Audacity issues

[MkIII_Supra]

Okay, I am not sure what or when it happened but I used to be able to import mp3 files into Audacity so I could do whatever I wanted with them. Now I can't and I haven't been able to really find a solid answer on how to solve the problem.

All I want to do is normalize two songs then concatenate them together so I can import the concatenated file into ManDVD so I can assign it to a slide show I am working on. I do not want go and convert to .ogg or any other format, I just want to do two steps get my task done and move on. Is there another application in Linux that will allow me to do this or how do I get Audacity to allow me to import my mp3 files?

Thanks.

[Davno]

Is it a new install or may be the first time you use Audacity since you re-install Linux ? Then check in Audacity/edit/preference/audio files/ mp3 librairies. Youll find a button to dl a version of Lame which is nescessary to be able to import mp3 files into Audacity. If this is not the problem, ill need more information.

[MkIII_Supra]

so it looks like Audacity just went to crap... I don't want to have to jump through hoops to get my NON-DRM mp3 files modified! I have about 2,000 MP3 files that are NOT DRM, I want to adjust the levels on some of them because they are recorded too high.

I also would like to edit some for videos I do... but now I can't! And here is why:

"Audacity cannot play or export files in WMA, RealAudio, Shorten (SHN) or most other proprietary formats, due to licensing and patent restrictions. On a Mac computer, unprotected AAC formats such as M4A can be imported. Some open formats are not yet supported, including Ogg Speex and Musepack. Files protected by any kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM) including most purchased online such as from iTunes or Napster, cannot be imported.

If you can't import your file into Audacity, then if it is not DRM-protected, use iTunes or SUPER to convert it to WAV or AIFF. If it is protected, burn it to an audio CD in the program licensed to play it, then extract the CD track to WAV or AIFF using iTunes or (on Windows) CDex or Windows Media Player 11. You could also record the CD to your computer. To export to an unsupported format, export to WAV or AIFF and convert to the desired format in iTunes or SUPER."

Ummm, most of my songs are from Amazon and NOT crippled with DRM and many more are ogg format that I ripped from my CD's that I want to convert to MP3 so I can play them on my MP3 player...

So what else can I use for my existing MP3's to reduce the gain on them? Since I can't do it with Audacity anymore. Also is there a way to do a batch of files with a reduction in gain and convert to MP3 from OGG?

Thanks.

[paj12]

So what else can I use for my existing MP3's to reduce the gain on them? Since I can't do it with Audacity anymore. Also is there a way to do a batch of files with a reduction in gain and convert to MP3 from OGG?

MP3Gain will do this for you. It's a command line to tool to normalize large batches of MP3 files. After they're all the same volume, you can cat them together with sox. So if you wanted to normalize the files "foo" and "bar" and cat them together into a file called "baz", it would look like this:

mp3gain foo bar && sox foo bar baz

[MkIII_Supra]

No other GUI tools like Audacity? Sigh... alright I'll try it a bit later... but it still doesn't meet my needs. In Audacity I could take an MP3 and trim X time off of it, adjust the fade out then fade in a new song and trim it... that is what I do, when I create DVD's I use music to match the images being displayed. So there is a critical timing element that I get with Audacity. It's when I run into issues like this that I seriously contemplate getting a Mac...

[paj12]

No other GUI tools like Audacity? Sigh... alright I'll try it a bit later... but it still doesn't meet my needs. In Audacity I could take an MP3 and trim X time off of it, adjust the fade out then fade in a new song and trim it... that is what I do, when I create DVD's I use music to match the images being displayed. So there is a critical timing element that I get with Audacity. It's when I run into issues like this that I seriously contemplate getting a Mac...

You didn't mention any of that other stuff in your last post. SoX has options to trim and fade, but that's probably not what you're looking for.

[MkIII_Supra]

Thanks, but you're probably right. I tend to avoid the command line for the most part now. I just don't have the desire to mess with it anymore. Guess that's age.

[paj12]

I just installed Audacity on the Ubuntu installation I'm running (for the time being) and it installed with support for importing but not exporting MP3s. The library for decoding MP3s is called libmad0 under Ubuntu. Maybe you could look for something similar in your distro's repositories.

[MkIII_Supra]

I can export to MP3 but I can't import any of them, even the ones I create. I didn't have this problem with OpenSuSE 10.3 and Audacity....

[psych-major]

Two things,
I use Audacity to record live sound feeds at the church where I volunteer, and several months ago it rolled over and died, just decided one day to no longer allow access to the sound device, and reported some library version errors. I did a TON of research, and ultimately switched distros, only to find the same issue. Long story short, I needed to install the svn bleeding edge version of audacity and then it was totally fine.

Second, MP3Gain has a GUI, and it works great. I use it for all mp3's that I copy to my mp3 player.

[blackbelt_jones]

For me, out of the box, audacity has always seemed to work for recording with some distros and not with other distros. Witrh Ubuntu or Sid, for example, the pull down menu for the input just isn't there. With Etch, for example, there's no problemo.

These days I'm running Ubuntu, and I solve the problem by booting a Knoppix 5.1.1 disk (the last CD sized Knoppix), and setting the preferences in audacity to put the temporary audacity file on the hard drive. I record with audacity (it works fine with Knoppix) and then I export the results as a wav file to the hard drive. Back in Ubuntu, I'll change the file from wav to ogg or mp3, depending on what I want to do with the file.

Is there a better way? Am I the only one who has this problem?

[psych-major]

Is there a better way? Am I the only one who has this problem?

Um, yes...I run it quite nicely in Ubuntu.
First, you will probably need to install the latest SVN version like I did above. Then make sure you have a valid sound input device, make sure you have permissions to it and then select it from the drop-down.

It was Ubuntu's packaged version (from 7.10) that died on me, and I had the same issue in the zenwalk package.

The SVN version had a fix for the sound device pernmissions issue.

Here is how to install and set up subversion
http://www.funnestra.org/ubuntu/hardy/#svn

Once you have that, the Audacity site has instructions for installing from SVN.

[blackbelt_jones]

Sounds like my problem is the valid sound input device, and possibly permissions. After all, I get good results with the Knoppix CD, which hasn't been updated in almost two years. Ditto for Etch.

[blackbelt_jones]

Um, yes...I run it quite nicely in Ubuntu.
First, you will probably need to install the latest SVN version like I did above. Then make sure you have a valid sound input device, make sure you have permissions to it and then select it from the drop-down.

It was Ubuntu's packaged version (from 7.10) that died on me, and I had the same issue in the zenwalk package.

The SVN version had a fix for the sound device pernmissions issue.

Here is how to install and set up subversion
http://www.funnestra.org/ubuntu/hardy/#svn

Once you have that, the Audacity site has instructions for installing from SVN.

Intuitively, it sounds like my problem is the valid sound input device, and possibly permissions, so I'm going to try to find a way around that before I start with SVN. After all, I get good results with the version of Ubuntu that's already on the Knoppix CD, which hasn't been updated in almost two years. Ditto for Etch.

Or am I thinking about this all wrong?

[psych-major]

Intuitively, it sounds like my problem is the valid sound input device, and possibly permissions, so I'm going to try to find a way around that before I start with SVN. After all, I get good results with the version of Ubuntu that's already on the Knoppix CD, which hasn't been updated in almost two years. Ditto for Etch.

Or am I thinking about this all wrong?

I spent about 12 hours unsuccessfully trying to "get around it" as in my case it affected a production machine.

The SVN solution took < 10 minutes, which included installing subversion.