The all-new "HELP! I have an Audacity problem" thread

[Winnifred]

I wonder if it ended up under Analyze because of how I installed it on my Mac? I'm not sure. I have the latest version of Audacity (3.2.5).

And in fact, it is because of how I installed it. I put it into the Nyquist folder last time.

I just put it into the Plug-ins folder and now it shows up under both Analyze and Effects

Cheers,

[MissJennyVoices]

Hello, All! Newbie here.

I am currently attempting to learn all I can about EQ and am practicing with an audio clip I made in Audacity. I have version 3.2.5. I may not have much of an ear for this but I think that a huge issue I'm having is that I cannot hear the audio & adjust controls in real time - I just have the 5 second preview button to go off of. Its driving me insane. I really just want to play with it in real time so that I can immediately hear the changes that I'm making. I've tried getting different plugins for Audacity as the EQ Filter Curve is what I am struggling with right now but they will not show up in my plugins manager so that I can enable them. That's one issue that I'd like to figure out because I will eventually need the ACX Checker plugin, I'm sure, and I'm sure that's obtained the same way as the equalizers that I've tried to get.
I've tried downloading the plugin & copying & pasting it into Audacity's program files under plugins & they do not appear in plugins manager at all. There is no Add/Remove Plugins option either.

At this point, I've been struggling through trying to play with the EQ Filter Curve & Graphics EQ, watching YouTube videos & doing a lot of googling and I'm stuck. Wondering if I shouldn't just download an Equalizer that I can learn on in order to find a good setting for my voice in this room with this mic & then replicate that setting into Audacity and set it as a preset there. I'm pretty fed up at this point. What is a good EQ to download & play with??

Can someone guide me as to:
1) How to get those stinkin plugins on Audacity to work, and
2) Advise me regarding EQ and the best ways to play with it in real time. I don't mind paying a bit for an equalizer app or something - I just really want to play with it this weekend and I've been at this for hours now with not even an idea of how to get an equalizer that I can play with.

TIA

[GrayHouse]

...
Can someone guide me as to:
1) How to get those stinkin plugins on Audacity to work, and
2) Advise me regarding EQ and the best ways to play with it in real time. I don't mind paying a bit for an equalizer app or something - I just really want to play with it this weekend and I've been at this for hours now with not even an idea of how to get an equalizer that I can play with.
...

That's a lot of questions - let's go slowly. The first thing to say is that you probably don't need eq on your audio. I suspect that most people here don't use it. If you do want to experiment with it then it's best to listen on headphones - you'll hear so much more. They don't need to be expensive ones, but that's an entire separate topic.

I don't use Audacity 3.2.5 - I'm a few versions behind, but hopefully much of this translates:
- The Audacity built-in plugins and the extra 'Nyquist' plugins should have come bundled with your Audacity. Have a look in Tools > Add / Remove Plug-ins... It may be called 'Plugin Manager' in your version. All the plugins that it can find should be listed. You may need to click on the 'Show All' button to see them. You may need to enable some of them - click on the plugin you want in the Plugin Manager and press the Enable button.
- You can change the length of the preview audio for effects in Edit > Preferences > Playback > Effects Preview Length. But, as you say, it's awkward using that method. It's much easier with realtime adjustments.
- There's aren't really standalone 'EQ apps' as such - they are really plugins that are written by third parties which work with many audio programs including recent versions of Audacity. There are good plugins that you can download for free, so you shouldn't need to pay for them. You'll often see them referred to as 'VST plugins' or just 'VSTs'. There are other types too. If you're using an Apple mac then things can be a little more complicated. If you install some VST plugins they should work under Audacity and enable you to do realtime adjustments. There are instructions here for installing VSTs. Many plugins come with an installer, but they don't always install the plugin files in a folder where Audacity can see them, so pay attention to that part of the instructions. You may need to copy them to another folder. VST files are really .dll files, so look for that style of filename. The newer VST3 format files have filenames that end with .VST3. Also, you may need to Enable the VST plugins in Audacity using the procedure I described above for the built-in ones.
- There are some suitable free realtime EQ plugins listed here.
- Before doing all that, you may want to question why you think you need EQ. You can upload an audio sample to librivox and ask for feedback on your audio. Just use the usual librivox uploader (place the sample in the tests folder) - and post a link to the audio in this forum asking for feedback. My advice would be to see if you can get the Audacity built-in effects working and play this those before launching in to VSTs and realtime effects.

I know that's a lot of information. Hope it helps,
-Ian

[ToddHW]

I agree with Ian that EQ is not usually necessary. I have been here 12 years and never used it.

Thanks, Todd

[MissJennyVoices]

-

You can change the length of the preview audio for effects in Edit > Preferences > Playback > Effects Preview Length. But, as you say, it's awkward using that method. It's much easier with realtime adjustments.
- There's aren't really standalone 'EQ apps' as such - they are really plugins that are written by third parties which work with many audio programs including recent versions of Audacity. There are good plugins that you can download for free, so you shouldn't need to pay for them. You'll often see them referred to as 'VST plugins' or just 'VSTs'. There are other types too. If you're using an Apple mac then things can be a little more complicated. If you install some VST plugins they should work under Audacity and enable you to do realtime adjustments. There are instructions here for installing VSTs. Many plugins come with an installer, but they don't always install the plugin files in a folder where Audacity can see them, so pay attention to that part of the instructions. You may need to copy them to another folder. VST files are really .dll files, so look for that style of filename. The newer VST3 format files have filenames that end with .VST3. Also, you may need to Enable the VST plugins in Audacity using the procedure I described above for the built-in ones.
- There are some suitable free realtime EQ plugins listed here.
- Before doing all that, you may want to question why you think you need EQ. You can upload an audio sample to librivox and ask for feedback on your audio. Just use the usual librivox uploader (place the sample in the tests folder) - and post a link to the audio in this forum asking for feedback. My advice would be to see if you can get the Audacity built-in effects working and play this those before launching in to VSTs and realtime effects.

Oh my goodness - thank you so much!! That is incredibly helpful information!! I really appreciate it. I tried to get 2 separate VST plugins from the Audacity website & followed instructions as to how to get them in my plugins manager (Copying & pasting to Audacity plugin file, etc)
to enable but could never get them to show up.

With your instruction, I was able to change the playback preview to 30 seconds and that may work for me for now to play with it, but what was really helpful was knowing that I may not even need to EQ my voice recordings at all!! My intention is to one day narrate for ACX so I just assumed that it was necessary and thought I'd try to practice figuring it out now, but if it's not necessary, then I may just do a preset filter to get out low level noise or something & call it good.

Again, many thanks! Have a great day!

[GrayHouse]

Oh my goodness - thank you so much!! That is incredibly helpful information!! I really appreciate it. I tried to get 2 separate VST plugins from the Audacity website & followed instructions as to how to get them in my plugins manager (Copying & pasting to Audacity plugin file, etc) to enable but could never get them to show up.

That sounds great. Effects are sometimes useful, but they can be a bit of a rabbit hole!
If you're still trying to get VSTs to work, one thing to check is that the word size (32 bit vs 64 bit) is consistent between your Audacity and your plugins. Many plugin packages come in both sizes, you need the one that matches your Audacity which is almost certainly 64-bit but you can check by going to Help > About Audacity... > Build Information - look for something like "Build type" which should tell you which one you have.
It may also be worth checking Edit > Preferences > Effects - and make sure that you've got VSTs (and anything else you want) enabled - I'm not sure what the defaults are these days.
Good luck with your ACX ambitions...

[AWilliams]

Hello, all!

I've been using Audacity to record for some time now, but for whatever reason, now it's giving me these digital clicks when I record. I've done a bit of googling and suspect it may be a buffer flow weakness that can result in digital clicking both in recording and playback.

Not sure if anyone here has suggestions on settings (audacity or pc) that might give it some CPU processing priority?

I found the "buffer" option in the preferences/setting, but I'm not sure if changing this will affect the playback for anyone else as well. Don't want to be changing settings that will pull the track out of compliance somehow.

Thanks!

A. Williams

[Scarbo]

Hello,

Checker is showing that a file has the wrong sampling rate of 48 kHz instead of the required 44.1. I checked that my Audacity settings are at 44.1 kHz and 16-bit, but when I export the file out of Audacity with those settings, I still get the wrong sampling rate in Checker. I tried changing the sampling rate following the advice in this video as well, but I'm still getting the same result. Do any of you happen to know what might be going on?

Thanks!

[Rapunzelina]

In the video you linked, you'll see a box near the bottom left corner, saying "Project rate (Hz)". Try changing the rate from there and then exporting again. Fingers crossed

[Scarbo]

In the video you linked, you'll see a box near the bottom left corner, saying "Project rate (Hz)". Try changing the rate from there and then exporting again. Fingers crossed

That did the trick! Thank you!

[Wacasey35]

I downloaded spitfish to use for de-essing. It's not compatible with my version of Audacity. I just got the updated version a few days ago.

???

Help please!

[bergmannw]

I'm an LV narrator working on my first solo project. I've submitted the first 16 chapters of a 36-chapter book, and some great proof listeners are jumping on board. Today I discovered that on 4 of the chapters (so far), I did something wrong in the process of saving -- but I don't know what I did wrong. When I try to open these chapters (to make corrections noted by the PL), Audacity gives me this message: "PROJECT RECOVERED: This project was not saved properly the last time Audacity ran. It has been recovered to the last snapshot, but you must save it to preserve its contents." In the window behind this message is an empty Audacity window that looks like it's ready for recording a new project. But instead of the title I gave it, it has this title: "New Project 2023-07-06 10-52-06 N-24 (recovered)". The date in that title is today. I'm not sure what any of this means. When I try saving this window ("Save Project"), its icon appears on my desktop, but opening that icon just brings me back to the same empty Audacity window. I'm using a MacBook Air, MacOs Monterey version 12-6-5. Any suggestions on how to recover these lost chapters (so I can go back and make corrections) would be very much appreciated.

[Kitty]

I'm an LV narrator working on my first solo project. I've submitted the first 16 chapters of a 36-chapter book, and some great proof listeners are jumping on board. Today I discovered that on 4 of the chapters (so far), I did something wrong in the process of saving -- but I don't know what I did wrong. When I try to open these chapters (to make corrections noted by the PL), Audacity gives me this message: "PROJECT RECOVERED: This project was not saved properly the last time Audacity ran. It has been recovered to the last snapshot, but you must save it to preserve its contents." In the window behind this message is an empty Audacity window that looks like it's ready for recording a new project. But instead of the title I gave it, it has this title: "New Project 2023-07-06 10-52-06 N-24 (recovered)". The date in that title is today. I'm not sure what any of this means. When I try saving this window ("Save Project"), its icon appears on my desktop, but opening that icon just brings me back to the same empty Audacity window. I'm using a MacBook Air, MacOs Monterey version 12-6-5. Any suggestions on how to recover these lost chapters (so I can go back and make corrections) would be very much appreciated.

So how do you usually save and with what extension ? Do you export right away to mp3 or do you save Audacity files, with extension .aup ? If you save the aup files, Audacity will automatically create a separate data folder. This folder should never be deleted or renamed, otherwise the aup file will not open properly anymore. Is that maybe what you did ?

But even if your files on the computer are lost, you still have them saved on our server, since you uploaded them already, if I understood you correctly. Just go to the Magic Window and download the files again from there and then save them properly on your computer. Then you have the latest version recovered.

Maybe this helps ? Or did I misunderstand your question/problem ?

Sonia

[TriciaG]

I'm an LV narrator working on my first solo project. I've submitted the first 16 chapters of a 36-chapter book, and some great proof listeners are jumping on board. Today I discovered that on 4 of the chapters (so far), I did something wrong in the process of saving -- but I don't know what I did wrong. When I try to open these chapters (to make corrections noted by the PL), Audacity gives me this message: "PROJECT RECOVERED: This project was not saved properly the last time Audacity ran. It has been recovered to the last snapshot, but you must save it to preserve its contents." In the window behind this message is an empty Audacity window that looks like it's ready for recording a new project. But instead of the title I gave it, it has this title: "New Project 2023-07-06 10-52-06 N-24 (recovered)". The date in that title is today. I'm not sure what any of this means. When I try saving this window ("Save Project"), its icon appears on my desktop, but opening that icon just brings me back to the same empty Audacity window. I'm using a MacBook Air, MacOs Monterey version 12-6-5. Any suggestions on how to recover these lost chapters (so I can go back and make corrections) would be very much appreciated.

If the file recovery isn't bringing back the audio, the best you can do is to open up the MP3 file instead and make the edits on that.

As to why the files didn't save properly - I don't know. Older versions of Audacity used to save a .aup file plus have a folder with the same name. The .aup file was a kind of "key" that told Audacity how to put all the little bits of audio together, which were stored in the separate folder. If you moved the .aup file separate from the folder, it would get confused and cause issues.

I thought newer versions of Audacity don't have this setup, though.

In future, I'd suggest, rather than saving as Audacity files, to export your project as a FLAC file before closing for the session. FLACs are lossless files, so you don't lose any quality when opening them up and editing them over and over. And they're in one handy file rather than the old .aup-plus-folder setup.

I almost never save anything in Audacity format. The only exceptions are when I have label tracks I want to save, or when I'm working on a multi-track project (like a dramatic work, where two or more people are speaking at the same time, and I'm getting them to sound good together).

Kitty beat me.

[bergmannw]

Thank you for these great tips. I will need to take some time to read slowly, and look up terms I'm not familiar with, to fully understand (and be able to implement) both of your suggestions. But the main thing, I think, is that, I had assumed I would not be able to edit the files I have submitted to LV, since they are no longer audacity files. I will work on that soon. Thanks again!