Hello
I’m brand new to using Audacity, I have recorded from a cd to a thumb drive with great success. The individual tracks appear on the thumb drive. I recently downloaded an album with multiple tracks and manually inserted labels into the project. Looking at the thumb drive, the individual tracks aren’t shown, just one single file. Can you let me know what I did wrong? Thank you!
Some questions:
- How did you “record from CD” and got single tracks? [1]
- Where did you download the album with multiple tracks?
- What did you do with this download?[2]
- If this download has already multiple tracks, what did you want too do using Audacity? (I assume you (wanted to) use(d) Audacity, since you post in the Audacity forum)?
- What file type does your “single file” have?
- What version of Audacity do you use?
- What operating system do you use?
[1] When I have a CD which I want to use on my computer, I insert it into a CD drive. Apple’s “Music.app” (or any other similar program) then decodes the individual titles / tracks and stores them in single files. Audacity is not involved.
[2] When I download an album from Apple, I get several single files which I just drag to Music.app, no further interaction (using Audacity or any other program) needed
You can Export Multiple based on labels.
Your tags/metadata may not turn-out correctly so you might need to go-back and edit the metadata. And Audacity can’t add album artwork. If you want to edit the metadata after you’re otherwise done there are advantages to using a specialized application like MP3Tag. (MP3Tag supports all the popular formats, not just MP3.)
…Personally, I don’t bother with labels. I select-highlight one song at a time, then I choose “Current Selection” to export one song at a time as a separate file. Then MP3Tag for metadata.
When you have a CD (already digital) you don’t normally “record” with Audacity.
You may not need Audacity if you are not digitizing vinyl or cassette tapes. You can use a Ripping Application to make a digital copy.
I use EAC or CUERipper. CUERipper is easier to set-up, but occasionally I have trouble with it. Both of these support AccurateRip which can verify that your digital audio data exactly matches the CD (but “re-packaged” is a regular computer file). Windows Media Player and iTunes can also rip CDs. The ripping application can also go online to get the metadata.
- The CD was recorded to the PC using Audacity, and then exported to the cd
- The album was downloaded from a library site to the pc, then exported to the thumb drive
- I used the analyze and label functions in Audacity to split the tracks
- The single file was an MP3 after exporting
- 3.7
- Windows 11
- After seeing a comment on the forum, I exported the AUD file into WAV, then converted into an MP3 and it appears that this resolved the issue. Thank you for your help
The CD was really “recorded”? Well then. But "exported to the CD???
There are so many programs which just extract the songs (or whatever the tracks contain) - so why use Audacity for this?
“A library site” is quite a good explanation so we know exactly what you mean. Try again.
When exporting, you should select “export range: multiple files” and “Split files based on: labels”. You’ll then get several files, one per each label.
Then you did not select to export multiple files based on labels.
A file is exported from Audacity in the format you select in the export dialog. This can be WAV, MP3 or anything else Audacity “understands”. The export behaves the same, no matter what format you select. If you split the file, your export is split - and if not, it is a single file.
The conversion of WAV into MP3 usually does not split anything, unless you use a program that can split based on gaps (silence) in the original file.
Have you had a look at Fre:ac? It’s very similar to EAC - which I have also used - but it’s available on other platforms and I use Linux mostly. CDex is also decent on Windows.
Mark B