I’ve downloaded a live concert online. A downloaded file containing nine Mp3 tracks which are separated, I mean, each one a new audio file, and together they make up the whole concert. I was wondering if there’s some way I can import these files, which are now individual files, to Audacity, and then merge them the way a live CD recording is. After that, I wanted to add tracks, which will help locate the songs in my recording. I hope someone might be able to help me. I’m a newbie, and there’s a lot to learn. Thanks.
After that, I wanted to add tracks, which will help locate the songs in my recording.
That’s a PROBLEM… Most “computer file formats” and most player software doesn’t support “tracks” or “chapters”. (You CAN put track markers wherever you want on a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray.)
But if you keep the tracks separate your player software should be able to play them in order based on track number in the embedded tags/metadata. I assume the files have metadata? If not it’s easy to add with MP3Tag.
If you still want to make one-long file -
“Import” rather than “open”, the files will be opened into the same project. You can click and drag on the track name above the waveform you can move the tracks to the right.
When you export you’ll get one-long file.
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“But if you keep the tracks separate your player software should be able to play them in order based on track number…” I think this is the best approach. I mean, if I really want to my CD player to play them based on track numbers and so on. A merged file means I’ll have to listen to the whole thing and manually add markers using Audacity, which may not work in the end.
If only I could I keep tracks separate and remove blank spaces between the songs, that would be great. Thanks for the support.
You can do that. But your “odds” of gapless playback are better with a lossless format like WAV or FLAC. (1) MP3 (and maybe the other lossy formats) adds a few milliseconds of silence to the beginning & end. If you try to trim it out it comes back when you re-export the new-modified MP3.
You can research “gapless” playback but it gets tricky.
if I really want to my CD player to play them based on track numbers and so on.
If you actually want to burn a CD you can make one-long file and burn use a CD burning application that supports cue sheets to burn a CD with track markers. I’ve done this several times with ImgBurn. I open a known-good cue sheet in Windows Notepad and edit it.
(1) Another advantage of converting to a lossless format is that you avoid an additional generation of lossy compression. When you open an MP3 in Audacity (or any normal audio editor) it gets decompressed. If you re-export as MP3 you are going through another generation of lossy compression and some “damage” accumulates. It’s not necessarily terrible, but you should be aware of it and try to minimize the number of times it’s re-compressed.
There are a few special-purpose MP3 editors like MP3directCut that can do limited editing without decompressing but the “gap” will still be a problem.
With FLAC metadata is better supported than on WAV. And your files will be almost half the size as WAV (but usually about 2 or 3 times larger than MP3).
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