What is a .AUP3 file?
The .AUP3 file extension refers to an Audacity 3 Project File. This type of file is used by Audacity, which is a free program for recording and editing audio. The .AUP3 file contains all the details of an audio project, including settings, metadata, and the audio files themselves. This information is stored in an SQLite 3 database format within the file.
Audacity 3, released in March 2021, introduced the .AUP3 file format. This new format replaced the older .AUP file format that was used in earlier versions of Audacity. While you can still open the older .AUP files with Audacity 3, any new projects or previously saved projects are now saved in the .AUP3 format.
One major difference between the .AUP and .AUP3 formats is how they store data. The older .AUP files are XML files that only contain links to audio files and other data. In contrast, .AUP3 files actually contain the audio files and other data directly within the database file. This change means that moving or deleting audio files outside of Audacity will not affect the project, as all necessary data is included in the .AUP3 file. However, this also means that .AUP3 files can be quite large, sometimes several gigabytes, and might take longer to load compared to .AUP files.
To open a .AUP3 file, you will need to use Audacity, specifically version 3 or later. This is currently the only program that supports the .AUP3 file format.
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