question about the cd burning side of things.

[kozikowski]

import music onto audacity via ... you-tube

How are you going to get the YouTube music? There are some software packages that claim to be able to "download" YouTube shows, but if that fails, you will be capturing the music with special settings.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tuto ... puter.html

Chances are good even though you use WAV all the way through, the on-line music is already compressed and has some damage burned in. The best you can do is prevent it from getting any worse.

I don't know why you would need magic software or odd downloads. Windows Media will burn an Audio CD just fine, last I checked. Consult your Windows instructions.

Note that a very common problem with burning CDs is the song order. While you're in Windows, the songs will list in alphabetic or numerical order. "Computer" order. It's only when you get them into a CD Authoring and Burning program do you get the chance to reorder them. That's why it's not just a burner. It's an authoring program as well.

gapless i.e. select 0 seconds,

You should forget the word "gapless." that means magic things to the burning process. Your goal is to produce zero time song gaps. You don't have to do anything to get them. Just pile up the songs in the right order and tell the program you want silent or no-second gaps. The program takes it from there. That's one of its jobs.

I predict (holding fingers to forehead), you're going to find a production problem. Unless you get insanely lucky, you will be back here complaining that the songs are not the same volume.

Koz

[zurich]

Cheers Koz, thats very interesting. I really appreciate your help and of making me aware of possible problems. I hope you dont mind that i press you for more info in light of some of the things youve mentioned. I appreciate any time you take in answering my flurry of further questions.

I will in a minute ask about a. volume-difference problems and then after that b. getting music from you tube, but first of all i will detail my plan to see if you foresee problems in song ordering/authoring.

My plan is to make an audacity audio production of say 30 minutes. It will be continual without pause. There will be 8 songs. However, between songs there will be more audio. It wont necessarily be music, although it might be (snippets of songs for example). This ‘audio interlude’ could be hypothetically anything. For example sports commentary from the web. Or maybe a mutual friend of all of ours saying something. Then the next song would start (without pause - it all runs into each other). And when this next song ends there will be more audio that again isnt necessarily music and then like before, when this audio interlude finishes, song 3 will begin. and so on until the end.

Does this sound an unlikely project? Also, does this present problems for lining up the songs in the burning stage or would i just simply have to also name the audio interludes in order for the computer to slot them in where i want?

or can i just present the finished 30 minutes to the burner software as one big continual 'song'/audio and the software just burns it onto the cd as it plays? i was hoping it would be like that tbh. oh man sorry for the newbie-ness.

Secondly, You say that you predict that i’ll have songs of different volumes, and therefore a production problem. I would like to deal with this now if you dont mnd.

Are you saying this because i want to import audio from you tube or are you in fact saying that volume differences are likely to happen regardless of where i get the songs from? that even if i import songs from a standardized cache of songs like a cd or in i-tunes, that there will likely be volume differences? If this is the case, do you imagine the difference in volume will make it unlistenable? Also: is there not a way to equalize the volume somehow; in fact i have been wondering if thats what the ‘amplify’ facility is for?

Or are you saying that in fact, the volume differences problems will happen in the burning stage of the process?

Lastly, about getting music off you tube. I am about to read your link so thanks for that. I got the idea of importing from you tube after watching this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQVTK23nbiA
To sum up it says to open audacity, make sure it’s in stereo, and then press record. Then press play on the you tube song. (When it’s done recording, then you can tidy up the front end by deleting the one-second gap between pressing record on audacity and pressing play on you tube.)

Thanks again Koz, really appreciating this info. cant believe how long my posts are!

[kozikowski]

making me aware of possible problems.

There's no condition that I can't make a lot worse.

There will be 8 songs.

My personal preference would be to produce 8 segments (one song and following narration). Set the CD software for zero song gaps and each time you press "Next,"on your player you should get the beginning of a song. If you don't press anything, you'll get all the songs and narration in order.

Change that around as needed. Again my personal preference, 30 minutes is a little rough to scroll through even at fast forward if you need a particular segment or narration.

can i just present the finished 30 minutes to the burner software

If you do one big 30 min song, both versions of the production will play beginning to end exactly the same. But only the version with the individual segments will be easily searchable with the buttons on the player.

Does this sound an unlikely project?

It sounds like the average music podcast.

volume differences are likely to happen regardless of where i get the songs from?

Wherever they come from, particularly if there is some age between them. You are spoiled rotten by listening to the radio in the car and not have to change the volume once between Hattiesburg and Jacksonville. There are regulations and broadcast volume processors which make that all happen.

The first time I tried to do production with a popular radio show by downloading the podcast instead of recording the off-air broadcast, I was sore-amazed how different the voices of the two performers was. Ray talks into his socks and Tom has a laugh recognized as a non-lethal weapon by the State of Massachusetts. Broadcast processors smoothed that all out before my radio got to it.

Even worse, older music is recorded with much less processing and to a lower volume standard. Modern music is subject to Loudness Wars and the louder the better. It's not just turning the volume up, either. There is processing which holds loud parts steady but boosts quiet parts so that everything is loud. The sound becomes "dense."

If you're not in love with keeping the quality of sound absolutely perfect, you can use an effect called Chris's Compressor to even everything out to broadcast standard. That's how I do it now, so Tom's voice doesn't blow me off the freeway.


So. I would compose the work as one long 30 minute production so I can jockey all the pieces as necessary and make the flow and meter comfortable and smooth.

Then apply Chris's Compressor to force all the volumes to be similar.

Then put Audacity Labels in at the breaks you choose (beginning of each song??). There is an Audacity technique of exporting a show that automatically breaks up one long show into individual files at the labels. Scoop the files up and dump them into your authoring and burning program, make sure the order is right, set it for no second song gaps and burn.

This is very similar to some of the steps in burning your vinyl collection to CD.

"It transferred as one long song per side. How do I break it up for the CD?"

https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/chriss ... -audacity/

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/label_tracks.html

You won't need all of this because your song volumes will already be set with Chris.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/spli ... racks.html

Windows Media is between you and Windows.

Koz

[zurich]

nice one!

Very interesting that about radio production regulations and tech. Stuff you take for granted.

I’m very equalized now about beginning my project.

I don’t want to sound glib about someone who i’ve just read about five minutes ago but r.i.p. Chris Capel of Chris Compressor fame.

[kozikowski]

It's not production regulations. The studio just has to make sure they don't distort anybody's voice. Volume processing happens at the transmitter. Squirting radio energy into the air has federal regulations.

I worked at a station so paranoid about overvolume, they actually got a citation for being too quiet. I can imagine the inspector chuckling as they wrote the citation.


Yes, Chris was a depressive, fatal, as it turned out.

Koz

[zurich]

alright Koz and audacaity forum again, i dont know how i missed this gaping hole in my need-to-knows! it's basically about recording off You Tube. thus i'm referring to this:

import music onto audacity via ... you-tube

How are you going to get the YouTube music? There are some software packages that claim to be able to "download" YouTube shows, but if that fails, you will be capturing the music with special settings.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tuto ... puter.html

Chances are good even though you use WAV all the way through, the on-line music is already compressed and has some damage burned in. The best you can do is prevent it from getting any worse.

im assuming its impossible, at least to the layman and his tools, to figure out if you tube music is compressed or not.

and assuming that it is, i think therefore the thing i need to know about most of all is the 'some damage burned in' bit from the quote above.

what does damage mean here, and particularly what are the likely ramifications of this damage to my finished audacity-audio production? is dmage basically a sound quality thing including volume, or is it perhaps also damage that could mean the song will not appear at all or will appear sporadically?

about recording from you tube, i'd planned to buy the 'total recorder' software package recommended in the audacity tutorial 'recording computer playback on windows'. it seems to me that this software will at least get me recorded You Tube audio in such as way that i can import it to audacity without much bother. so ... that basically leaves me with the question of likely-compressed you tube audios and the ramifications for my project.

im gonna start tomorrow by the way, im just getting all my ducks lined up, probably a little obsessively lol. and i was thinking about it and i thought 'there is something i forgot to get clear on'

cheers again for any help

[kozikowski]

You can keep it from getting worse.

Once you get the music, do the production in Audacity and Export the work as WAV (Microsoft), 44100, 16-bit, Stereo. Then dump your WAV files into Windows Media and burn. The music quality inside an Audio CD is the same quality as the export.

Stereo is optional in production. You can submit a Mono WAV file and Windows Media should figure it out.

Koz