exported wave file length not equal to audacity track length

[billko]

A little background:

I ripped a tape into Audacity, adjusted the overall amplification (to keep the track loudness relative to each other), used noise reduction then EQ (to revive the high end after the NR), cut it up into tracks, then exported the whole thing to a wave file. I thought it would be great to be able to use a cue file to burn a CD of it, so I created labels using the project --> create labels at selection after selecting each track. I verified the label info matched the track info they were related to in terms of length/position. I exported the label info. I developed a mini-app to change the raw label info into a cue file, which worked fine. I then burned a CD using the cue file, and they were all off by at least a few tenths of seconds. Hmmm... I checked the cue file, and the info there matched the info in the label export, which matched the label info itself. (Actually, the cue file can only go to 1/100 seconds, so there was a tiny error, but this error is an order of magnitude smaller than what I saw and was not cumulative.)

So I exported each track separately and lo n behold, all the tracks were short by 1/10 second or more...

What do you think happened???

Thanks,

Bill

[waxcylinder]

Can't comment on the length issue (I'm now a reasonably expeienced user, but I never look under the hood) - but why do you need a cue sheet to burn a CD?

Having labelled your tracks all you need to do is to export multiple as a set of WAV files and then use a CD burner to create a CD from the set of WAVs. Using this method, many of the CDs that I have produced from vinyl albums (and taped copies) are recognized quite happily by the Gracenote/CDDB database when I rip the CDs into iTunes - so Gracenote is obviously happy with the length produced.

And to aid getting the CD tracks in the right order, I label my Audacity tracks as 01 <track_name_1> <artist_1>, 02 <track_name_2> <artist_2>, etc.

WC

[billko]

Can't comment on the length issue (I'm now a reasonably expeienced user, but I never look under the hood) - but why do you need a cue sheet to burn a CD?

Having labelled your tracks all you need to do is to export multiple as a set of WAV files and then use a CD burner to create a CD from the set of WAVs. Using this method, many of the CDs that I have produced from vinyl albums (and taped copies) are recognized quite happily by the Gracenote/CDDB database when I rip the CDs into iTunes - so Gracenote is obviously happy with the length produced.

And to aid getting the CD tracks in the right order, I label my Audacity tracks as 01 <track_name_1> <artist_1>, 02 <track_name_2> <artist_2>, etc.

WC

I'm sorry if I emphasized the wrong issue. The main issue was that ANY waves exported did not match the waveform that was stored in the project, but to illustrate it, I used the cue file project so you could one could see that all the data said it should be one length and the exported file was another. Besides, it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing, regardless of whether or not my reasons for doing it seem strange. I still have to determine whether the wave file was merely "chopped off" or if it is something more sinister, like a calculation issue that compressed the same amount of data into a shorter time frame, effectively transposing the pitch as well as accelerating the tempo (like playing a 33 1/3 rpm record at 45 rpm but much less pronounced, of course).

Thanks for taking the time to respond!

Bill

Oh, BTW - the reason why I wrote the application was just to waste some time and see how easily it could be done. The reasons you'd want to burn a CD with a cue file and a single wave form would be the same reasons for burning a data CD from an ISO image, plus the disc will burn pretty much the same way with any software that supports burning from a cue file. (The purists will say that you have to contend with CD burner read and write offsets, me being one of them.) Not so when burning separate wave files. It also gets pretty complicated making a CD with indexes in the songs if you burn each wave file separately.

[billko]

Ummm, let's just consider this thread closed, due to author (me) incompetence!

Bill