Moving AUP3 projects from Audacity 3.x to Audacity 2.x

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While projects created and Saved with Audacity 2.x.x or 1.3.x can be opened in Audacity 3.x.x the same is not true the other way around.

Once a project has been saved in the unitary AUP3 project file it can no longer be opened in earlier versions of Audacity.

You may wish to do this as you might want to collaborate on a project with another user who only has an older 2.x.x version of Audacity.

There are a couple of workarounds:

Consolidated Project

If the project can be sent as a single rendered consolidated audio file then Export the whole project as single WAV file with File >Export >Export as WAV and Import that WAV file into Audacity 2.x.x

When exporting the WAV select the Encoding to be 32-bit float to retain full audio quality for the transfer (note that this is not the default setting for WAV export).


Track structure retained

If instead the project is a work in progress where the track structure need to be retained then each track must be exported individually

Audio Tracks

  1. Go to Import/Export preferences and ensure that Ignore blank space at the beginning is not turned "on" (default setting is off). This is to ensure that tracks with leading blank space have that space rendered to silence on Export thereby retaining the proper time position of the audio.
  2. Export each individual audio track as a WAV file using File > Export Multiple.
    • If you have label tracks present in the project be sure to select Split files based on Tracks.
    • In the Export Multiple dialog ensure the Encoding for the WAV files is set to 32-bit float to retain full audio quality for the transfer (note that this is not the default setting for WAV export).
  3. Then you can Import those WAV files into older Audacity versions.
Warning icon Note carefully that each track is rendered on Export to the WAV file and thus any envelope or Pan&Gain settings will be mixed into the output WAV file.
Bulb icon The Imported files will be sorted alpha-numerically so if you want to retain the track ordering you may want to prefix the Track Names with numbers: 01, 02, 03 etc.

Label Tracks

Any Label Tracks that you may have will not be Exported with the Export Multiple of the audio.

You can Export these separately with File > Export > Labels.

These can then be Imported into the Audacity 2.x.x project and you can reposition them as required.

Time Tracks

These cannot be transferred from a 3.x.x project to a 2.x x one.