Audacity Forum

Weird problem: Any WAV and MP3 tracks I import into Audacity are now severely clipped, and the tracks play back at very high speed and at a very high pitch. Sounds like a squeaking mouse! But these same tracks have no trouble playing back in other media programs - Windows Media, iTunes, etc., or in other editors like Kristal.

Any help you can offer would be appreciated. Here's as much as I remember happening:

I was using v1.3.7. Month-old computer, has Vista 64-bit, with 6MB RAM.

Everything was working fine.

My workflow is usually: 1. import WAV to Audacity from digital recorder, 2. make minor edits as needed (e.g., trimming unwanted space, normalize volume), 3. export WAV to hard drive, 4. process in Kristal with VSTs, 5. export WAV (with new name) from Kristal to hard drive, 6. convert WAV to MP3 using a conversion utility.

Again, this had been working just fine, and I could open and play back the same (processed) files in Audacity with no problem.

Until this weekend. I was importing a WAV from my recorder (drag and drop into the Audacity window), and Audacity crashed. That's unusual; I have been using it for a long time on an old XP machine and rarely had any trouble.

Upon restarting Audacity, I loaded the WAV with no problem, but it was extremely clipped and had the squeaky mouse playback. I thought the file had become corrupted in the crash, but then I played it back in the recorder and it was fine. I saved the file directly to the computer and loaded it into Kristal - it looked and played just fine. Reloaded it into Audacity - same problem; clipped and squeaky. Rebooted the computer, no luck. Reinstalled Audacity (over the existing installation,) no luck. Uninstalled Audacity and reinstalled it again; no luck. Ugh!

Uninstalled Audacity again, and installed the stable v1.2.6. Problem solved!

Temporarily.

Same problem started again last night; no crash this time though. Same workflow; files had been just fine in Audacity and are still fine in other programs; it's just that Audacity seems to be importing them incorrectly. I haven't tried reinstalling yet, but given the above I'm not too optimistic.

Any ideas?

<<<Audacity seems to be importing them incorrectly. >>>

Yes, but. Audacity is trying to manage sound files that are foreign --it has no idea how to play them correctly, so it gives it its best shot.

Audacity 1.3 warns you right up front that this is going to be a crap shoot and for you to convert the files to a more manageable format before importing.

Use Super or Switch or the conversion program of your choice to convert the work to WAV 44100, 16-bit, Stereo.

Koz

Thanks for the quick reply!

Not sure what you mean about foreign files; the WAV files out of the recorder are standard 44100, 16-bit stereo.

And Switch is what I'm using to make the MP3 versions.

Are you saying I should convert the MP3s back to WAV before importing into Audacity? What about the ones that are already WAV?

I followed the suggestion and converted a few of the MP3s that won't load properly to WAVs using Switch ... and they load just fine now.

So I guess somehow my files got corrupted ... not sure how though.

I'll have to try this with the beta version as well.

Thanks for the tip!