Audacity Forum

I have Windows Xp and a Lenco 3866/67USB turntable.
I am trying to transfer my very old LPs to CDs. I have managed to record the LPs onto the PC and remove sundry scratches etc. I have split the recordings into separate tracks by carefully following the instructions found in Audacity Wiki. I have done the Multiple Export after having followed the "Extra notes about burning to CDs". But when I burn the CD all the tracks are bunched together as one track. (So far I have 3 wasted CDs)
Can anyone please help me?!
I'm no buff, so simple step-by-step instructions would be very much appreaciated.
Another thing: what is "Snap to". I set it to "On" (as instructed), but it reverts to "Off" after the aborted recording attempt.

Many thanks, whoever you are.

Sanlorenzo

sanlorenzo wrote:I have split the recordings into separate tracks by carefully following the instructions found in Audacity Wiki. I have done the Multiple Export

At that point you should have a collection of WAV files (one for each "song").
What program are you using to burn the CD? If you are using Windows Media Player for burning I'd recommend that you download CDBurnerXP and use that instead (it's free, and easy to use).

sanlorenzo wrote:what is "Snap to"

It is easiest to see what this does if you select "seconds" in the time display (click on the little black arrow next to one of the time display boxes near the bottom of Audacity and select "Seconds". Now, if you have "Snap To" enabled, you will notice that if you try to select a short section of audio, say 3 1/2 seconds, the selected area jumps (snaps) to the nearest exact second.

I do not recommend leaving the time scale set to seconds - that was just for testing.
If you are making CDs it can be an advantage to set the time scale to "hh:mm:ss +CDDA frames (75 fps)" and have snapping switched on - CDs work in blocks (called "frames") that are 1/75 seconds duration.

sanlorenzo wrote:The "Snap to" seems too compliacted and in any case outside my scope, although I have (as instructed) set the time scale to "cdda min:sec:frames 75fps" and snap to "on".

Don't worry about "Snap To", just leave it off (not selected). Nero is sufficiently sophisticated to not need exact CDDA boundaries so you won't need to use "Snap To".

sanlorenzo wrote:

"At this point you should have a collection of VAW files (one for each song"

What I have is as depicted on the Wiki tutorial under LABELS, i.e. a number of waveform "worms" linked by "silence" and labelled Song 1, 2 etc. Is this what I should have?
And then what?

Sounds good so far.
Then you need to use "Export Multiple".

In Audacity 1.2.6:
"File menu > Export Multiple"
Select WAV as the Export format.
Click on the "Choose" button and select a suitable folder (such as "My Documents", or the Desktop, or a folder that you make specifically for putting these files in.
"Split Files based on > Labels"
"Name Files: > Using Label/Track Name".
Click the "Export" button.

Audacity will then create a series of WAV files (one per label - make sure that you have a label set for the first track).
You can then add these files to a Nero Audio CD project and burn your CD (make sure that you set the CD type to "audio" if you want it to be compatible with ordinary CD players).

Hello
It works. Perhaps where I went wrong was that I "chose" to put the files back into the original folder. This time I parked them on Desktop and managed to burn a CD with track numbers. Which is a great step ahead and I was happy as a fiddle (no pun intended).
But, and there is a big BUT. When I played back the CD I found that the track numbers had been completely (and randomòy) shuffled.
Any suggestions? I might add that I identified the tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. and not by the song title - but that should make no difference???

CD burners, more accurately Music CD Authoring Programs let you arrange the music and the space between the songs any way you wish and that's the way the CD comes out. This happens inside the authoring program and has nothing to do with the computer, the song name, or the export order.

Desktop or file folder arrangements depend on operating system name and usually works out to alphabetic and numeric order. All ordered names have to have the same number of digits. 01, 02, 03, not 1, 2, 3, or 10 ends up in the wrong place if you were wondering why that happened.

Koz

Many thanks for learned explanation.
I shall re-label the songs 01, 02 etc if that is all it takes. If the number of tracks exceed ten, should I number 001, 002, 003 etc??
But I have another difficulty: I used

Automatic labelling based on silences

- in the dialogue box one is prompted to agree that the label be positioned 0.30 secs

before silence ends.

But on play-back I found that the track-interrupt takes place 0.30 secs (?) BEFORE the track (song) ends - the "missing" bit being the first thing you hear on the subsequent track. I have checked the positions of the label flags and found that they are exactly in the middle of the silence

waveforms

between the songs. These silences are to the order of 2 to 4 seconds long.
Have I done something wrong?
Thank you for your contiinued patience.
Sanlorenzo

Which version of Audacity are you using? (look in Audacity Help menu > About Audacity)

sanlorenzo wrote:I shall re-label the songs 01, 02 etc if that is all it takes. If the number of tracks exceed ten, should I number 001, 002, 003 etc??

You would only need 00x, 00y etc. if you were going to have more than 100 tracks - but note that the Red Book standard for CDs stipulates among other things a limit of 99 tracks per CD.

I do have triple-figure-numbered "pseudo" albums on my iPod - those are extracts from FM radio shows and not intended for burning to CDs (though I can of course still burn a subsset of those to a CD if ever required).

WC

For waxcylinder: Many thanks for tip.
For stevethefiddle: I'm using version 1.2.6

sanlorenzo

iTunes lets you create playlists which allow song ordering by simple dragging. You can listen to a playlist in iTunes or your iPod instead of a raw collection of songs. If you don't do that, the system will always play from 'Aardvaark Lullaby' forward or whichever iTunes column you have selected -- album name, music type, artist, etc.

The rule is the number of digits in any one collection needs to be the same. On a Music CD, you would never need any more than one leading zero since you can't put 100 songs in. Only up to 99.

Koz