Total Newbie - Please help

[kleskie]

Hi,
I'm not sure if Audacity is too advanced for me...please refer me to something else if it is.

Here is my question, I've imported an MP3 song and when I hit the play button it sounds like a one second screech! This is obviously normal because I've checked other MP3 songs and it does the same. What am I doing wrong?

My goal is to create a 3 minute mix of songs (Thriller, Billy Jean, YMCA etc.) for my wedding. Can someone let me know if this is a really hard system to use for someone who has never done this before. Please help me.

Other questions:
-How can you hear the song back in it's original form (i.e. Speed and sound are normal).
-How can you cut and paste portions of sounds to blend?
-How do you save in a format that will play on an iPod or similar player.

Thank you!

[waxcylinder]

You are almost certainly trying to import a file type that Audacity does not support. Audacity Supports WAV, MP3, OGG and FLAC & MP2 in 1.3.

The screech is Audacity 1.2's inelegant way of telling you that it can't handle the file type you've given it - in 1.3.x a more appropriate and informative error message appears.

If this is the case you have two basic options:

1. find and use some converter software to convert your file to a type that Audacity supports

2. play the file in any music software that supports that particular file format and record it in Audacity.

There's a free program called SUPER by erightsoft that can convert most media file types. If you can convert the files to WAV files that should fix the problem.

WC

[waxcylinder]

For the answer to your third question, please see: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... s_and_iPod

WC

[kleskie]

Thank you! I really appreciate the advice and I will make sure the file is compatable.

All other comments are welcome re:complexity of Audacity and if it is newbie user friendly.

[waxcylinder]

All other comments are welcome re:complexity of Audacity and if it is newbie user friendly.

Well we all started off as Newbies at one stage or another.

As you know Audacity is driven by a GUI (Graphical User Interface) - this is ientended to make life easier (but it doesn't always happen that way - sometimes folk can't easily find functions. But all in all I think it is a pretty straightforward and reasonably intuitive interface.

There is some fairly complex functionalty in there - but the basics like recording, simple editing and exporting usable music files are quite easy to master.

To make your life easier I would recommend a couple of things.

1) Don't bother with 1.2.6 - it is so old now and has some known bugs which will never be fixd. Instead start out with 1.3.9 - don't worry about the "Beta", "unstable" and "For experienced users only" - 1.3.x is pretty mature now and is approaching Release Candidate status. So you may as well start out learning the new interface rather than the old (Not a lot of changes ut enough to trip you up occasionally if you are used to 1.2.x). You can get 1.3.9 from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows

2) Unless you are going to do a lot of complex editing - do yourself a favour and reset your Audacity Preferences to Project Rate of 44.1 kHz (44100 Hz) and bit rate 16-bit and set Channels to 2 Stereo . Note that these are not the Audacity defaults when you install Audacity - but they are (part of) the Red Book standard for CDS and will thus help you to produce projects and music files which arte more universally usable without difficulty. Note too, that if you change from the Audacity default bitrate of 32-bit to 16-bit your projects will take up roghly half the room (and Audacity projects can get big).

3) Spend some time readg the tutorial and tips in the Audacity Wiki: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Tutorials and http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Tips

4) You may want to look at the manual too at a later stage - but start with the tutorials/tips and not the manual. The manual is unbder development for the next release - but will cover 1.3.9 if you do decide to download that: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... nual:About

Have fun,
WC

[waxcylinder]

-How can you cut and paste portions of sounds to blend?

Quck answer to your question 2:

Editing 101 - basically you will want to:

1) Import each song onto its own separate track - use Tracks >Add New > Stereo Track to get a new track.

2) Edit each track down to the time portion you require.

3) Use the Time Shift tool, icon is the little square button with a little horizontal arrow with an arrowhead at each end) to slide tracks 2 and 3 along the timeline so that they have an overlap with the previous song.

4) Select the overlap portion at the end of track 1 - and use Effect >Fade Out - then select the overlap portion at the beginning of Track 2 and use Effect>Fade In

5) Now the really important bit - TEST the fades to make sure you are happy with the result - if not go back and adjust till happy.

6) Repeat for the track-2/track-3 overlap.

7) You may want to do a fade in at the beginning of track 1 and a fade out at the end of track 3 (make the fade-in short and the fade-out longer is generally a good rule-of-thumb - but not for your overlap fades above, make them roughly equal in length).

8) TEST the complete result by playing it -use good quality headphones if you can.

9) When you are happy with the result - Export the project as a WAV file first (and back it up) - this will give you a safety copy.

10) You could also export as MP3 for importing into iTunes - but since your total project length is only c. 3 minutes I personally would use the WAV file in iTunes/iPod/whatever -as this will give you the highest quality audio (MP3 and iTunes AAC are both compressed lossy formats and there always damage the audio somewhat.

TIP: I suspect that you may have the CDs with the songs you need on - in which case you would be better of starting out by ripping WAV files of the songs to import into Audacity - rather than the already "aurally damaged" AAC files that you have now. You can do this with iTunes - if you need help, just ask.

As you are not recording a performance in real time you can always go back to earlier stages in the project if necessary - just give yourself some time to practice and don't rush the job.

Have fun - and finally: enjoy your wedding!

WC

[kleskie]

I spent a few hours pulling my hair out last night...I will try these tips tonight.

Thank you very much for your advise, I will post a reply tomorrow with any updates.

[waxcylinder]

A further suggestion for you - rather than use the simple Fade effect which is linear - try using the Crossfade In and Out. According to the manual, the Crossfade shapes the fade to try to maintain a constant volume as the tracks fade in/out - so you may get better results with the crossfade.

WC

[steve]

the Crossfade shapes the fade to try to maintain a constant volume as the tracks fade in/out - so you may get better results with the crossfade.

Emphasis on the word "you may get better results..."
Depending on the type of sound, sometimes linear fades work better and sometimes the "cross-fade" type fade works better.