Bad .wav quality

[cesare]

Hi everyone,
I suppose my trouble has been dealt with already, just I'm not able to find it, sorry.

I transferred some vinyl using audacity 1.2.6, saved project and, before making any adjustment, exported a .wav file.
Now, listening to the .aup file the sound quality is very nice, but the .wav is definitely ugly.
As the .wav is now, is completely useless.
I've tried with different devices (usb turntable, standard one with 2 different amplifiers) but always had poor results.

Is there any solution? I'd rather avoid the whole cleaning if not.
Thanks for help.

[steve]

What program are you using to play the WAV file?
If you open Audacity and Import the WAV file (Project menu if I remember correctly), then play it in Audacity, how does that sound?

[cesare]

Thanks Steve!
Well, bad results were given by both Winamp and VLC, normally used to play WAV files without problems.
Now, I followed your suggestion, and opened that poor WAV with Audacity and it works perfectly.
So now I'm very confused... lol
Further tips wpuld be very much appreciated.
The only thing I may think of to use my standard sw is try to convert it in flac and see what happens
Anyway, after your kind help, I'm less worried

[steve]

I suspect what is happening is that Audacity is sending the sound direct to the sound card and playing it as it really is, but the other programs are playing the sounds with some Windows "enhancement" that is making it sound bad. Check your sound card settings and ensure that all effects and enhancements are disabled.

[steve]

To judge WAV files quality, best player is MS-Windows build-in tiny program: sndrec32.exe

"best player" is a bold claim. In what way is it better than say Foobar2000, SoX, VAC, APlay, Herrie, afplay, or any other non-bloatware player?

[steve]

Simplicity... Just no non-sense straight audio!

I don't use Vista or Windows 7, but apparently the version of SoundRecorder in these versions of Windows can now only be used for recording sounds and does not work for playing files. My personal favourite audio player for Windows is Foobar2000, though I'm sure that everyone has their own favourite.