Audacity Forum

Kia Ora from NZ! I am new to this recording and still finding my way. I am trying to copy my cassettes on to disc and am wondring if anybody out the can tell me in simple terms how I can record both sides of the cassette and be able to get them all as one long track and able to play it on my sound system and fast forward from one track to another. At present all I can do is get side one as track one and side 2 as track 2 and can't just go forward from one song to another.
Would really appreciate your help and know it so basic but just can;t get it!!
Many thanks
Cheers!!

two things here as i read your post. first use the label function to tell where to split the tracks and then export multiple. repeat this for both sides of the cassette. save all the exports in the same folder. then drag and drop the contents of that folder into your cd burnign program (nero roxio etc). when you burn the cd you will have separate tracks taht you can play by track number. i don't know how to fast forward on a cd but picking the number to play should do what you need. more details on label and export check out the docs andor the wiki.

See this set of tutorials from the 1.3/2.0 manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... iscs_to_CD

and this Wiki article: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Trans ... uter_or_CD

and this one: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/How_to_burn_CDs

WC

My prefered method is to use a CUE Sheet and Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to burn unsplit wave files to CD.
I still use the silence finder and the sound finder to find the beginning of the tracks and the length of the pregaps respectively. One trick to burning CDs is that the tracks can only be divided to the nearest CDDA frame (1/75th of a second). So I use that view.
If you don't cut on the CDDA frames, fading out and in at the ends and beginnings of all the tracks can prevent a clicking sound when your burning software adds silence at the end of each track to round up to the nearest CDDA frame.

Now I am veering into one of my questions/fearure requests which is:
Can the silence finder be made to snap to the CDDA frames?

Perhaps choosing CDDA snap-to just before using the silence finder works.

i thought it did that. may be wrong. i set the time on the bottom to frames. get no spikes pops or clicks when i edit. maybe i was lucky.

Just to be clear, I follow everything the tutorial says to do to spit the tracks except instead of exporting multiple, which is a cool option for sure, I usually just split the tracks in a CUE file. This allows me to preserve the gap length between tracks on an LP. I have a theory that the exact length of pause between songs is really part of the music itself. Modern CDs tend to insert a uniform 2 second gap between songs, which isn't the way it used to be at all. Album sides were mastered in their entirety with the individual tracks very carefully placed on the timeline.

Learning to use cuesheets gives you a lot more control of how you burn CDs. You can also use cuesheets to do the opposite of what I have been saying. You can trim the silence off the ends of all your tracks and then re-insert the gaps using a cuesheet. Or sometimes your burning software will give you the option to add a 2 second gap between all the tracks.

OK, I have to stop talking, I hope I've been clear.

i am confused. i still have the exact gap length when i use the label and export multiple. if its important to you then leave them be as is. i find most of them too long , especially from cassettes and need to shorten them to avoid real long pauses between tracks on the cd.
and i need to set the label point near the start of the next track so the next track starts promptly (say 1sec or less) instead of being delayed by a long gap that i split in the middle. not sure where cue sheets fit in. are they in audacity or nero/roxio or somewhere else.

To clarify, I think I answered my own question here. I think checking snap to will have the effect of causing the labels to be snapped-to whatever you want them to be snapped-to.

I mean even when using the silence or the new sound finder.

If you are very careful about setting the audio threshold to a good value, using sound finder can be an easy way to skip the gaps between the tracks when using export multiple. Doing it this way tends to cause the tracks to be cut-off on long fade-outs as the level gets close the the general noise. But it can sound good to cut out the part of the music that almost high-lights the noise as it fades out.

This only works if your burning software gives you the option of re-inserting 2 second silences between tracks. Or again, use cuesheets. I think they are the way to go.

Personally I prefer controlling the intertrack gaps in Audacity myself (my "default" is to leave a 1.5 second trail and a 0.5 second run-in) - then use Export multiple - but I ensure that my CD burner s/w is set to "Gapless Burning" so no addiotional 2-second gaps are added by the burner s/w.

I prefer to work this way as I use the exported WAVs both for (sometimes) burning CDs and for loading into iTunes (wher I convert them into AAC) - so for iTunes I need to control the gap-length.

I admire Ctrl+N's purist approach to preserving the original LP gap length (my son would agree with you Ctrl+N ) - but these days I prefer to trim down gaps that I think are too long - I also get rid of excessive applause at the end of live tracks (I get bored of listening to that). I aslo clean the intertrack gaps with fade-outs and fade-ins and replace the gap with true silence (with CTRL+L).

Update: I've just been working on one of my wife's LPs, a Planxty album, one intertrack gap is 28 seconds !! Not any more it isn't

WC