While importing commercial CDs directly from the CD (rather than importing to itunes then to audacity), I noticed two issues.
My procedure is to use the Import>audio command, highlight all tracks within an album listed in Finder, then import. I then tracks>align tracks> end to end. Then I generate>silence (30 secs) at the end. I hate it when the next track just starts playing, so I get 30 seconds to press stop.
If there are more than 9 tracks, the import is in the wrong order. It imports eleven tracks in this order: 1, 10, 11, 2, 3, … 9.
After exporting, instead of just inserting a new CD for another project, you must completely close audacity and re-open it in order for the newly inserted CD to show in the import (finder-like) list within audacity. While the new CD is correctly listed in Mac’s finder, it is not updated within audacity.
What version of OS X? On Mavericks, 1.wav, 10.wav and 11.wav are imported from the hard drive in that order (from top to bottom). Audacity just uses the file system order.
I can’t test on Mavericks with a real CD drive, but mounting and unmounting a DMG is reflected in the Audacity file open/import dialog while the dialog is open, so it’s real-time.
Importing direct from the CD are .aiff format files, not .wav. But is it possible to program within audacity to look at the highest number, note the number of digits, then add leading zeros? Like it reads there are 11 tracks, so it would make 1 into 01, etc. Like I said, it’s more an issue, and thus may not be changeable.
Added at edit:
An alternative might be, where the ‘move track down’ command is (within the program window), maybe add ‘move track to end’ which would save moving each track one by one. I did try selecting two tracks (10 and 11) and selected move track down, but only the first track moved. Also, it would be nice to be able to move selected adjacent tracks at the same time (i.e., select all tracks above 9 and move them all down together).
When you say importing a DMG, I’m not sure what you mean, because DMGs to me are the files I use to add programs to my computer, like PC’s .exe. When I tried to click on the CD drive in Finder, the display was not enough to identify what CD was in the player, but Audacity would not let me click on the CD drive at all. It would just jump back to whatever I had it on before. I tried F5, refresh, but that did not transfer to Audacity. Could a refresh option under file work to reload the Finder contents within audacity?
Thanks for such a versatile program. It keeps doing whatever I seem to need it to do.
Is there any reason you’re studiously avoiding using iTunes for this music management? You can configure iTunes to be loss-less for CD import.
Pull the music into iTunes, create a playlist and drag the music over to it. Once you do that, you can arrange the music inside the playlist in any order you wish and they will stick that way. If you then burn an Audio CD, the music will stay in that order.
If you need gaps and separations, you can create silent clips in Audacity and pull them into iTunes, too and put them in the right places in the playlist.
Any reason that wouldn’t work?
Most operating systems, left to their own devices will go by filename order which gives you the 1 > 10 > 11 problem. You can work around that with leading zeros: 01, 02, 03, etc.
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.DMG is a Disk Image. It is a tiny “fake” disk drive mounted on your desktop (or anywhere). Disk Drives do not have to be spinning metal or memory modules. It can contain anything, but it’s very popular for moving programs or other major program collections around.
When you install a program from a Disk Image, it looks like you opened up your computer case with a screwdriver and put a physical drive in there for the purpose of installing a program. In reality, you did no such thing. It just appears like you did to OS-X.
There will be two new move commands be available in version 2.0.6, “Move to Top” and “Move to Bottom”. Since they are in the drop down menu, they will only move the track with focus. Nevertheless, a great improvement.
Very few new Macs have CD drives these days. A CD Drive doesn’t fit with making a wafer thin computer.
When you put your CD in, doesn’t Finder mount the CD on the left under “Devices”? When you look at the list of mounted AIFF files in Finder, and click on Name to sort them by name, what order are the AIFF files in? If they are in order 1, 2, 3…9, 10, 11 (and not 1,10,11, 2, 3…) then Mac is already using natural number sort. If the tracks are sorted in natural number order but you still get them into Audacity as 1, 10, 11, 2 then I would guess that the bug is in Mac rather than Audacity.
Assuming you are sighted, you could click and drag on track 10 and drag it to underneath track 9 and so on. You can only drag one track at a time, though.
If the CD appears mounted under Devices then I don’t see why it isn’t updated in the Audacity file open window given a DMG is updated there (in Mavericks).
What happens if you have a CD mounted, then use File > Open in your web browser. Open 1.aiff in the browser. Change to another CD, then use File > Open again to open 1.aiff. Do you still hear the track from the CD you’ve taken out? Is this what the problem is in Audacity, not that the CD drive doesn’t show, but that it’s opening cached files from the previous CD?
I guess I forgot to click on notify when reply is posted.
I was avoiding itunes just to save a step. I’ll use itunes for any disc with more than 9 tracks.
Yes, in finder the tracks are listed in proper order, but within audacity, file>import does it as 1, 10, 11, 2, 3… .
My experience with dragging tracks is not good. I can drag a track to move down one place, but I can’t find where to put the cursor to get the tracks to scroll.
Thanks. I would still guess it’s a Mac bug, given Audacity takes the alphanumeric order it’s given.
You just have to keep holding until the Audacity window scrolls down, then release when you get to where you want drop the track. Audacity moves the track when the pointing hand gets over the track name. If you drag too far, just drag back.
Re-reading this topic, I am still not clear what the exact problem is with the File Open/Import dialogue in Audacity. When you put in a new CD, does the CD drive in the open/import dialogue disappear, or does the drive show AIFF files but when you import them, they are the files from the CD you already took out?