splitting recordings into separate tracks

[djeddieo.com]

what if there ARE no silences, like on a DJ mix? I'd still like to skip to the next (or previous) track, which could begin at the exact frame the track is introduced or at some close-by, arbitrary point. whomper, can use Ctrl B by simply moving the Selection Tool to the points I want to use, and create multiple labels?

edit: I found the instructions in the manual, HEREhttp://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... ate_tracks. It appears the answer is yes!

[djeddieo.com]

Okay, an update: I used Ctrl B and the Selection Tool to make 24 labels, all Artist - Song Title. Following the instructions from the manual, I then chose "File> Export Multiple" and WAV and chose to have those tracks saved to My Music, which is where the aup file was (this was mistake #1 I think; see below). Then, the Metadata Editor dialog opened and the fun begins! For 24 songs, I entered Band, Title, Album, and Year. "Track #" was already in each Metadata dialog box. When I was finally done a confirmation dialog appeared listing the files that were created. I didn't look too closely at it as it appeared correct, and I quickly hit Okay, beginning the Export process (Maybe THAT was a mistake on my part).

When the export was complete these files all ended up in My Music, but scattered around alphabetically by Artist name, not numerically by Track #. Is this because of something I did wrong?

Luckily for me, I don't have a lot of WAV files, so sorting My Music by file type greatly simplified finding them all, and I moved them to a new folder, then numbered them 01-24. At that point, I selected them all and clicked Copy To Audio CD.

Windows Media Player expressed some hesitation, displaying "Some files might not fit on the CD. The required space cannot be calculated accurately because some files might be missing duration information. To ensure the calculation is accurate, play the files that are missing duration information." I wasted a bit more time before coming to the realization that Windows Media Player will not support Disc At Once recording, so I need another burner app. I did find one, but I don't know if it's okay to mention it here.

Anyway, I load all the WAV files into the new burner, and it says my total play time is 80:37. Now that still includes 2 seconds silence between each song, which gets removed in the next step supposedly, and Audacity says it's 79:51, so I click Burn, choose no gap between songs, and it still says it's too long. For the sake of getting SOMETHING burned, I delete the last track, and it burns a 76:19 disc in about three minutes. I toss it in my PC and it plays in iTunes (my default player) much as I had hoped: no gaps, no clicks, and the number of the track playing advances with the prior song typically fading for a few additional seconds. However, all my painstaking Metadata typing appears to be for naught: all tracks show up as Track 01, Track, 02, etc.

I'm guessing I did a few things wrong here, beyond the ones I "fixed"....can anyone sharpen me up? Thanks.

[waxcylinder]

WAV files generally do not carry metadata (there are some exceptions - but not in this case I think - even if your WAVs are carrying metadata, I suspect that iTunes will just ignore it).

I also export WAVs for iTunes I label my tracks in an Audacity project as: 01 <song_name_1>, 02 <song_name_2>, etc.
I convert these WAV files to AAC in iTunes. The 01, 02 etc is to get the correct ordering, I strip these now redundant bits off the song titles which do transfer to iTunes ok (they come from the WAV filename and not the metadata).

I do all my metadata editing in iTunes - I personally find it much easier to do it there - and I prefer to export "clean" WAVs with no metadata (some applications don't work with WAVs that have metadata apparently).

You might like to look at this styicky thread which outlines my workflow: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 28&t=18759

WC

[djeddieo.com]

yeah, I shoulda just used iTunes, but I misinterpreted the "WAV for Windows/AIFF for Mac" instruction. That would've saved me all that WMP nonsense and the new burner app. Would you also agree that one should choose a folder? I'll study your workflow and try to adapt it to my different application, i.e. making continuous mix sets of mp3s (note that my ORIGINAL files that I import into Audacity are mp3s, if that makes a difference).

[djeddieo.com]

boy, did I just do something STUPID!! I exported to mp3, and clicked a little too quickly through the screens without reading. Thus, I selected "Use Label/Track Name" and "Overwrite Existing Files", which, given the nature of my Audacity project (overlapping songs), ruined all my song files! I had just about resigned myself to having to go out and re-obtain the 24 songs, when a solution occurred to me: reopen the aup file, separate the songs and move the labels, then "Save As" using a new name, and export to mp3 again, again selecting "Use Label/Track Name" and "Overwrite Existing Files". Hopefully this might help someone in the future as dumb as I!

[waxcylinder]

Would you also agree that one should choose a folder?

Absolutely - or rather a set of folders - a taxonomy even.

I have a folder under my username called "Audacity Projects" under that is a set of folders e.g. "Radio recordings", "LPs", "Singles 45s".
Each of these has subdolders by category, within each sub-folder there is a further sub-folder by artist and then a further subfolder by album or whatever.

This structure is replicated on my external hard drives which are used for the archive backup storage of the WAV files that I make. This way stuff can be easily found.

sample taxonomy file structure

file structure.PNG (43.5 KiB) Viewed 1318 times

WC

[djeddieo.com]

hey all, I just realized something, and my discovery may just help any other dopes (like me), at least if they're trying to do something similar to me, which is to make a CONTINUOUS, non-stop mix of separate tracks; in my case it's overlapped tracks, like a mixtape, but others might have a live album with audience applause between tracks or a "ready-mixed" LP, like say, Donna Summer's "Bad Girls" or The Who's "Quadrophenia". Anyway, the problem is that Audacity puts a tiny little bit of silence "between" each track, even if you didn't want that, and the solution has been stated as use "burn at once" setting on your burner app. Unfortunately, iTunes is what I use for burning, and doesn't offer such a setting. It simply asks if you want "none" for a gap between songs, and even if you select that, these Audacity gaps persist. Since iTunes works to my satisfaction in all other categories, I'm loathe to replace it. I've messed around a bit with the CDs I made of the Audacity sets, and I've discovered that the silence is (a) at the END of each track; the beginnings are instant, and (b) the silence measures 0.05 seconds. This means that one can go into the "Get Info" menu for each track and, under Options, reduce the Stop Time by 0.05 seconds, like the example below:

3:34.491 -> 3:34.441

This change allows the CD to play continuously without gaps in any player.

[steve]

the problem is that Audacity puts a tiny little bit of silence "between" each track, even if you didn't want that

That should not be happening if you are using Audacity 1.3.12 and are exporting as a WAV format. You may get an inexact file length if you are exporting in a lossy format, or if you are using an old beta version, but Audacity 1.3.12 exports the audio at exactly the right length. Another possible explanation is that your CD burner application is adding a bit of silence to the end of the tracks.Perhaps it requires the audio to be of a length that falls exactly on a CDDA frame boundary. If that is the case, then when you are exporting your track you should set the time display in Audacity to hh:mm:ss + CDDA frames (75 fps) and switch on the "Snap To" function. When you trim/split your audio tracks the "Snap to" will ensure that the edit points, and thus the exported track length, will be an exact number of frames. Another option would be to use a CD burning program that supports gapless burning without the need for the tracks to be an exact frame length (Nero has this option).

the solution has been stated as use "burn at once" setting on your burner app.

I think you mean "Disk at Once" (DAO). That is not the same as "gapless" burning, which is simply to set the pause between tracks (2 second default) to zero. There are two "modes" for burning CDs - TAO (Track at Once) and DAO (Disk at Once). Unfortunately not all CD drives support DAO, but it is required for gapless burning to be exactly gapless.

I suspect that what may be happening is that your CD burning App requires the end of the audio to lie on a CDDA boundary, and when you set the length to slightly shorter than the actual audio length, the CD burning program is automatically snapping that value to the nearest CDDA frame boundary. If you use the snap to feature in Audacity as described above, then that will hopefully remedy the problem without needing to change your software or fiddle about changing the track length in iTunes.