they sound ok in Audacity and you export them to a high quality format, they should sound the same when played back everywhere.

I'm not sure why your wav files won't burn to disc. One thing you need to do is make sure the wav file is at a 44100 Hz sample rate. That's the CD-audio standard. Also, have you made sure you're burning an Audio CD and not a Data CD? I've never used Windows Media Player to burn a disc, so I can't really comment there.

One thing to try, export to wav (16-bit, 44.1 KHz) and play that file on a variety of different program on your computer (including re-importing it to Audacity and playing there). Does that file sound wrong?

Thank you Alatham, this all sounds like great advice, when I get a chance I will try out these suggestions and let you know how it turns out.

The files are fine in Audacity. I strongly suspect it is either the windows media player/winamp which is actively screwing it up (it told me when I tried to burn the Wav versions that I didn't have enough copyright privileges to burn the tracks to CD!! Despite it being my own original recording made minutes prior-and despite having burnt a zillion bootleg copies of ACTUAL copyrighted material without a hitch! Talk about barking up the wrong tree! or perhaps it is the export quality. I shall fiddle with these things and report what cures it.

Thanks again for the help.
B.M.

For the record, it was the export quality. 224 or whatever it was fixed it, and the maximum (I forget, 350 or something) sounds really good, so thanks again alatham for helping out with this little issue!

Regards
Bloke Man