Hi–I’m a longtime user of Audacity for ripping old vinyl lps via my Ion USB turntable. I tried to use the ‘silence finder’ to help me save time and split tracks into individual files, but in the end I always wound up spending more time autospliting and then undoing and then autosplitting and then undoing as I tried to find the right levels/lengths of silence [There’s often a lot of noise/scratches on the lps I rip]. A much better way for me would be if there were a way for me to split the recording manually WHILE I am listening/recording the record itself… I know some standalone CD burners do this, but that’s a different ball of wax (so to speak).
Is there any way to do what I need in Audacity?
Thanks,
Ben
Audacity has provision to add a label at any time in the recording. You can then use the labels (which later become sticky) to identify the track breaks.
My Hot Key is Command-B or Tracks > Add Label. Yours is going to be different, but all Audacity programs have one. One oddball thing you need to be careful of is to press Enter after you place a label. Add Label naturally stops for you to add a comment. Of course, you can actually add a comment if you wish, then press Enter.
As you found, Silent Sense fails because records are never silent. You can also, if you’re not transferring opera, use the fact that the vast majority of popular music is 3 minutes or less. This is, or was a broadcast thing. Many stations will not play a song over three minutes long. Some labels even resorted to evil tricks like labeling the record 2:73 hoping nobody would notice.
Koz