Audacity Forum

Using the software for first time. Everything seems to work normally per manual until I want to export the first track only of an album recorded. I highlight the track and use export selection as WAV. It makes the file, which plays fine in Windows Media Center 11. Once it comes time to try and burn it I first get an error message that WMC cannot determine length of file but may be able to proceed if I play it. After playing, the time shows up in blue in the burn list. I hit burn and then get another error in main WMC page next to the file indicating that WMC cannot read the file, which is not true since it will play it as soon as I hit play.

I first tried Roxio CD creator version 6 with the same result but with meaningless numbered error messages.

I'm a total newbie at all of this and just trying to move some old LP's to CD's. They sound great when played on the computer but now I need to get them onto CD's. At this point I am just experimenting with various levels of noise removal so do not want to burn the whole album, rather four or five different flavors of the first track to decide what is the minumum amount of noise removal I can live with. Hope somebody can help me.

Cliff

cliff42 wrote:I highlight the track and use save selection as WAV.

You mean that you Export the selection as WAV.
Audacity "Saves" projects and "Exports" audio files - this is a common cause of confusion, so using the correct terminology helps to keep it clear.

cliff42 wrote:but once it comes time to try and burn it I first get an error message that WMC ....

WMC is rubbish for making CD's and a lot of people have problems with it, There are many excellent CD burning applications that are available at little or no cost (Nero Essentials is good and cheap) that will do the job much better.

When making audio CD's you should Export your audio as "16 bit 44100Hz Microsoft PCM WAV - stereo" format. This is the standard format for audio CD's.

I forgot to mention that before trying WMC, I also tried Roxio CD creator version 6 with the same result but with meaningless numbered error messages. In Audacity I did use export selection as WAV (I'm an old coot and did the post from memory without rechecking the exact terminology) rather than save as. I will edit my original post to include these facts.

Cliff

Hello All. On a related topic i wonde if you can help? I have created WAV files from some old vinyl successfully using Audacity. I have then been able to burn these same files to CD and the CD plays fine in a computer drive. But no joy on any audio equipment. I have used CD Rs and the file formats suggested and Windows for buring the CD. Any help would be much appreciated

@ Farsideout, it is most likely that you have made a data CD and not an audio CD.

to both of you - do you have Administrative privileges on your computers? By default normal accounts do not have the necessary rights to burn CD's on Windows. (Nero provide a utility to extend burn rights to all users).

Regarding admin priveleges: I am using Win XP home and the only user. Is there something I need to do special? What is the minimum version number of Nero that should solve my problems?

Any version of Nero should work.

Are you absolutely positive that your WAV files are "16 bit 44100Hz Microsoft PCM WAV - stereo"

Farsideout wrote:Hello All. On a related topic i wonde if you can help? I have created WAV files from some old vinyl successfully using Audacity. I have then been able to burn these same files to CD and the CD plays fine in a computer drive. But no joy on any audio equipment. I have used CD Rs and the file formats suggested and Windows for buring the CD. Any help would be much appreciated

Thanks for reminding me of the 'bleedin' obvious!! Will try harder next time and thanks for your help.

I now feel like a complete idiot. For my recording I sampled at 32 bit floating per online Audacity manual and never looked back. Until a few minutes ago I did not find the place (files menu under preferences) to set the output to 16bit WAV. Once I did that the burn was successful with Roxio Easy Creator 6. If the error messages in either Roxio or WMC had indicated an incompatible WAV format rather than the stupid numbers I might have figured it out myself. Thanks stevethefiddle for being persistent enough to steer me in the right direction. I am now on my way to burning CD's from who knows how many LP's. It's amazing how well the software can clean up the raw recording!

Finally, should I be sampling also at 16 bit or is there an advantage for using the 32 bit floating?

Cliff

There is a marginal improvement in quality when using 32 bit. This can be significant if you are doing a lot of processing and want the best possible quality, however the cost is that all files are twice as big, and you have to remember to convert to 16 bit to be sure of compatibility with other programs (16 bit 44.1 kHz stereo WAV is compatible with just about anything).