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I wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the Sandbox. I hope it's ok being posted here. Has anybody here worked with Audacity? I want to take two seperate recordings, and synch them to play as one file with both pieces of music joined together. I have to either "import" or "export" one file into the one I currently have stored in Audacity, right? Every time I try to do that, it says that Audacity can't recognise the file. Once in a great while I can get it to work, but most of the time it doesn't. Am I doing it wrong? Or is my Audacity program not working right?

I don't use Audacity to record but I have a guess: It could be a file format issue - what type of files are you looking to import into the track? If you're working with WAV files only, it should work but if it's another format maybe it's copy-protected from the source or Audacity does not recognize it.

I'm comparing this to Adobe photo editing programs not recognizing "bitmap" image files unless you convert them to the universal "JPEG" before trying to edit them. The program doesn't work for the Windows format files unless they're converted. Your audio files may have the same compatibility issues, I'm just taking a wild guess.

I was thinking the same thing.

Also, try dragging the selected files right to the track-editing area instead of clicking 'import' - a shot in the dark. I remember Audacity being very difficult to work with. I too had problems importing, but WAV files always worked for me. And there are free converters scattered throughout the web. If it is a file-format issue, just upload your file to www.mediaconverter.org and select your file to be converted to WAV.

The files I've used were mp3's from various file uploads from "blogs of dubios origin". I usually extract the certain song/file I want, and it extracts to a winamp file. I was thinking that it's audacity itself, because I can save a file as an audacity file and have it work fine, then the next day, or even a few hours later, it tells me that audacity doesn't recognise the file. It would help if I were somewhat more familiar with the working of Audacity, and knew exactly what buttons to push.  ;D

When you said Winamp I think you identified the issue causing you the problems. Some of those files going to Winamp may be copy-protected or encrypted, or the issue may just be the inability to work with that format within Audacity as we've described above.

If you can convert those same files you're trying to work with into the WAV format, it will probably solve the issue.

I used to use Audacity all the time! Pleasingly basic. I likened it to the software equivalent of a garage studio where pro-tools is Gold Star.

I think you might be dragging 'Winamp' playlist files into Audacity, and that might be the confusion. Find the mp3's in windows explorer (or mac equivalent), and drag those into audacity. if that doesn't work, they're copyright protected. Or not mp3's. are they M4A/AAC? (Itunes files) Winamp will play them, but audacity doesn't like them.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by "dragging" the files into Audacity. Once I extract the zip file into winamp, all I do is left click and tell it to "send to Audacity". But once it gets to Audacity, it's touch and go whether Audacity will recognise the file. When I try to do the same in Cool Edit Pro 2.0 as apposed to Audacity, it just comes out as static.

I'm saying don't do it from winamp! Find where you've extracted the file from the ZIP (if you don't know, reextract it and click browse to send it somewhere easily accessible) in windows explorer and drag the mp3 file from there into an open audacity window. if it doesn't work then, I don't know what will, I'm afraid.

Audacity is pretty limited.

Download "Reaper' - Mac or PC.  It's quite powerful and you can try it out for free (for 30 days) thenit's only $40.  I dumped Cubase and Logic for Reaper.

http://www.reaper.fm/