BACKGROUND
I’m a newbie just learning Audacity 2.1.1 for an audio project. The project consists of 4 separate audio (.wav) files/tracks that run anywhere between 45 to 60 min each. I’m working on the first one now, but I need to do this to all 4 of them: After I clean up the audio, I will be splitting each track into several (16-20) individual tracks in preparation for burning them onto CDs. Currently, the individual pieces of music are separated by silence (as they would be on a CD) of approximately 4 to 8 seconds between each piece of music. Before I split the long tracks, I want to make sure that the time of silence is consistent between the pieces of music on the track.
QUESTION
How can I shorten or lengthen the time of “silence” between the pieces of music so that it is the same length of time between each one? I’m thinking 5 seconds between the pieces of music as a standard for my project.
I want to make sure that the time of silence is consistent between the pieces of music on the track.
You don’t do that at the content level, you do that at the burn level.
You produce the works tight so they would sound OK if you jammed them into each other with no silence. Then, at the burn step, you tell the Audio CD Authoring and Burning software that you want 2, 4, or whatever seconds of silence between each track. They will all be the same, so if you need individual size silences, the project is suddenly much harder.
If your burning software fails to ask you about the gap size, then you are probably not creating an Audio CD (attach).
Do Not use MP3 anywhere in the process. Export from Audacity WAV (Microsoft). Then copy the files to the burning software. Audacity default WAV export quality is the same as Audio CD.
Koz
It would be unusual, but if you actually wanted to hear not silence but room noise or recording noise rather than “nothing” between CD tracks, you would do that at the content stage and set no gap at the burn stage.
If you wanted to shorten “non-silent” silences you could use Truncate Silence but it may still be quicker to delete silences manually if you have to experiment a lot with Truncate Silence settings.
If you had to lengthen “non-silent” silences you could perhaps copy and paste some “room noise” or use Effect > Change Speed… or Change Tempo… or Effect > Repeat… on the silence (whatever sounded best).
Wow, such a simple answer to an over-complicated question. I overthought it! Thanks for the advice Koz & Gale. And thanks for correcting my typo in the Subject line.
Jerry
