I am wanting to make 2 songs flow into one another. One song ends and another begins without even noticing the next track has started playing. I have tried making labels and exporting, I have tried mixing them together and exporting selected audio, etc. But when they are playing in a player, even though they do flow into each other, there’s an obvious popping noise where the first track ends and the second starts. I’ve tried different media players and there is always this obvious noise indicating that the track has switched. How do I make this transition seamless and unnoticed?
Could this be what you are looking for? - Creating a crossfade
Mark B
Unfortunately, no. Crossfade seems to literally be the only answer I ever find and I know how to do that. An example of what I mean would be like on Periphery’s first album. The song Zyglrox goes into Racecar seamlessly without any clicks or pops between track transitions. How that remainder of Zyglrox is still going as the track switches to Racecar. I’m wanting a small overlap between the end of the first track and start of the second as it moves from one track to the next with no click or pop sound that makes it obvious it just switched to another song. But again, I’ve tried so many ways of exporting the audio with that small overlap and it always has an obvious noise where it switches.
I don’t know what else to suggest. It worked perfectly for me and I’ve never done it before.
Mark B
That would be a short crossfade. Maybe just a few milliseconds.
Sometimes it takes trial-and-error and it may sound better with a longer crossfade of one second or so.
Zoom-in so you can see what’s happening.
You can try to match the beats but that will usually require some additional editing.
You may want to temporarily slide the 2nd track so there’s a gap between fade-out and fade-in to make sure there are no pops/noises before sliding back to make the actual crossfade.
If you overlap too much without enough fade, the mixed (summed) audio may go over 0dB and clip (distort). But if the mix is 50/50 at the mid-point you should be OK.
You can get a “pop” if you cut in the middle of a wave, but with fade-ins and fade-outs there is no hard cut.
Make sure there there is nothing after the fade-out and nothing before the fade-in. You have to fade to-and-from silence.
P.S.
I’ve made a few crossfaded CDs and use what I call a “DJ crossfade”. I don’t actually ADD any fade-out or fade-in. I just overlap the beginning of the 2nd song as the 1st song is fading-out naturally. BUT I have to be careful to keep the mix from going over 0dB and clipping. If the 1st song ends too-loud or the next song starts too-loud I have to use less overlap. And sometimes I just have to take-out the gap with no overlap.
Basically the first song ends with a delay ring out. Only 4 seconds long. The beginning of the next song is a fade in droning sound. I want the droning one to start while the delay of the first still rings out to silence behind it. I tried a 0.5 millisecond Crossfade, but there’s an obvious fade and still a POP sound when the track switches to the next in a player. It’s been a few years, but I swear I used to be able just select audio, export that as track 1 then drag the slider and export the rest as track 2 and it didn’t have this pop noise. I am genuinely lost
Ahhh… It shouldn’t be the “next track”. After crossfading the two (or more) tracks become one longer track.
There are ways to make a CD from one long file and no gaps (like a concert) and track markers can be placed wherever you want. That’s a feature on “shiny discs” and it’s not standard on “computer” media files.
Most media players have a crossfade feature but you can’t control the way that different tracks crossfade.
I use Winamp with the 3rd-party SqrSoft advanced crossfader plugin. It’s “smart” and it can be configured to start the crossfade when the current track drops to a certain dB level, etc. Sam DJ and some other DJ applications also have smart crossfading.
I’m not wanting 1 long track. I am wanting 2 tracks that flow into one another. I apologize if I failed to explain clearly. Basically the first song plays the last note, and while that’s ringing out the song switches and the next starts playing while that first one rings out to silence behind the start of the next song. When the song switches in a player there’s an obvious pop sound indicating that it’s switched. I just don’t know how it’s done smoothly with any noise
Like the Rolling Stones said, “You can’t always get what you want”. 
You can simply use the the crossfade feature on your player software and you won’t need to do anything special in Audacity (but then all of your songs will crossfade and you may not get the crossfade/overlap that you want).
Or you can make a CD (or DVD or Blu-Ray) from one big file and add chapter markers with a cue sheet.
Or it’s possible to make “one big” crossfaded file, and cut it back into in two files on a zero crossing, make two WAV or FLAC files, and hope that your player software can play “gapless”. (MP3 or other lossy compression usually isn’t gapless so your chances are better with WAV or FLAC.) But then if you play just one track you’ll hear a bit of the crossfade at the end of the 1st track and the beginning of the next track. (Same thing if you make a CD and put the track marker in the middle of a crossfade.)
MKA (and MKV) also supports chapters but I don’t know anything about it. I assume it’s like a CD with one file and markers. “One file” assures a clean transition with no gaps. And of course you’ll have to use a player that supports MKA files and chapters.
I also didn’t realise you meant this. I had one other idea and that is to use the free DJ software Mixxx to play the songs. Add them to the AutoDJ queue, set the fade interval to something that suits you - the default 10 secs is too long for my taste - and then Enable AutoDJ. The first track will play and then fade into the second (or more if you have more in the queue). But, DVDdoug’s Rolling Stones quote might still apply .
Mark B