Audacity Forum

Having imported an original song, about 10 minutes long, as a stereo .WAV file, from a Zoom H-4 digital recorder into iTunes, it played it back OK. I then tried to import it from iTunes into Audacity, hoping to trim the dead space off the beginning and ending of the track, but when it came up in Audacity, it appeared mono, about 2 seconds long, and sounded like when one reaches a fax machine on the phone. Any suggestions?

Thank you,
Terrel

Let me read this back to you. You created a nice clear, uncompressed WAV file of a live performance and then imported it into iTunes which carefully converted it to highly compressed Apple AAC format which Audacity doesn't recognize.

I hope you kept the original Zoom WAV file. Apple AAC is a lossy compressor and always adds damage.

Change the iTunes import preferences to AIFF > Custom > 44100, 16-bit, Stereo and try re-importing the iTunes file. That AIFF file should drop right into Audacity and you can edit your brains out. Then change the iTunes preferences back to where they were and re-re-import to get the iPod file.

iTunes only converts on Import. If you don't have access to the original Zoom file, then you're going to be stuck with multiple compression steps adding distortion at each step.

Another way out of this is QuickTime Pro. I believe you can change formats within QTP, as long as the original isn't an iTunes Purchase.

Koz