Audacity Forum

Can you import an MP3 file into Audacity? I would like to add background music to my vocal recordings and was wondering if there was an import option??

Thanks

Georgia

Sure, but a lot internet audio isn't MP3. Where were you going to get the track from?

Koz

I am also interested in his topic.
I have overseas muso friends and we would like to exchange our musical contributions for a song.
I have made an initial Audacity recording (files ~ 108Mb).
I have exported the recording as an MP3 files (for purposes of emailing ~5Mb).
I am hoping that my friends can record while playing alongside my track and return the recording (probably as an MP3 file for sending purposes).
I was wondering if the returned MP3 file could be incorporate back into my initial Audacity track.
I am new to this and welcome any positive suggestions.

Yes you can do that, but I would recommend using the latest 1.3 version rather than 1.2.6

In Audacity 1.3, Import is in the File menu.

Thanks Stevethefiddle. However I think I will wait for the pundits to release 1.3 in its stable version.

One thing i found out since my last posting is that you can just OPEN an MP3 file and it will appear as a track. I am not expecting to edit it etc. But at least I can play it and hope to create new tracks against it. Haven't tried it yet but we'll see.

<<<I have exported the recording as an MP3 files (for purposes of emailing ~5Mb). >>>

Which should drive the musicians at the far end nuts. MP3 is a final delivery format, not a production and editing format. Every time you compress and decompress the music, it's going to get more and more ratty, bubbly and gargly. You should do all your production in very high quality (and large) WAV files.

I was recently introduced to DropBox. You can post files for others to pick up and it's free up to 2GB of files.

http://www.getdropbox.com/

That's how I'm planning on sharing family files with my sister four time zones away. One hour of Stereo uncompressed WAV is about 700MB of data. Of course, you still have to upload the data and that could take all night on the average DSL.

Koz

If you are both using Audacity, you could use FLAC format for exchanging files. Flac files are bigger than MP3s but are about half the size of WAV files.
Another alternative is to use OGG files. You get about the same compression amounts with ogg as you do with MP3. At high quality settings the sound quality is excellent (though still not quite as good as WAV of Flac).

A big and important advantage of ogg over mp3 is that the MP3 format adds a little bit of silence to the beginning of the file. This can play havoc with synchronisation in an Audacity project.

Audacity 1.3 is now in a very late beta stage and on many computers is a lot more stable than the (now ancient) 1.2.6 version. It also has greatly improved functionality, especially for multi-track projects. I am using Audacity 1.3.10 (alpha) and have been unable to break it even though I have been trying to do so.

If you want to step back from the edge, for Windows XP Audacity 1.3.4 has been around a long time and is tried, tested and stable, but I would definitely recommend going with the latest beta version and upgrading to 1.3.10 beta when it is released. Current beta versions include the facility to "Save Compressed Copy of the Project", which is ideal for collaborative work by e-mail (the tracks are compressed using Ogg and the "quality" (compression) setting is taken from the last setting used for the normal Ogg Export - the default quality setting is 5 which is roughly equivalent to 160kbps VBR for an MP3).

Thanks guys for your informed responses. As I said before I am new to this and its good to get your experienced comments.
So it seems MP3 is not a good choice for an initial cut. I will give those other formats a go and my friends and I will decide on which suits.
And thanks, Kozikowski, for the Dropbox suggestion. I was unaware of that.
And Stevethefiddle, you have put a good case for going with a Beta version. And since I am just getting to grips with Audacity, I might as well start with the more up-to-date version.
So my thinking is (keeping it simple):
1. I record a track say of rhythm guitar and ship it out in one of those recommended formats.
2. the person at the other side of the world would load that track into Audacity and record, say, lead guitar as a separate track. They would then export their lead guitar track in the same format and return that.
3. I would then compile the finished product (synchronise timing etc).
Is that do-able with the formats that you suggested. See any problems?

Sound doable to me

There's also many other sites for sharing big files. I quite like http://www.sendspace.com/