can't hear any sound in project

[carol]

I've imported wave files into audacity. I can see the sound files, and hear them. Then I close the project for the evening. Now, when I open the file I see the sound files, but hear no sound. What am I doing wrong?

[kozikowski]

Audacity doesn't actually "Import" anything when you Save A Project. It just creates an AUP supervisory file that "points" to the original sound files. If you deleted or moved the original sound files, then there is no project. The blue wiggly line waveforms on the timeline are carried by the first two AU files inside the _DATA folder and aren't related to the show at all.

Audacity does a very poor job of explaining how Projects actually work. Trust me, you're not the first person to assume that Audacity somehow absorbs sound files into itself and you can delete all your external clips and music capture files.

It doesn't and you can't.

Next time you get a show you like, Export As WAV... to get a safety backup. WAV files are very large and take up a lot of room, but they represent a perfect, undamaged version of your show. MP3 files do not maintain high musical quality the way that WAV does. You can email either a WAV or an MP3, but not a Project.

Koz

[carol]

Thanks for your response. But I need to dig a bit deeper. I didn't move any files after saving my work in Audacity. I have a folder called buying project, and it in there is another folder called buying2.29_data, with the auf files. There is a buying2.29.aup and a buying2.29.aup.bak. Then there are all the wav files that I imported. When I try and open buying2.29.aup, audacity opens, I see the wav files, but there is no sound.
Am I opening the wrong file?

[carol]

One more question. When you say deleted or moved any sound files, do you mean within audacity? I'm editing voice interviews, and had imported about 10 wav files into audacity. There I named the files, and moved them around within Audacity. I hadn't actually started editing the files, just organizing them. But they are now in a different order than the wav files sitting in the folder

[kozikowski]

When you start a project, Audacity remembers the locations, folders, names, and directory structure of your whole show. You can't move things around, clean up, neaten up, or organize anything once that happens. I bet if you un-organize your sound files, your project comes back to life.

You can open up an AUP file with TextEdit and read it. It's an XML supervisory file and built into it are all the locations and names of all your files.

aliasfile='/Users/koz/Desktop/piano2.wav'

That's an actual line from one of my AUP files. If I move or change piano2.wav in any way, I'm dead.

The neat, orderly, compulsive people always get burned with this. The slobs are fine.

It is totally possible to change the AUP file in TextEdit to reflect what you actually did. Make sure TextEdit Preferences is set for Plain Text when you do that.

Koz