All I need to do is burn my cassettes to CD's

[will09]

thanks Steve : that's what I did . I ended up with one long CD with one track containing all the songs. I now realize what I did wrong . It sounded fine but I need tracks to I can see and skip . Right now all I have are RW disc's but then I didn't finalize the brun thinking i could burn more on later , doesn't work that way. I did finalize the recordable disc can't rerase that one . I need to get more discs . most of my players will play RW discs and once I learn this thing I can go back and erase . Then get readable discs and just do this one cassette over again and then on to the rest .

[kozikowski]

After they are finalized, single-shot CD-R disks are the most compatible with store-bought Audio CDs. I think you can force CD-RWs to work, but it takes much longer and some older players might not know what to do with them.

I record whole hour-long radio shows and that works, but even then I occasionally wish I could skip between the three major segments of the show. Chopping an album up into songs is highly recommended, but you need to know that Audio CDs don't naturally carry song titles. When you slide a CD into a computer, the computer goes on-line and looks up the titles for you making you think they've been there all along. Of course, that doesn't work so well in the car.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

This set of tutorials from the Manual may be useful to you: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tu ... to_cd.html

especially this one: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sp ... racks.html

and this one: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/bu ... _a_cd.html

WC

[will09]

I tried last night to burn separate tracks yet I screwed the entire thing up and I recorded off the cassette again to do this.

I could not figure out how on earth to get Audacity to separate the CD into separate tracks . I have gone over the Audacity info again and again and still can't figure out how to setup track numbers so I can export the recording . I know how to burn it . Can anyone tell me how this works ? I need it so it just shows a track number for each song .

It seems you have to due any changes on Audacity before saving the recording or if there's a way to save then come back later and edit the Audacity . I tried to save the Audacity recording and it said something about saving changes , I have yet to figure this out.

All my CD players only show track numbers and on the PC it shows song titles but I don't need that , I never needed it with cassettes and it was never offered .

I tried reading through as much of Audacity as I could until my eyes glazed over .

[Gale Andrews]

I could not figure out how on earth to get Audacity to separate the CD into separate tracks .

See http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sp ... racks.html .

Can anyone tell me how this works ?

Same answer - http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sp ... racks.html .

If you recorded the songs on one Audacity track, click in the blue waves between song 1 and song 2, CTRL + B to add the label, then repeat between song 2 and song 3 and so on.

If each song is on its own Audacity track you don't need to add labels.

In either case, File > Export Multiple and choose the 16-bit Microsoft WAV option. This exports each song as a separate WAV file.

It seems you have to due any changes on Audacity before saving the recording or if there's a way to save then come back later and edit the Audacity . I tried to save the Audacity recording and it said something about saving changes.

If you don't have time to finish then you should File > Save Project and give it a name. Don't type any of these characters in the name of the project:

Code: Select all

  /  :  *  ?  "  <  >  | 

Then you can exit Audacity.

When you come back, open the saved AUP file - you can see it at File > Recent Files.


Gale

[kozikowski]

I recorded off the cassette again to do this.

When you captured your cassette the first time, you should have Exported the whole thing as one long WAV file which you then burned to the CD. Where did that WAV file go? You should be able to Open Recent, click on the file and go. No re-recording needed.

There are some dangerous misconceptions about managing files for production. The top one is you have to do everything in MP3 because it says so on a stone tablet somewhere. MP3 is a delivery medium designed to get music to your ears from your Person Music Player. It does that by compressing the sound and causing musical damage. It's the last thing you want when you're making a high quality CD or doing production, filtering or effects.

The next thing people do is capture a cassette (for example) and then either delete the original file intentionally or record over it while they're working on it. This is a terrifically bad idea because one mistake and you have no "good" music to go back to. A bad mistake becomes fatal. You can just record your cassette again, but there is a posting of someone who is doing live interviews like that and they can't go back and do it again.

The first transfer of sound is the Master, should never be touched except to play back, and should be backed up for emergencies. Then you can make the MP3 if you want to listen to it while you walk to the 7-Eleven/Tesco to get a cup of coffee. But that's all the MP3 will be used for.

Koz

[hellosailor]

Will-
I don't know what quality your original tapes were, or what condition they are in, or whether you have "AM" or "CD" ears, so I'll put this out there and add that whatever is good enough to keep you happy--is good enough.

I would suggest picking up a "dual capstan" tape deck. As tapes get old the media degrades, and they don't always wind smoothly. A dual-capstan deck actually uses two rollers, one holding the tape back and the other pulling it forward, so there is very even tension on the tape and you won't get distortion (pitch changes, etc.) from old tapes. You will also find that using a tape deck, instead of a boom box or a Walkman, gives you better audio quality. If your Walkman, etc. sounds good enough--again, you are the judge of that, but if your original tapes were good quality, it should make a difference. If your original tapes were commercial, store-bought, then you are less likely to hear the difference.

There are no short cuts and the learning curve with the equipment can drive you nuts, but Audacity Is an outstanding tool to work with. You will still have to manually tag each track but at least once that is done, they can be exported in batches.

Having recently finished moving all my music to digital--and it was a really long process--I'd suggest you also consider storing the digital files in multiple formats. A lossless format like WAV is great because it is lossless, and as you note almost everything plays it. Although, if you have an old CD player they don't play WAV files, they play the "cda" files that you burn on a CD, from WAV or other audio formats. By now, any CD player that doesn't play MP3 files is long in the tooth. I retired one and upgraded another because stacks of CDs actually cost MORE than a new way to play the music. Consider that.

I wound up making one library in WAV form because it is lossless and well supported, but the music I listen to is saved as MP3 VBR-2 format, which takes up a fraction of the space and to my ears sounds just as good. (With zero background noise, great equipment, and young ears you might, only might, be able to tell them apart on a good day.) The difference is that the WAV library might be 500GB in size and take up 1000 CDs. The MP3 library fits on a single 128GB SDXC card or 128GB USB stick, each of those costs less than $50 now for brand names.

1000 CDs to keep the old player happy...or a new player and a $50 memory card/stick. Think about that. I'd suggest that the CD is now about as obsolete as the 8-track player, before you burn a stack of them, you might pause on that. A keychain or postage stamp can hold 1000 albums, at CD quality.

[kozikowski]

One of the reasons to use WAV as an archive standard is you can always go down to lesser quality formats, but you can't easily come back up. People who download a marginal quality MP3 and then try to edit and create a new MP3 frequently have bubbling, gargling and honky sound compression problems as the MP3 damage increases.

You should get a young woman to tell you there's no difference.

Koz

[hellosailor]

Koz, I really shouldn't get a young woman, all I could do is get in trouble that way.<G>

As I said, with my ears, and my stereo, and my ambient listening situation, there's no difference. And I made those qualifications because they are all part of the equation. When I was 19, I could literally hear ultrasonic alarm heads and traffic detectors, and that's like getting your teeth drilled when you have to pass by them. Add enough "average" hearing loss and I know, I've checked and confirmed that I can no longer hear 19kHz tones at all.

So if the OP is 19, has no hearing loss, and has a great stereo...lossless is the way to go. Except, typical home made cassettes played back on a boombox or typical Walkman are likely to be no better than FM radio quality to begin with.

When I hear how vinyl is back and LPs are collectible again...I wonder which Twilight Zone I've crossed into. Ain't no way to listen to an LP, even a Direct Digital, a couple of dozen times without SOME degradation, and at that point all the arguments about how digital is cold, sterile, inferior...take a back seat to the record washing, don't they?

Done the whole audio salon double-blind high end business, years ago. Really don't care about objective standards for the audio quality right now, since there's no objective way to filter it through my subjective ears. And if I get a young woman who wants better music, I'll find one who can bring her own.<G>

[kozikowski]

One of the radio engineers where I used to work years ago could hear reliably out to 19.5 KHz. Life must have been interesting for him although he never complained about about anything.

I have a CD called "In the Digital Mood" (Grusin-Rosen Productions). The object was to produce a perfect digital music recording. They went to dead quiet studios with top quality equipment, etc. etc. There's nothing wrong with it, but it is without question one of the worst, unlistenable recordings of Glenn Miller I've ever heard. It's one of my favorite CDs for the wrong reasons.

The discussion wasn't necessarily how wonderful compression schemes were. They do very well, but compression schemes are all designed to work perfectly from a perfect source. Successive compressions never go well.

"I downloaded MP3 music files to use in a mix, but after I exported the finished mix to a similar size file, the sound is terrible. It's all bubbly and honky."

Yes.

It is.

Koz