Audacity Forum

Hello everyone.

I've recently downloaded audacity but just couldn't figure out how to perform even the simplest function. It's my first time trying fixing bad sound files, and I'm completely new to audacity, so please excuse me for my dumb question.

I have a several hour-long wma file of conversation, etc. I opened it in audacity, and it took up two rows. So I hit the play botton on the control tool bar. But cursor just ran through the two rows together in 5 seconds, and of course I just heard "gheerrr...." in quick sequence. How do I even get to play the file in its normal speed?

Thanks, please help out the newbie here.

You're incomplete. Complete newbies can't find the forum.

Audacity has no idea what a Windows Media Audio sound file is. Audacity will try to open it up and play it using very plain assumptions. WMA files are anything but plain. They are very highly processed and compressed, so you get that screaching or odd sound as the timeline plays.

This part is hopeless. You need to use another software package to convert your show to something you can manage in Audacity--like Windows WAV format (preferred) or MP3 using Switch or Super.

We also warn people not to try and edit enormous files all at the same time. Your machine can run out of resources very rapidly and Audacity could lose the whole thing. There is another problem, too. Windows Media is pretty efficient at compressing a large show into a small file. WAV isn't. Suddenly your convenient, tiny show is going to take up a very large amount of drive space--more if you try to edit or do special effects.

Koz

Thanks a lot kozi. I finally got to play the file with audacity. What a major advance!