Audacity Forum

hi All,

Is there a place where totally dumb questions can be asked? Like maybe where someone just starting can ask questions? There is so much info out there, it's a bit hard to siphon it down to what is relevant to one particular situation. Anyway, I'd like to have several tracks shown at one time. Ones that are .wav and that I have previously recorded on a 'Portastudio'. Seems like I can only have two tracks; when I try to open any more than two they just won't load. I'd like to have like 4 tracks to work on,( all displayed at once ) eventually combining into just two. Sorry if this is somewhere explained in detail. I'm running Win 7 64 bit and 1.3.13

Thanks for any help
radio

Importing the tracks should stack them up one atop the other. The limit used to be 16, I think the limit is much larger now. There is a limit to the number of radically different tracks you can import. Someone will correct me, but I don't think you can mix MP3, AIFF, WAV, M4A, and ACC in the same show.

Koz

Wow, cool!

Thanks Koz, that's just the ticket... Now I've 'imported' all the tracks for a mix down. Just what I needed to know.

r

kozikowski wrote:Importing the tracks should stack them up one atop the other. The limit used to be 16, I think the limit is much larger now. There is a limit to the number of radically different tracks you can import. Someone will correct me, but I don't think you can mix MP3, AIFF, WAV, M4A, and ACC in the same show.

Yes "Import" is the important word. Audio files (as opposed to "Audacity Projects") are "Imported" into Audacity and "Exported" from Audacity. See here for more information on this important concept: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audacity_Projects

Regarding the number of tracks, it's essentially limited by the capability of the computer. When you get too many tracks the responsiveness of Audacity will start to go sluggish and you will notice a delay between pressing the Play button and Audacity starting to play. I think the most tracks that I've had loaded simultaneously on this (cheap) laptop is about 30 and it was still running pretty smooth.

There's no problem with mixing file types in the same project as Audacity works on raw uncompressed audio data. When you import a compressed file type (for example an MP3 or WMA file), Audacity copies the audio data and works with this copy.

To be able to import or export WMA files (and some other file types) you need to install FFMpeg (see here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... tallffmpeg )