Exported audio is stuttery/repeats

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

I’m trying to clean up some audiobooks, removing the hiss noise. Removing the hiss is going great. Audacity does an amazing job. The problem I’m having is that when I export the file, the resulting file is corrupted. The audio will jump around, repeating segments and cutting in and out. This happens when I export as MP3, as FLAC, as M4A. It doesn’t happen when playing back in Audacity, and doesn’t happen if I export as OGG.

Any idea what might be going wrong, or how I might be able to fix this? Thanks!

Audacity 2.1.3 on MacOS 10.13.6. LAME 3.99.5 and FFmpeg F(55.33.100),C(55.52.102),U(52.66.100).

2

Still happens with 2.2.2. Not as much though. Also happens with WAV, AIFF.

3

Does nobody else have this problem? Or any ideas for solutions?

4

I’ve not come across that problem before.

To be clear, if you export a file as MP3, then close and restart Audacity, and then import the MP3 back into Audacity, does it play correctly?

5

Hi Steve, no, it plays incorrectly. The exported MP3 plays incorrectly in all apps. It sounds all stuttery, and has a shortened length when exported, even though the length is correct in Audacity before the export. How much length is lost and how stuttery it is varies, but I’ve yet to export one that isn’t stuttery in any format other than OGG.

6

Interesting addition that’s likely very relevant. The exports that are having issues are audiobooks. We’re talking 14+ hours. If I cut a segment out, a few minutes, it exports just fine. The issue seems to only be on the long exports.

7

I can understand this problem happening with WAV format, because WAV has a limit of 4 GB, and exceeding that limit will corrupt the file. The problem should not occur with MP3 or FLAC.

Are you sure about the export format?
Are you sure that you are not simply running out of disk space?

8

Hi Steve. Positive about both things. It happens to every format I tried except for OGG. Definitely enough disk space.

9

Are you saving these files onto a FAT32 drive?

10

This problem exists for me in the recorded file. I listened to some flac files that were skipping and also a file that I was editing prior to exporting. I am running v2.2.2. This seems to be a problem that came up recently. Is that correct?

11

How big are the files?
Have you checked that the problem that you are reporting is exactly the same as the issue that Jimmni is describing? If it is not exactly the same, please start a new topic.

12

@steve Exporting onto a APFS volume. I installed Audacity on my PC running Windows 7 and did the same export and it exported without issue. I saved the project on OS X, copied the project over to the PC, opened the project on my PC and exported it to MP3. So it’s the exact same project being used for both exports.

13

Okay, things get more interesting. I do not think this has anything to do with Audacity. I downloaded WavePad to try to do what I need with that. Exporting to MP3 yields the exact same result. I haven’t tried other formats yet. This is with a totally different source file, but the effect is the same - repeats and stutters.

This means it’s either happening at the OS level, or more likely it’s happening with whatever tool is being used for the export in both apps.