Audacity Forum

After many months without any problems, I recently starting working with some downloaded mp3 files.

Sometimes a clip won't play at all.
Sometimes a clip will be silent for the first second or so.
Things that have worked: moving it to another track, or cutting the clip and then repasting it in the same place. Sometimes just replaying the clip will make it work.

To see if the problem only affected realtime playback, I tried doing an mp3 export when I was having a problem, and the problem showed up on the exported file as well.

My project has a 44.1K bit rate; the problem seems to happen with imported clips at 48K.

Running Audacity 1.3.9 for Windows.

I'm going to ask people who send me clips to set their bit rate at 44.1.

Does it look like the bit rate is the problem, and is there an overall solution?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

Gordon

Audacity has no problem with files at 48000. The test files on my web site are at 48000. That's the video sound standard. 44100 is the Music CD standard.

How do you know the downloaded files are MP3? A lot of the newer stuff isn't. Do you have Windows set to stop hiding file extensions (highly recommended if you have problems)?

Hidden File Extensions
-- Start > My Computer > Tools > Folder Options > View > [ ] Hide Extensions for Known File Types (deselect)
-- Apply (to this folder) or Apply to All Folders
-- OK

You should stop using Audacity 1.3.9. The versions before about 1.3.11 or so all had problems.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

That and download and install the FFMpeg libraries (same web site) for immunity from oddball file formats.

Koz

thanks Koz...

I'm seeing extensions, and they are mp3 files. But let me upgrade my Audacity and load those libraries, and see what happens.

Thanks for the tips!