First—a great many thanks for creating this software.
I learned how to divide one continuous track into multiple tracks—this is clear.
I haven’t found any information anywhere about how to divide one track into multiple ones, but without any gaps in sound. So that just by sound, it sounds like one single continuous tracks with no silences or gaps at all—but divided into tracks for navigating to different sections of the piece or song.
Most classical albums of operas or long pieces are recorded this way, and some jazz and latin ones as well.
How to do this with Audacity?
Thank you in advance.
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, I’m asking about burning a CD—so that the audio is continuous on CD, without any breaks or gaps, but divided into several tracks.
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OS X 10.13.4
Audacity 2.2.2
Use “point labels” (not “region” labels) to mark where you want to split the track. Export Multiple will then export from one marker to the next, ensuring no gaps and no overlaps.
Export as “WAV” files. WAV is a lossless format so there is no significant loss of sound quality. Don’t export as MP3 as MP3 is a lossy format (some loss of sound quality) and has a bit of silent padding at the start, which will cause small gaps between the files.
To make a “gapless audio CD”, the CD drive must support “DAO” (Disk At Once), and DAO must be enabled in your CD burning software. The CD burning software must also be configured for no gaps between tracks (most CD burning software default to 2 second gaps).
Hi,
Thank you very much for the detailed reply—I appreciate it.
May I ask these follow up questions:
Can you recommend a cd drive that is DAO compatible?
And which CD burning software would you recommend?
I have been just burning CDs via iTunes on my iMac—I’m guessing this is not capable of performing the steps you’re advising.
The cross fade feature in iTunes doesn’t do the job either.
Unfortunately there is no clear answer. Some optical drives support DAO and some don’t. The only way to know before you buy is to look at the specifications. Note that TAO (Track At Once) is NOT the same as DAO (Disk At Once).
Google tells me that iTunes has an option to set the length of the gap between tracks to zero, but doesn’t tell me for sure if iTunes supports burning DAO or not.
“Toast” for Mac (by Roxio) says that it supports DAO, though I’ve never used it.