Greetings,
I have a mp3 file that is only one song and almost 80 minutes long. There are multiple songs within the single file. I would like to know how to create multiple tracks within the single mp3 file without having the pauses between the tracks. In other words, how can I insert track numbers and information within the single file? I would like to have the tracks run as if it is one song but contain all the information within the tracks. Is it also possible to insert ID2,ID3 information on the individual tracks dispite not having pauses between tracks?
Thanks in advance.
See Index of /man .
No audio file formats supported in Audacity support time markers within the file. So the general solution is to export one WAV (not MP3) file for each track of the album using FIle > Export Multiple. Burn each file to its own CD track with a burner and burning software that support “disc-at-once”. You can add information for each track in the burning software and see it in the CD player if both support CD-Text. Then you should be able to skip between CD tracks using the control on the CD player and if your CD player supports gapless playback you should hear no gaps.
If you still hear gaps, export a single WAV file with a prepared cue sheet, then you should get gapless playback and still be able to skip between tracks. See http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Burning_music_files_to_a_CD#Gapless_burning for details.
If you want to play the files on your computer, MP3 is not a good choice for export because MP3 files are lossy and always have silence padding. The best way is to export WAV files (which are lossless), then import the WAV files into a playlist folder in your favourite media program. You can move from track to track but you may not receive gapless playback, depending on the player program. iTunes supports gapless playback for its supported formats (and most of the time this works even for MP3). Windows Media Player supports gapless playback for Windows Media Audio (WMA) files. You can export MP3 from Audacity by adding LAME to your computer, and you can export WMA by adding FFmpeg to your computer.
Gale
Gale,
Thanks much for you response. The file in question was already stored as an mp3 file. I like to save my files as “flac” files. I also save my files as “ogg” files as well. I actually save the file in question on a CD as a wave file. Should I rip the CD as a wave file and edit is per your suggestion? That sounds like the best course of action. I don’t like to convert lossy files to a lossless format for fear of further degrading the music files. I am open to suggestions. Thank you for your input to date.
btw, does audacity support “flac” files?
Audacity does not support time markers even in WAV. The benefit of ripping the CD to WAV is that you are not losing quality. If you rip to MP3 then export the edited MP3 as another MP3 you have two lossy encodings, so cumulative quality loss.
Converting lossy to lossless (for example, MP3 to WAV or MP3 to FLAC) does not further degrade the quality providing you do not deliberately use a lower sample rate than the original file had.
Yes assuming you are using the current Audacity 2.0.0 (the board you posted to).
Gale