No Sound At All

[alpha1961]

It doesn't matter what I do; there's no sound, even when following the instructions that I have in my hand, six pages of it. "How to make a ringtone." File transfer works fine, but when I select the part of the track to be edited and push play, nothing happens. It's a choice of either "microsoft sound mapper" or the one that's used for every audio piece on my pc: "Vinyl AC '97" which handles both input and output. I've switched to both choices, and nothing. I mean, NOTHING. Except for one thing: When I hit the play button, it simply skips over the track, no matter which sound device I use. That's right: THE SOUND COMPLETELY SKIPS OVER THE TRACK; the only thing I hear is this weird "screech" or "scratch", as though it's simply passing over the track, in half a second. Really, I've read the setup. I've gone through the FAQs, etc. I'm not understanding it, I guess. I give up.

[waxcylinder]

It sounds like you are trying to import a file type that Audacity does not support - that screech is Audacity trying to play a filetype it can't resove (1.2.x doesn't give you sensible error message - IIRC this is fixed in later versions of Audacity 1.3.x, where you get a meaninful warning). Audacity Supports WAV, MP3, OGG and FLAC & MP2 in 1.3.

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

[jan.kolar]

When I hit the play button, it simply skips over the track

(Just to be sure: Audacity plays current time-selection. Make sure to select nothing or everythink, or several seconds at least. To make sure you can play something, try Generate>Tone > (Sine) and play that (long beeeeep). If this fails, problem is not in your files. )