Introduction
An .aup3 file is a project saved by
Audacity, the free audio editor, from
version 3.0 (2021) onwards. Unlike most music projects it holds the audio itself as
well as the edits, so a single file carries the whole project.
Before 3.0, Audacity saved an .aup XML file together with a
_data folder of many small audio block files. Audacity 3 can still open
those projects and converts them when saving.
Structure
An .aup3 file is a SQLite 3 database, so it starts with the text
SQLite format 3 and can be opened with any SQLite tool. The project
description (tracks, clips, labels, settings) is stored in a table as a compact binary
form of Audacity’s XML. The audio is split into blocks, stored as rows of a sample
blocks table with summary data used to draw the waveform quickly. While Audacity is
running, changes go to SQLite’s write-ahead log, kept as .aup3-wal and
.aup3-shm files beside the project.
Links
Software
- Audacity – the free audio editor that saves its projects as AUP3, from version 3.0 (Windows, macOS, Linux)
Developers
- SQLite – the database library and command-line tools that open the file (C)
- Audacity source code – defines the tables and the project data inside them (C++)