Audacity Forum

I have used Audacity for several years on the Win X, but this is my first use on the Mac. I don't know whether the issue is with Audacity or with OS X, so here goes.

When I attempt to save a segment as "wav", the popup defaults the file name as project_name.wav. If I attempt to change the name to artist - song title.wav, "it" spawns a new pair of tracks, but does not save anything and I have ended up aborting the entire process.

What I did get to work was to insert a track number as in project_name1.wav, and that works fine. No replacing the name, just click-insert and done. Trying to replace the name spawns the track as described above.

Audacity is 1.2.5
OS X is 10.5.6

Thanks for any clues.

Chuck

You used a couple of naughty words there and we need to deal with that first.

Audacity, no matter how hard you try, will not Save a sound file. Will not. Audacity only Saves Projects. In order to get a internationally recognized, stable, stand-alone sound file that you can email to your mum you have to Export. That's the path to a WAV or MP3 file. Once you clear that concept, you can Export a selection as a WAV or Export the whole show as a WAV file (as long as it doesn't get much larger than 4GB).

This Export business is a dandy way to protect and back up your original performances as well as snippets and selections. I lock up copies in a closet during a production.

Back to the Project. A Project is an Editorial Production Management Environment sometimes consisting of thousands of different files. That's why Projects don't move awfully well. So when you tried to rename your Project, Audacity thought you want to start your whole show all over again.

Koz

Are you on an Intel machine? Apple > About this Mac > Processor > Intel

If you are, you might want to graduate to Audacity 1.3. There have been some significant problems with the 1.2.5/Intel/Leopard combination.

Koz

Hi Koz (and whoever else)

Thanks for attempting to remind me of the nice words I should have used. Maybe my lack of those "correct" words is merely symptomatic of my ignorance. Sorry about that.

So I was *exporting* wav files -- that's what I do when I am ripping my old vinyl collection to record as cds. I clean each band of the original record with fade ins and fade outs at either end, then export that band or segment as a wav file, working my way forward through the "project".

The point is I was attempting to describe what happens when I "export" a segment as a wav file. I am not sure that my question was answered, is this a peculiarity of Audacity working within the OS X environment or is it an OS X peculiarity that I had never experienced with MS 2000 or MS XP?

And no, I have not tried 1.3. I have always reckoned that I have enough problems without, given my level of ignorance, helping to debug a beta.

<<<Maybe my lack of those "correct" words is merely symptomatic of my ignorance. >>>

No. Everything you say has to be taken at face value. We can't assume you know the difference because too many people try to "save" a sound file by removing snippets from their Project and instantly reducing their show to garbage.

<<<I am not sure that my question was answered>>>

I know mine wasn't. Are you on an Intel machine?

<<<And no, I have not tried 1.3. I have always reckoned that I have enough problems without, given my level of ignorance, helping to debug a beta.>>>

A natural assumption in any other circumstance but this one. Assuming an Intel machine, 1.3.7 may be more stable than 1.2.5. My Leopard/Intel test development machine will not run Audacity 1.2.5 correctly.

You can, if you wish, put 1.2 and 1.3 on your machine at the same time safely as long as you only launch one at a time. I would urge installing the current one, 1.3.7, I believe, and see if it has the same problems on a short test job.

You can also try the time honored fix of trashing your audacity.cfg file. Close Audacity.

Search for it or dig...

/Users/koz/Library/Application Support/audacity/audacity.cfg.

Drag it to the Trash.

Audacity will build a new one when you launch again. You know you succeeded when Audacity asks you English? at startup. See if it still behaves badly.

Koz

charlemagne wrote:When I attempt to save a segment as "wav", the popup defaults the file name as project_name.wav. If I attempt to change the name to artist - song title.wav, "it" spawns a new pair of tracks, but does not save anything and I have ended up aborting the entire process.

What I did get to work was to insert a track number as in project_name1.wav, and that works fine. No replacing the name, just click-insert and done. Trying to replace the name spawns the track as described above.

Using "the right words" is not just Koz being picky, it's quite difficult to understand exactly what you mean if we're not speaking the same language, but let's see if I've got it right...

You Click on the File menu and select to Export as WAV. This opens a file browser window where you select the location of where the exported WAV file will be saved and it also enters the project name as the default name for the exported file.

You want to change the file name, so you enter a different name and Audacity attempts to write the file to your hard drive but it is unable to do so (what exactly does Audacity do at this point?)

Exactly what name are you trying to give to the new file?

BTW, Audacity 1.3 is pretty stable now and has many advantages over the old 1.2 version. In my opinion, all users should now be encouraged to use the 1.3 version. The new 1.4 stable version (based on Audacity 1.3) is due to be released later this year and will take over from the old v.1.2

Hi guys,

I regret that I "sounded" pissy. I'm just old and cranky. You are absolutely correct, and I should have taken the trouble to open Audacity and get the correct terms, yatta, yatta.

Numero uno: Yes, it is an Intel box.
Numero two-o: I installed 1.3.7 and exporting a wav file works as expected, that is it accepts exactly what I typed in to replace the default file name. So, problem solved.
Numero three-o: I guess this is just informational because you all asked for exactly what was happening when I attempted to export. The album in question is one I was ripping for my daughter, "Bump City" by Tower of Power. Scenario follows:

Project name: Bump City.aup

Default name for export file: Bump City.wav

Attempt to change name to: Tower of Power - BUMP CITY - OF THE EARTH.wav
What happened: Firstly, no file exported, secondly, at each "(blank)-(blank)" Audacity would create an additional track set, starting at the end of the recorded material of the previous, original track set.

Additionally, as I was trying different things, I tried to replace the default file name with some other unique file name such as the track name, like, "OF THE EARTH". Again, no file recorded, but a new track set created.

What I did discover was that if I only *inserted* a unique identifier, in this case the track number, like "Bump City9.wav", it created the file without complaint. As I previously stated, this was totally a left-click at the point of insertion, type in the track number, and hit <return>.

So, thank you all for your help. By default I now know that the problem appears to have been with 1.2.6 and not with Leopard, and since it was the first time in using Audacity on a Mac I had not a clue as to whether it was a peculiarity of the Mac or what.

charlemagne wrote:I'm just old and cranky.

No problem, you're in good company

charlemagne wrote:Numero two-o: I installed 1.3.7 and exporting a wav file works as expected, that is it accepts exactly what I typed in to replace the default file name. So, problem solved.

And Audacity 1.2 will be "retired" when 1.4 comes out later this year (hopefully).

charlemagne wrote:since it was the first time in using Audacity on a Mac I had not a clue as to whether it was a peculiarity of the Mac or what.

I think it was a combination of Audacity 1.2 + Mac. There have been other file naming issues on other platforms, but in this case the file names that you were using appear to be valid names, whereas the issue we more commonly see is where people are trying to name files with things like:

Tower of Power:~"Bump" City/of the Earth.wav

As a general point - good practice for compatibility across all computers, use lower case letters, numbers underscore and hyphen only in file names (Use underscore instead of space).
" tower_of_power-bump_city-of_the_earth.wav " should work correctly on any modern computer (some old computers would have problems with the name being too long).

It's worse than you think. 1.2.6 will not run on an Intel machine. Those take 1.2.5 and as we're finding out, even 1.2.5 has its problems with the Intel/Leopard combination.

My 1.2.5 runs perfectly on my Intel machine...under Tiger.

So you're far better off in 1.3 land.

See, if you had said that earlier....

Koz