Can I create a customized playlist to a folder, flashdrive, or CD with Audacity?

Its been a good while since I used a software program called “MP3 CD Burner” to create party mix discs for my wife and I. Now my grandkids are asking that I use my MP3 library to create playlists that can be copied to a flashdrive or burn an audio CD for them. MP3 CD Burner is long gone but the software worked pretty good in its day. I would create a list of songs, chose the “gap” between tracks (if any), and specified in seconds the fade-in and fade-out of each track. The software would keep track of the time used and the time remaining depending on the capacity of the CD. I could also normalize the volume level for all the tracks and, best of all, listen to the results before I performed the burn to disc.
Is it possible to simulate any of these steps with Audacity and output the results to a CD or flashdrive?

Audacity can help you, but it doesn’t do the final step of burning CDs.

Playing an audio CD is “different” from playing “computer files”. Audacity itself doesn’t burn CDs and it’s not an audio/media player, but of course it can be useful and you can listen to the files you’re editing.

create playlists that can be copied to a flashdrive

You can create a playlist with your player software (Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc.) The player software doesn’t care about the physical location/organization. You can also select songs by genre, artist, year*, etc., as long as the files are “tagged” with the metadata.

I would create a list of songs, chose the “gap” between tracks (if any)

With digital players the gap is determined by the silence at the beginning and end of each song. But, some player software has a “gap killer” option or a crossfade option. Unfortunately, the crossfade is usually “dumb” and you have to set the same crossfade time for all tracks. There is an optional smart-crossfade plug-in for Winamp but I get glitches when I use it.

If you’re making an audio CD, you can make custom [u]crossfades[/u], export as one-big WAV file, then tell your burning software where to put the track markers. Track markers don’t work with player software so I don’t recommend that if you’re not making an audio CD.

…I usually make a “DJ style” crossfade where I don’t actually fade-in or fade-out. I just overlap the “natural” fade-out (if there is one).

and specified in seconds the fade-in and fade-out of each track.

You can fade-in and/or fade-out with Audacity but unless you’re making a crossfade you usually don’t want to mess with the original song production.

The software would keep track of the time used and the time remaining depending on the capacity of the CD.

You’ll probably have to keep track of the time “manually” unless you’re making a “one big” crossfaded track. Then, just figure on a little under 80 minutes for an audio CD.

I could also normalize the volume level for all the tracks and, best of all, listen to the results before I performed the burn to disc.

There are a couple of approaches for this…

“Normalization” generally means “maximizing” for 0dB peaks. If you normalize all of your files they won’t sound equally loud and in fact most commercial releases are already normalized/maximized. Some people use the term “loudness normalization” when volume-matching so it can be confusing.

If you’re making a CD or if you have a limited number of tracks it’s best volume-match manually by ear with the following process:

  1. Normalize all of the files (The Audacity Amplify or Normalized effects can do that.)
  2. Listen to the files and if they are not equally loud, choose the quietest one as your refernce.
  3. Adjust the other files down by ear to match (use the Amplify effect with a negative dB value.)

If you are using a software player there are other options. Some players support [u]ReplayGain[/u], and Apple has something similar called Sound Check. With ReplayGain, the file is scanned in advance to find it’s “loudness”. Then the player adjusts the volume before the song starts.

There are MP3Gain and WaveGain variations that use the same loudness-scanning algorithm but they make a “permanent” change to the file so it doesn’t require anything special from the audio player. There is a similar unofficial [u]plug-in[/u] for Audacity that uses the ReplayGain loudness algorithm so you can measure the loudness and “permanently” apply the changes.






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  • By default, when you rip a CD the online databases will give you the year the CD was released. With albums that were originally released on vinyl, or with compilation CDs, I try to find the original release year to “correct” the metadata.

Wow, thanks for that great reply and all the information. Looks like I’m going to begin learning Audacity over the holidays. I’m still testing a couple of CD burner programs but finding one won’t be a problem. Thanks again and have a Happy Holiday!