User:Billw58/Splitting Recordings Advanced

Tutorial: Splitting recordings into separate tracks
The following tutorial demonstrates one method for dividing a recording into separate songs for export in preparation for burning those tracks to an audio CD. Others may recommend slightly different methods. It is worth going through this tutorial as it introduces the basic concepts of identifying and marking the boundaries between songs, and using labels to identify songs and support the Export Multiple command.

The method presented here uses the Edit > Split command to create a separate clip for each song. This guarantees that if you do any editing after marking all the songs that the boundaries between the songs will be maintained. Labelling the songs is the very last step before exporting the songs as individual files.

A note about CDs and CDDA frames

The audio recorded on a CD is broken into "frames" of 2352 bytes each, read at 75 frames per second. Some CD burners and/or CD burning software may pad the last frame of a track with silence to fill the 2352 bytes, and this may result in a tiny but audible click between tracks. For this reason it is safest to edit your recording so that all track boundaries fall exactly on CDDA frame boundaries. Audacity makes it easy to do this by selecting "CDDA Frames" from one of the drop-down menus in the Selection Toolbar.

Live recordings versus studio recordings

Sometimes songs on live recordings flow together. If you want to split a live recording into songs but want to maintain an uninterrupted flow from song to song on the CD you need to have burning software that is capable of burning a CD in "disk-at-once" (DAO) mode, and is capable of setting the "gap" or "pause" between tracks to 0 seconds.

Step 1 - Remove unwanted audio from the recording

 * Set Snap To: Off in the Selection Toolbar.
 * Click the Skip to Start button [[Image:Rewind.png|image of skip to start button]].
 * Zoom in until you can see from the start of the track to the start of the music.
 * Click and drag from the start of the music to the start of the track.
 * Click on Edit > Delete.

Similarly, remove unwanted audio from the end of the recording and from the middle (between sides 1 and 2 of the LP or cassette).

Save your work!

Step 2 - Mark tracks and optionally edit out the silent sections between tracks

 * In the Selection Toolbar, change selection units to CDDA frames by clicking on one of the downward pointing arrows in any of the three boxes to the right of Snap To
 * Set Snap To: On

For studio recordings (recordings with silences between the tracks)
Our goal is to fade out each song so that the vinyl surface noise (or cassette hiss) doesn't suddenly cut off at the end of each song. We'll do this fade out after the music actually ends. The amount of time to leave after the music ends is a judgement call on your part - whatever sounds good to you. For the purpose of this tutorial we will leave about one-half second after the music fades out.

Keep in mind that this is a tutorial meant to show you one method for doing this task. If you don't care about cutting out the vinyl surface noise between songs and don't care about fading out the ends of the songs, just treat every case as if it were a live recording (see next section) which is much simpler.

Gale: What fade out? Suppose the tracks don't have fade outs and I don't want to add them? Are we fading silence? Bill: See the blue note above. Yes, we are fading "silence" so that the vinyl surface noise or cassette hiss does not cut off abruptly. Gale: I saw it, Bill. My "songs" don't have fades in the first place. I want to see the "simple" splitting tutorial first, then get into advanced stuff (to paraphrase some of the complaints). Bill: Gale, see my comments on the talk page. Agreed that this is too complex and fiddly. I will work up a simpler tutorial on User:Billw58/Splitting_Recordings_Basic
 * Zoom in on the silent area between the first and second songs.
 * Using the selection tool click as close as possible to the beginning of the second song.
 * Click on Edit > Split
 * Find the point where you want the first song to end - about one half second after the sound fades out.
 * Click and drag from that point to the split line marking the start of the second song.
 * When the right selection edge reaches the split line it will snap to the split line, "lighting up" in yellow to let you know you've hit it.


 * Click on Edit > Delete or press the delete key to remove the selection.
 * You have now deleted the excess silence between the first and second songs.


 * Click at the point where you want the fade out to begin, then drag the selection up to the split line.
 * Do not drag past the split line, or the two clips will be joined together when you do the next step.


 * Click on Effect > Fade Out to make the fade.
 * At this point your track should consist of two clips. The first, shorter clip defines the first song on the LP or cassette. The second clip defines the rest of the LP or cassette.

Continue in this manner removing the silence between songs and adding the fades.

For live recordings (recordings with no silences between tracks)

 * Click as close as possible to the start of the second song
 * Click on Edit > Split.

Continue in this manner setting the split points between songs.

Note that you may want to do a fade out on the last song of side 1.

Save your work! Gale: I assume you mean save project, but most users will take this as export, if they can find it

Step 3 - Maximize the volume of the recording
If you did the original recording properly and avoided clipping, the recording is probably not at the maximum possible volume. In order for the CD you burn to be at maximum volume and thus match other CDs in your collection we need to fix this.


 * Click on Edit > Select > All
 * Click on Effect > Amplify
 * Accept (for now) the default choices in this dialog and click the "OK" button
 * The volume of your recording is maximized.

Note that Amplify retains any volume differences between channels of a stereo track. In practice however, consumer-level turntables, tape decks and/or amplifiers may well record stereo channels with a stronger signal in one channel than the other, which you will probably want to correct. In that case, use Effect  > Normalize instead. One problem when copying records is that a loud click in one channel can cause Normalize to create an unwanted change in the stereo balance. In that case you should consider removing the click before the Normalize step, using Click Removal. For more information about the difference between the Amplify and Normalize effects see this page on the wiki.

Save your work!

Bill 16Jan10: note for post 2.0 - possibly add info about amplifying individual tracks if needed. Peter 17Jan10: Bill 17Jan10:
 * Gale commented in an email: I think it could be worth a basic mention of at least doing it roughly by eye and how, without going into details of calculating values or explaining that this isn't necessarily a guide to how loud the different tracks will sound anyway.
 * Peter: I tend to do it as the last step prior to exporting my multiple WAV files.  Certainly if I am trying to amplify/normalize per track then this is made much easier with the sticky labels in 1.3, as this makes accurate selection of a particular track, or set of tracks, easy.
 * If you use the method presented here (using clips to mark songs) then selecting a song is just a matter of double-clicking the clip.
 * Once a song is selected, simply selecting Amplify or Normalize does the calculation for you.
 * I've tried to use song rather than track in this tutorial (don't know if I've been perfectly consistent) because of possible confusion between CD tracks and Audacity tracks.

Step 4 - Naming the songs

 * Double-click on the first clip
 * Click on Tracks > Add Label at Selection
 * Type the name of the song into the label then press the enter key.

Continue in this manner naming all the songs. You should now have something that looks similar to this:
 * [[image:SplittingTutorial001.png|image of audio and label tracks with songs labelled]]

Save your work!

Step 5 - Export
Congratulations, you are now ready to export the tracks.

Metadata in this context refers to information stored in the audio file such as Artist, Album and Song Title. While this is widely used with MP3 files, it is less useful for AIFF and WAV files. To avoid having the Metadata Editor pop up for each track you are about to export, click on Preferences, click on the Import / Export tab, and uncheck Show Metatdata Editor prior to export step. A progress dialog might appear if the process takes more than a second or two. When the process is finished a confirmation dialog will appear listing the files that were created.
 * Click on File > Export Multiple
 * Choose the Export Format from the pop-up menu: for CD burning choose AIFF if you're using a Mac, or WAV if your using Windows or Linux.
 * Click the Choose... button and pick the place where your exported tracks will be saved.
 * Under Split Files Based On:
 * Labels should be checked.
 * Include audio before first label should be unchecked, as there is no audio before the first label.
 * Under Name Files, Using Label/Track Name should be checked
 * Click the Export button.
 * The Metadata Editor dialog will open.
 * If you want to, enter common information in the Metatdata Editor dialog (e.g. Artist Name and Album Title)
 * Click the "OK" button in the Metatdata Editor dialog, not the "Save" button

The tracks are now ready to import into the CD burning software of your choice.