Audacity Forum

Whenever I import an mp3 random sections are removed causing the track to skip. I import a song that is some 4 minutes long but it becomes shortened to around 50 seconds. I'm a beginner to audacity and music editing in general so don't skip any details if you think you can help me out.

Are you sure it's an MP3 file? If you got it from your iTunes library it might be an AAC file, which Audacity doesn't understand. If it's a tune you bought from the iTunes store it probably has copy protection on it as well.

-- Bill

I torrented the song and it is located on my external hd from which Itunes references the song. Im fairly sure it is an mp3 because the file is called "09 - The Handshake.mp3". I thought the fact that the mp3 was located on my external hd might have been the problem so i dragged a copy to my desktop but still encountered the same problem. any ideas?

Does this happen with this song only, or all MP3s?

Click on the file and do a "Get Info" - just because it has the file extension "mp3" doesn't mean if might not be some other format.

Does the song play OK in iTunes? If so, in iTunes 9, go to Preferences > General then click the "Import Settings..." button. In the import settings window, choose "AIF encoder". OK and OK.

Right-click on the song in your iTunes library and choose "Create AIF version". Locate the AIF version in Music/iTunes/iTunes music/ and try opening that version in Audacity.

-- Bill

Control-Click > Open With > QuickTime.

Apple-I for the info panel. Does the song play in QUickTime? Does the INFO panel agree that it's an MP3 file? We keep beating on this because this is a very common error. "My MP3 file will not play," almost always means it's not an MP3 file. Many Windows users figure MP3 = Sound, period.

If all this lines up OK, the next step is going to be inspecting your machine. Apple > About This Mac. Know all the information in that panel.

Koz