I am running Audacity 2.0.6 on Windows 7. My problem is that I am digitizing songs from my tape casette player to Audacity, and making sure that there is at least a 2 second gap between each songs. i then export the data tape to a WAV file, and then burn a CD from it using Windows Media Player… When i try to rip the individual songs from the CD, it seems that despite the 2 second gap, the songs on the CD have been recorded as one continuous recording. Is there any way to fix this with either the Windows Media Player or Audacity settings? Thanks cwk
data tape to a WAV file
One WAV file? You are supposed to put Labels at the beginnings of each song on the timeline (including the first one) and then File > Export Multiple. This will give you a pile of individual music files which you then drag to Windows Media. Tell Windows Media to burn an Audio CD and there may be an option to include or change the 2-second gap between songs. You should not have to include the gap with the music.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_copying_tapes_lps_or_minidiscs_to_cd.html
Windows Media should hand you back an Audio CD with each of the individual songs, as many as 99 and up to 78 minutes total.
You may have made a Data CD by accident. There is no gap management in a Data CD.
Koz
Aha, I will try that.Thanks
The labelling and multiple export tip worked fine. Thank you very much.
I would appreciate it if you could advise me on another problem. Namely, some of my tape tracks that I have recorded onto Audacity are very loud and some are very soft. I applied the “Normalizing” effect to the data recording, but it did not equalize the sound level. Is there any way to make all the tracks play at the same volume? Thanks
There’s no magic wand, no. Normalize and its sister Amplify are stupid tools and they do almost the same thing. You choose a particular volume and both of them rip through an entire song (or collection if you haven’t broken them up yet) and forces the one loudest note or sound to be that volume, and drags the rest of the song behind it. Neither tool has any idea how loud the song is and they can both be faked out by one very loud sound; a typical one being a cat hair on the record. That car hair pop will come out perfect every time. The rest of the song probably not so much.
You can try Effect > Compressor. That one does try to tame wild music note by note or phrase by phrase, but any tool that does that also produces some distortion. The before and after songs no longer match, but it may be good enough for you.
If your songs are “clean” (no cat hairs), you might be able to apply Normalize to individual songs instead of a whole side of the record.
All that is assuming the production values of your music are all the same. There is no good way to make an old recording match a modern produced one. Newer songs are produced with the idea that louder is always better and they are much denser and forward than the older more restrained recordings.
Koz
I would appreciate it if you could advise me on another problem. Namely, some of my tape tracks that I have recorded onto Audacity are very loud and some are very soft. I applied the “Normalizing” effect to the data recording, but it did not equalize the sound level. Is there any way to make all the tracks play at the same volume? Thanks
A “classic problem”.
Normalizing basically “maximizes” the file by adjusting the volume to the point where the wave peaks hit 0dB (the “digital maximum”). If you go any louder than that you’ll get clipping (distorted flat-topped waves). Or some people like to normalize to near 0dB.
The problem is, perceived loudness doesn’t correlate well with the peaks… It’s more correlated to the average volume and the frequency content. It’s common to have a quiet-sounding song with big peaks.
So… If you are making a CD, the best solution is:
1. Normalize all of the tracks individually. (Now, all of the songs are as loud as they can go without clipping).
2. Listen to the tracks. If some tracks are louder than others, choose the quietest sounding track as your reference.
3. Reduce the volume of the other tracks (by ear) as necessary to match the reference track.
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There is a group of tools called [u]ReplayGain[/u], MP3Gain, WAVEgain, etc. These tools analyze the “loudness” of your files to make them all approximately equal in loudness. Just as you have to reduce volume when doing it manually, ReplayGain tends to reduce the volume of many/most files. People often complain that the songs are too quiet when they 1st try ReplayGain.
Since ReplayGain needs to work with “all of the songs in the world”, If you are trying to match the volume of a few songs on a CD (in this case you’d use WAVEgain), you could end-up with none of the songs normalized/maximized.
ReplayGain works with player software that supports it to adjust the volume at playback-time. It adds a tag to the file, but it doesn’t actually change the volume of the audio, so your player software has to support it. Apple has something similar called Sound Check.
MP3Gain and WAVEgain, actually change the file-volume so it works with any player or player-software. If you are making an audio CD, you’d choose WAVEgain.
Finally, there is dynamic compression. (Audacity has a Compressor effect.) In general, compression either boosts the quiet parts and/or reduces the loud part/peaks. In practice, it’s normally used to make “everything louder” without boosting/clipping the peaks. This is a non-linear effect and it be over-done and if you push it far enough, it can sound like distortion. A song that’s “constantly loud” can sound “intense and exciting”, but after a few minutes it can become boring and the listener may simply turn-down the playback volume, or skip to the next song.
Most modern popular music is highly-compressed. Some modern CDs are actually clipped. One of the reasons some listeners prefer older vinyl records over the remastered CDs is that the dynamics are sometimes compressed on the CD version. (I don’t want to go too far off-topic, but there is lots of misinformation about this because the vinyl production & playback process also makes the dynamics measure higher without actually changing the dynamics of the sound.)
MP3Gain and WAVEgain, actually change the file-volume so it works with any player or player-software. If you are making an audio CD, you’d choose WAVEgain.
That was one question I had. ReplayGain just adds a loudness tag inside the soundfile, right? Do all CD burners pay attention to that? Is it available cross-platform? Can you force a player to ignore it and how do you know that a player is paying attention to it?
Koz
CDBurnerXP understands ReplayGain (it’s a setting) and I guess at least some specialist burning apps understand ReplayGain.
I don’t think Windows Media Player understands ReplayGain and I think iTunes only respects SoundCheck.
If you must burn CD from MP3, MP3Gain changes the volume of the file (losslessly - which I suppose is done like MP3DirectCut by adjusting the values in each frame). You can remove the MP3Gain tags from the MP3 and it does not change the volume of the file, so MP3Gain would not be a problem for a CD burner.
WAVEGain re-encodes the audio so that would not be a problem for a CD burner.
Gale
Windows Media Player (12) has its own system - they call it “Automatic Volume Leveling”. Apparently it is accessed via:
“Enhancements > Crossfading and Auto Volume Leveling”
Thanks, Steve. OK, I see that when right-clicking without being in the “Library”. That is a playback feature. The “Burn” tab in the main Options has a checkbox “Apply volume leveling across tracks”. The Help for that says
If you’re burning songs originally recorded at different volume levels, select this check box to minimize the volume differences between the songs on audio CDs that you burn. This helps avoid having to adjust the volume as you play the CD.
I assume you don’t need to to enable the playback option for Volume Leveling to burn a CD with Volume Leveling enabled.
Gale
Thanks,all, for the useful information. CWK