Audacity Forum

I know I've seen the answer to this before, but have just ploughed for ages thro doc'n & forums, so....

I record a song fine, normal good-sounding playback within Audacity, and I export it as an MP3 file, apparently normally.

BUT when I play it back through Windows Media Player (God bless its little cotton socks) it is clearly playing much too fast (probably twice what it should be, both in speed and pitch.)

WMP says it is playing it at 406kb/sec....

This happens consistently, 100% repeatedly, & with different recordings. I've tried hopefully altering bit rate under Edit Prefs "Quality" down to 16 bit, but no change to symptoms. Is there something else I should tweak?

?????
Au secours...

Cheers, Dave T, up near Inverness, Scotland

Can you Export As WAV and drop that into Windows Media?

Tell me again where you got the music from? Is this you playing a ukulele in front of a microphone?

Koz

Thanks Kozikowski,

Yes, I can export to WAV, and that plays fine thro WMP - normal speed/pitch, just as it sounds within Audacity (and as on my original cassette tape I read into Audacity). But of course I lose the real benefit of going for mp3, which is size reduction to about a tenth... I'm trying to wean myself off Cool Pro Edit, , which does MP3 export fine, and move completely to to Audacity if I can.

As it happens I could have played a ukelele into a mike, having played almost everything at one time or another in my career as a "serial-instrument-failure"; but just like accordion players who are gentlemen, I don't. I've finally settled on the English Concertina - my musical love..

But in this case I'm trying to capture somewhat aged (unique and precious to me) original recordings from cassette tape and put them on CD before the original tapes begin to fail.

cheers, Dave T, Findhorn, near Inverness, Scotland

WMP is not highly regarded by several posters on this forum.

Why not try using iTunes (it runs fine on PCs and is downloadable for free - and IMHO is a good jukebox system). You can then export your WAVs and import/convert those into iTunes as AAC (or even MP3 if you prefer). With AAC you will still get your c. 1/10 compression - but size-for-size and bitrate-for-bitrate AAC is generally reckoned to offer better audio quality (but it is obviously not as portable to different platforms as MP3).

WC

Thank you WC for your suggestions; I'm no fan of WMP either, but I'm not sure that WMP is at fault here. I've created loads of MP3s previously (from various sources, Cool Edit and elsewhere) and played them back through WMP and other players, with never this problem.

[I do want to stick to MP3 (purely for the widely recognised standard reason you refer to) unless I have a real good reason to move away from it.... Having been in the computing business for an embarassingly long time (44 years!!) I know that you have to take considered leaps from one standard to an emerging one (sometimes without a lot of good info!), but equally that you can waste a lot of time and money "jumping about" to possibly better alternatives before the trends are really clear. I fought IBM for about 22 of those 44 years, pretty much on this one issue, and kind of won mostly!!!]

So, to me it comes back to the original question "Why (apparently) doesn't Audacity export to MP3 correctly, and can I do anything about it?" Can anyone else duplicate the problem, or am I doing something really dumb?

Still looking for inspiration please..

cheers, Dave T

daveaudacity wrote:I'm trying to wean myself off Cool Pro Edit,

Don't do that, CEP is a wonderful program. I use Audacity for most of my editing because it's so quick and easy, but for a few jobs CEP is the better tool (for example Noise reduction, time stretch and volume envelopes). It's just a shame the Syntrillium boys didn't make it open source rather than retiring to a life of luxury by selling it to Adobe.

daveaudacity wrote:Having been in the computing business for an embarassingly long time

Ah good, you won't mind doing a bit of detective work then

If you've not already got it, grab a copy of SUPER by erightsoft (it's free).
When you have been through their link jungle you will probably be ready for a cup of tea, but it's worth the effort for this extremely useful tool.

Now make an MP3 with Cool Edit Pro, and attempt to make an identical MP3 with Audacity.

Open SUPER and drag both files onto the SUPER interface (don't worry if SUPER says that your computer is not powerful enough, we're not doing any real-time video encoding).

The two files will now be listed in the file list of SUPER.
Double click on one and it will open an information window (with links for "Basic / Advanced" information).
Repeat for the other file.

What's the difference?

<<<Findhorn>>> would that be the village, the Foundation or the Air Force Base?

Cheers, Stevethefiddle,

will get hold of SUPER and let you know...

[and yes, the village, Foundation and airbase; live about a mile and a half from each, with some involvement with the Foundation...; you're not stevethe fiddler from Elgin are you??]

Will report back soon

Dave T

OK here we go - results of, I hope, a pretty rigorous test... A bit long winded, but necessary...
Two files, each created by reading the same original WAV file
1) into Audacity and Exporting as MP3
2) into Cool Edit Pro and Exporting as MP3

Original file sounds right (same in Windows Media Player and in Real Player)
File plays right within both Audacity and Cool Pro - sounds just like original WAV.

BUT, When resulting exported MP3s are played back (same in Windows Media Player and in Real Player),
1) Audacity export MP3 plays double speed, with pitch an octave high
2) Cool Pro export MP3 sounds just right, same as original.


This is the file information as given by SUPER v2009.build.36

-------------------------------------------------------
1) MP3 FILE AS EXPORTED FROM AUDACITY 1.2.6
Complete name : E:SongOther SongColin_Dryden1AUD.mp3
Format : MPEG Audio
File size : 6.08 MiB *** approx 2/3 size
Duration : 5mn 40s *** exactly 1/2 length
Overall bit rate : 150 Kbps *** 18% higher
Writing library : LAME3.98 *** (no equiv)

Audio Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Duration : 5mn 40s *** exactly 1/2 length
Bit rate mode : Variable *** not Constant
Bit rate : 150 Kbps *** 18% higher
Channel(s) : 2 channels *** not 1 channel
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 6.08 MiB (100%)*** approx 2/3 size
Writing library : LAME3.98 *** (no equiv)

-------------------------------------------------------
2) MP3 FILE AS EXPORTED FROM COOL EDIT PRO 2.00
Complete name : E:SongOther SongColin_Dryden1CPE.mp3
Format : MPEG Audio
File size : 10.4 MiB
Duration : 11mn 20s
Overall bit rate : 128 Kbps

Audio Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Duration : 11mn 20s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 10.4 MiB (100%)

Any ideas? A bug in Audacity 1.2.6? My set-up somewhere (like a duff LAME encoder downloaded or....)?
Can anyone with both Cool Edit and Audacity reproduce this? With same weird or with normal result??

Over to you all. Hoping not to have to retreat back into Cool Edit Pro, which, while brilliant function and interface at the time, now seems a bit heavy somehow for easy operations.....

Cheers, Dave T

I've got some good news and some bad news for you - which do you want first?

So, what's the problem...
WMP is probably contributing to the issue (and Real Player), but for once it is not their fault.
(Some players, including WMP have problems with VBR MP3s, which is a shame because VBR generally gives better sound quality for a given file size than CBR, but in this case, VBR is not the only issue)

Audacity 1.2 was written at some time between the Middle and the Dark Ages, back in the days when LAME was but youth. Since then Lame has grown up and improved in both quality and efficiency to the point where Lame encoded MP3s can hold their own against the best compressed audio formats in the modern world. However, Audacity 1.2 came to the end of the line at the age of 126 (1.2.6 in case I'm loosing you with my rambling metaphor).

You are using a modern version of Lame (3.98) with an almost obsolete version of Audacity, and there are "issues". Audacity is not sending the correct parameters to Lame (or looking at it the other way, Lame is not reading the correct parameters from Audacity. It's the age old problem of the young thinking that old people are foolish and the old knowing that young people are foolish, and misunderstanding ensuing.

Old versions of Lame (that will work correctly with Audacity 1.2.6) are likely to be difficult to get hold of, and I doubt that it is worth the trouble as the sound quality will be inferior to using the modern version. The solution is to upgrade Audacity to a more recent version - I would recommend 1.3.8, but it is not yet on general release (you would have to build it from the source code), so until it is released I will recommend 1.3.7 (the current release version).

Note that there are many different "builds" of Lame 3.9.8 in circulation, and many of them have been built against out-of-date libraries that are not compatible with Audacity 1.3.7, so it is important that you use the "official" Lame dll.

If you did not obtain Lame from the links on the Audacity website, you will need to download the official version from here: http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/

All of the regular forum people now use Audacity 1.3 which probably explains why we have not previously spotted this issue.

As a matter of interest, CEP uses the Fraunhofer encoder - it's a bit on the slow side, but represents the "Gold Standard" of MP3 encoding. (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft are also responsible for many of the licensing issues that exist around MP3 encoding, and why Lame can not be included in Audacity as standard). The Lame encoder has now achieved quality/compression ratio that are as good or better than the Fraunhofer encoder, and it is a bit faster.

daveaudacity wrote:Hoping not to have to retreat back into Cool Edit Pro, which, while brilliant function and interface at the time, now seems a bit heavy somehow for easy operations.....

And that is why I do most of my editing in Audacity - Audacity is so much quicker, I can open it, do the edit, Export and shutdown again faster than opening the file in CEP (and Adobe Audition takes twice as long to open as CEP).

daveaudacity wrote:you're not stevethe fiddler from Elgin are you??

No, but I have been there many moons ago. Its just down the road from you (East a bit?) isn't it? Also popped into Findhorn briefly and was given a quick tour of the Foundation - very interesting to actually see the place having read about it as a child. I was on my way back from a couple of weeks in the mountains near the Orin Reservoir http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Elgin&o ... 84629&z=14 (you may need to zoom out )

Update: If you are looking for a quick fix, you could try the 3.92 version of Lame with Audacity 1.2.6 from http://www.free-codecs.com/Lame_Encoder_download.htm

This version appears to work correctly with Audacity 1.2.6. However I would still recommend updating to Audacity 1.3.7, it really is a lot better.

This version of Lame will probably not work with Audacity 1.3.7, (or 1.3.8 or Audacity 2.0 when they are released).