Audacity Forum

When I export mp3s at the default 128 bit rate, they come out about twice the size of the original WAV file. At a bit rate of 32, they're about the same size as the WAV.

I also tried the lamedrop approach, and it rejected my WAV file entirely. Are my WAVs the problem? Does anyone have an idea what's going on?

This has been true on 2 installations of Audacity, an old one at home that didn't require LAME at all and a new one (1.2.6) at work.

kathye wrote:I also tried the lamedrop approach, and it rejected my WAV file entirely. Are my WAVs the problem? Does anyone have an idea what's going on?

It's probably to do with the WAV files - they are probably not WAV files. If you right click on the file and look at the advanced audio properties, Windows should tell you what format they are.

Do you have Windows set to show you file extensions? That can help a lot when it turns out what you thought was beautifulMusic.wav is really beautifulMusic.m4a.

Biiiig difference.

My Computer > Tools > Folder Options > View > Uncheck [Hide File Extensions].

Koz

<<<If you right click on the file and look at the advanced audio properties, Windows should tell you what format they are.>>>

Son of a gun. That even works in Win2K -- in a slightly awkward way. Right click the file > Properties > Summary.

Who knew?

Koz

The extension is .wav.

When I look at the advanced tab on properties, though, it lists IMA ADPCM.

Huh? I looked on Wikipedia but am still way out of my depth. Does anyone know whether this is compatible with it being a WAV file?

kathye

It may say it's a WAV file, but it's really an IMA file which is a compressed format. So you're going between two compressed formats which is why nothing seems to help.

I don't remember if Audacity 1.2 will open up IMAs or not. 1.3 might. You can have 1.2 and 1.3 on your machine at the same time as long as you don't use both at once.

You can also use Super or Switch (downloads) to convert your sound file to a "real" WAV.

Koz

I think kozikowski has answered my question: "It may say it's a WAV file, but it's really an IMA file which is a compressed format."

I was starting to suspect something of the sort, since Audacity can also export as WAV, and get a much bigger file.

Thank you!

kathye