Audacity Forum

Hi,

I am running Audacity 2.0.5 on my laptop running Vista and desktop running XP-Pro.

I record some album tracks on my laptop just to test with and created 2 Projects but only created a .wav file from the 2nd Project.

I copied both projects .aup files and the .wav file to my Desktop to play around with.

When I tried to open the first .aup file (that created no .wav file) I received a message that said: "Couldn't find project data folder". Clicking OK then a message "Couldn't load file"

When I tried to open the second .aup file (that DID create a .wav file) I received a message that said:
"Project detected 166 missing audio data (.au) blockfles(s) Probably due to a bug, system crash, or accidental deletion....." Then there were options to:
Close Project immediately wit no further changes
treat missing audio as silence (this session only)
Replace missing audio with silence (permanent immediately)

So, I see that I can't just copy the .aup file and expect to use the same project on another machine.

That being said, I was able to open the .wav file and perform tracking on it. I then exported the tracked files to multiple .wav files.

Questions:
Is it advisable to copy Projects from one computer to another?
Is there any difference in quality when tracking a .wav file to other .wav files vs. tracking project to .wav?

Thanks!
RR

An AUP file is not everything. Take a look at Audacity File Management Tips.

Is it advisable to copy Projects from one computer to another?

I'd avoid it unless you are in the middle of a project and you really need to transfer all of the edits & settings to another computer.

Of course, there is no problem copying WAV files from various/multiple sources into your main audio-editing computer.

Is there any difference in quality when tracking a .wav file to other .wav files vs. tracking project to .wav?

I'm not sure I understand...

In theory there can be some slight quality loss if you do something like reduce the volume, save the WAV, re-open the WAV and re-boost the volume. And, there are lots of things that are not reversible. So ideally, you would keep all of your original WAVs for use in your project, and render once. If you want to change something, you'd go back to your original WAVs, make the changes to your project, and render again.

But in practice you can "encode" and "decode" WAV hundreds of times with no loss of audio quality. And in the case of volume-changes, saving in 32-bit floating-point WAV will make any changes completely reversible. (If you don't change anything, nothing will happen to the data.) That's not the case with lossy formats like MP3.

It also depends on your overall project & workflow. If you are making a movie soundtrack, you'd generally have separate projects (and create separate WAV files) for the dialog, music, and Foley, and another "final soundtrack" project bringing them all together.

Ok, thanks. I think I am starting to get it. The .aup is just a file that Audacity uses.

To clarify the question, it was creating the .aup and then export tracking to separate .WAV files (the way I would have done it if I was keeping everything on the laptop) VS. Exporting to one big .WAV file, and then exporting again to separate tracking .wav files.

I think you cleared it up for me though, that there would be no difference.

Thanks again.
RR.