Audacity Forum

On a senior citized trying to use Audacity. I made my first recoring yesterday and now I have no idea how to save it. I don't even understand the directions. I am not sure but I don't think my MAC 10.5.8 OS X likes mp3. Can some help me? Thanks in advance. Cknicker

When you "save" an Audacity project you are, in effect, saving a "work in progress". Pick a place to save the project and the program will create two things on your hard disk: a file ending in ".aup" and a folder ending in "_data". The .aup file contains a description of your project - how many tracks it has, and where the audio is in those tracks. The "_data" folder contains the actual audio in your recording, chopped up into 6-second segments. The information in the .aup file says how to stitch these segments back together.

Note that this .aup file cannot be played in iTunes.

Now, in order to create an MP3 file that you can play in iTunes, you need to download and install the LAME MP3 encoder. If you would like to avoid that, there is an alternative.

Once you have edited your recording to your satisfaction (removed dead space from the start and end, for example) go to File > Export. In the export dialog http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... ort_Dialog choose "AIFF" from the "Save as type:" dropdown menu. You now have an AIF file on your hard disk. Drag and drop that file onto iTunes and iTunes will import it into its library. In iTunes, go to iTunes > Preferences, click on the "General" icon at the top of the preferences window, then click the "Import settings..." button. In the Import Settings dialog set Import Using: MP3 encoder and Setting: Higher Quality. Click OK then OK again. Find the file you imported into iTunes and click on it to select it. Click on the Advanced menu then "Create MP3 version". iTunes will convert the (large) AIF file into an MP3. Once the process is complete you can delete the AIF file from iTunes (thus saving a lot of disk space).

I know this sounds like a long procedure, but once you have set the Import Settings you don't have to do it again. iTunes creates MP3 files much faster than Audacity, and you can import multiple AIF files and "batch convert" them to MP3s in iTunes.

Hope this helps. If you would prefer to download and install the LAME encoder, just yell and I'll try to walk you through it.

-- Bill

A few words on why you want the MP3 is good.

If your whole job was to get the music into iTunes, Ol' Bill pretty much did it for you. If you want the music in your iPod, you can do that with the AIFF file and it will sound terrific, but you wont get very many pieces on there before it fills up. That's when you convert to MP3 and then drag the smaller, compressed music over to your iPod.

Another quick rule of thumb. Sound files aren't automatically MP3. MP3 happens to be a nice way to post internet audio so it downloads fast and doesn't take up a lot of room. But. MP3 always creates damage and you can't stop it. So for production, editing, or archiving, WAV or AIFF are the way to go. MP3 is a delivery or iPod format.

Koz