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Help! Imported file sounds high-pitched and scrambled.
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 2:55 am
by KatieAW
I imported a WAV file into Audacity that only produces a very high-pitched, scrambled noise (so much so that it hurts my ears) - it doesn't play in any audio player that I've tried. The audio was also compressed from several minutes to 1 second. I cannot figure out how to de-compress the file, or export it in such a way that it will render at its normal sound and length. Is there a setting I'm missing? I'm under a tight deadline and would appreciate any help! Thanks.
Re: Help! Imported file sounds high-pitched and scrambled.
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:22 am
by waxcylinder
Katie,
You have almost certainly imported a filetype that Audacity does not recognize - Audacity works with WAV, MP3 and Ogg (and in 1.3 support for FLAC is added). You will need to either convert your file to one of the supported formats and then import - or play the file in software that supports it while at the same time recording it in Audacity.
WC
Re: Help! Imported file sounds high-pitched and scrambled.
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 2:41 pm
by KatieAW
Thanks for your reply. The file was delivered to me with a .wav file type, but is it possible that it could be in another format? Any idea what format might cause it to compress to less than 1 second when played? If anyone has any ideas, they would be greatly appreciated.
Re: Help! Imported file sounds high-pitched and scrambled.
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:18 pm
by waxcylinder
Can you play this WAV fime in Windows Media Player or RealPlayer? I seem to remeber from previous postings that there can be some "non-standard" WAV file types - and that Audacity may struggle with these too.
If you can play it in WMP or RP - then you may be able to record it into Audacity while playing.
WC
Re: Help! Imported file sounds high-pitched and scrambled.
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:31 pm
by kozikowski
Audacity plays mystery filetypes as if they were uncompressed, so if your ten second file flies by in one second, whatever file type it is features 10 to 1 compression.
Do you have your Windows set to show you file extensions? Windows comes out of the box hiding file extensions that it already knows about. Two important problems with this are your music file which could be music.wav.mp3 instead of music.wav, and cute-kitten.jpg which turns out to really be cute-kitten.jpg.exe, a vicious Windows virus.
I can't tell you how to set Windows to show you file extensions because I'm not in front of my Windows machine.
There may be a Windows tool to tell you about files, but you can download QuickTime For Windows free from the Apple web site and that will tell you the file type and probably play it.
Koz