Audacity Forum

I haven't used my Audacity 1.3 (beta) for well over a year and decided to go back to burning old cassettes to CDs via Audacity. I get cassette sound through my computer, but the wave form I used is missing from the tracks when recording. I just get a little line below the center line on both channels. I used the wave form for editing. What has happened? How do I get it back?

Audacity does not "Save" audio files, it saves "Audacity Projects".
You can make an audio file by "Exporting" from Audacity.

An Audacity Project is made of 2 parts - there is the Audacity Project File (filename.aup) and then there is the data that is used in the project.
The AUP file does not contain any of the sounds !

The AUP file contains "pointers" to the audio data that is used in the project. This data will often (but not always) be located in the project data folder (filename_data). To allow people to efficiently work on very large projects, Audacity is also able to refer to uncompressed audio files that are outside of the data folder.

If any of the data is missing, or no longer in the location specified in the AUP file, then the sound will be missing from the project.

Audacity projects are for working on Audacity Projects, then are not designed for long term storage or for portability. You should always backup important work by Exporting the tracks as WAV files.

See here for more information: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... ement_Tips

My problems has nothing to do with "saving" a file or project. When I open Audacity and start redording music, I didn't have a usable wave form in the track panel. Looking through the Audacity home page, I realized that the 1.3.7 version I had been using was for Windows98 while I've been using XP, so I deleted the 1.3.7 version and downloaded the 1.3.9 for XP now I have a wave form, but it is either too small to be useful, or, after clicking on something in the track panel, it is very large and still not usable. What happened to the wave form that allowed me to identify clicks etc.? Also, when I play back a recording it is very soft. A hint might be that the redording level idicator does not go as far up as I was accustomed to. When I started using Audacity 3-4 years ago to convert my LPs to CDs, I found that the manual assums you are conversant with autio engineering. I sure wish there was a "Audacity for Dummies" book available.

royceballew wrote:I just get a little line below the center line on both channels.

That is not good. The little line should be exactly on the center line. What you're seeing is called "DC offset" and generally indicates a fault with your sound card. However, let's assume your sound card is not broken, and see if we can get you recording again.

royceballew wrote:My problems has nothing to do with "saving" a file or project. ... downloaded the 1.3.9 for XP now I have a wave form, but it is either too small to be useful, or, after clicking on something in the track panel, it is very large and still not usable. What happened to the wave form that allowed me to identify clicks etc.? Also, when I play back a recording it is very soft. A hint might be that the redording level idicator does not go as far up as I was accustomed to.

Something has changed on your computer. Have a look in your sound control panel - make sure you can get reasonable sound levels into your computer just using the system sound control panel. Once you are sure of that you can start troubleshooting in Audacity.

In Audacity, make sure you can see the "Mixer Toolbar" - this is the one with the recording and playback volume controls. If not, click on "View > Toolbars > Mixer Toolbar" to get it back. With sound going into your computer, right-click on the recording meter in the Meter Toolbar (indicator) and select "Start Monitoring" - the meters should register as if you were recording. Now adjust the recording volume control.

The "something" that you clicked on in the track panel was the vertical magnification:

http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... al_zooming

-- Bill