how do you chop up and mix mp3s ?

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you know, for burning onto cds, so that
there are no gaps in between tracks and stuff ?

― piscesboy, Saturday, 18 January 2003 22:18 (twenty-three years ago)

I wrote this in my blog last May, and it's still the method I use:

are you paying attention? this is where you can learn something from the rub (at long last). today, we're going to learn how to crossfade tracks when making a mix cd-r. this will require a few things first; some of them incredibly obvious.

cd-rw drive

blank cd-r

roxio easy cd creator

goldwave sound editor

i know that the "platinum" version of easy cd creator includes a crossfading option, but it's often unreliable and has been known to ruin cd projects. that's where the goldwave application saves the day. just follow the steps...

1. open an .mp3 in goldwave and select the final few seconds of the track (it's the part that would be illuminated).

2. now, open another .mp3 in goldwave and copy the file. go ahead and close it, then, so it doesn't get in your way.

3. click on your "edit" menu and select "mix..." you will see a box pop up that asks you to adjust the volume of the .mp3 file (the default is 100%). once that setting meets your approval, click "ok" and the second track will seamlessly merge with the first.

4. but won't that be a mess when it comes to splitting them all up? no, it won't. goldwave has already thought about this in advance. if you click on your "tools" menu and select "cue points...", another box will pop up. leave the position on "start marker", assign a name for your cue point, and then click "add." be smart and keep them organized. adding a number to the name will probably help you keep the sections in order. repeat steps 2-4 until you have all the tracks you want to include on your cd-r project.

5. when you're finished adding tracks to your goldwave file, select "split file" in your "cue points..." box. this will do all the hard work for you and leave you with a collection of .wav files to burn to a cd-r. when exiting goldwave, don't save changes to the original file. remember - this was all built around a single .mp3 at the beginning.

6. as you're putting your cd together, do remember to put all the files in numerical order. the whole operation will have failed if you don't. your transitions will make no sense and the seamless flow will be lost.

7. throw a party! you're the dj now.

hmmm. was that confusing? it might have been. if i could figure out how to do it, though, i imagine most anyone could. i used to use the crossfading plug-in offered with winamp, but it just made one long .wav file. the drawback with that is there's no way to skip around on the cd-r. (ask meghan...she knows what i'm talking about.)

― paul cox (paul cox), Saturday, 18 January 2003 22:45 (twenty-three years ago)

um. thanks. that looks...difficult.
how is it that with all this fancy new stuff in the world
taping is still the best /easiest option for
flexibility.
with tapes it's easy to just
chop what you want, but with cd burners, all yr dance tracks have that *hopeless*
one minute intro that only djs need.
it does feel like the un-user friendliness of mp3 is taking
us 2 steps 4ward and 3 back.

by the way re: the crossfade on winamp ?
..*where* is such a thing ?

― piscesboy, Saturday, 18 January 2003 23:00 (twenty-three years ago)

At the Winamp site, look under output plug-ins for an advanced crossfading tool.

― paul cox (paul cox), Saturday, 18 January 2003 23:10 (twenty-three years ago)

here are the plugins: http://classic.winamp.com/plugins/browse.jhtml;$sessionid$JSNJ1BHOR2JG3TN241HBCZI?categoryName=Output

― ron (ron), Saturday, 18 January 2003 23:17 (twenty-three years ago)

let me say that cd architect is a bomb ass program

― ron (ron), Saturday, 18 January 2003 23:18 (twenty-three years ago)

if you want to mix things more "live" like if you were making tapes, there is a program called traktor (i think) that's just kind of like a dj mixer for audio files

― ron (ron), Saturday, 18 January 2003 23:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Sonic Foundry Acid is very good for this sort of thing. Normally used, I suppose, for sequencing shorter .wav files, but it works just as well for long mp3's. You can just "paste" your mp3 choons onto a timeline. Each track can have a different volume level, plus you can draw in envelopes to make the tracks fade/change balance. You can also add effects. I think it has built-in cd burning capabilities, but you can also get it to spew out your final sequence as a .wav file for burning. It's good.

― alarmsoff, Sunday, 19 January 2003 00:13 (twenty-three years ago)

oh yeah you can also just click on an edge of an mo3 track and drag left or right to cut out the the beginning or the end of the track, which is also good.

― alarmsoff, Sunday, 19 January 2003 00:17 (twenty-three years ago)

Acoustica's Mp3 Audio Mixer is dead good, and lets you save out as .wav. And the realaudio plug-in is grate for uploading bonus bootleg mixes to your website for the whole world to get jiggy to.

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Sunday, 19 January 2003 03:51 (twenty-three years ago)

can you get a plug in for winamp or windows media to play .ra files?

― ron (ron), Sunday, 19 January 2003 04:36 (twenty-three years ago)

If you just want to make continuous mix (and not, like, a bootleg), Mixmeister has got to be the very most easy thing in the world to use. You just pop the tracks you want onto a playlist and it pretty much does all the rest.

― Dan I., Sunday, 19 January 2003 05:35 (twenty-three years ago)

can you get a plug in for winamp or windows media to play .ra files?

I think Real Media's .ra is a proprietary format, and they do everything within their power to keep those files played on their own software.

― paul cox (paul cox), Sunday, 19 January 2003 05:55 (twenty-three years ago)

i tried just about everything to do it. every program i came across needed to have real player installed on the machine to do conversions, etc. gave up and installed r.o.p. to see the clip, then uninstalled it. hopefully no residual nasties

― ron (ron), Sunday, 19 January 2003 07:23 (twenty-three years ago)

Native Instruments do a program called "Traktor" thats kind of an attempt to do a PC-based DJ mixer deal. It handles MP3s, is very easy to use and has a few nifty features too. You can output your mix to a .wav file and burn that to CD. My only word of warning is that the resulting .wav could be pretty huge and take up a hell of a lot of hard disk space.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Sunday, 19 January 2003 13:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Ummm, how about for Macs? Don't hit me.

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Sunday, 19 January 2003 14:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Mixmeister is also a very good mp3 mixing program, beatmixes for you, does treble and bass cuts, easy to use, not real time, but good for making cdrs for friends..

― jk___, Sunday, 19 January 2003 16:59 (twenty-three years ago)

haha you mean there's not some magic program called imix? i swear i saw jeff goldblum talking about it on tv

― ron (ron), Sunday, 19 January 2003 18:01 (twenty-three years ago)

jk (or anyone) talk to me like i'm 4 yrs old -
what do u mean when u say it's not real time ?
also which of all of these programs/fetures is *least*
likely to crash/f*ck up my p.c.
my p.c. is a sensitive soul.

― piscesboy, Monday, 20 January 2003 13:48 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm also interested in cross-fading tracks while recording, but I can't do it with iTunes or, to my great dismay, with Roxio's Toast Titanium (although you can with the "with Jam" version).

Seems to me if you can do cross-fades in playback (which iTunes supports), you should be able to burn it too. But what do I know?

― Jim M (jmcgaw), Monday, 20 January 2003 15:22 (twenty-three years ago)

I second that emotion (i.e. why can't u burn cross-fades offa i-tunes?)

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Saturday, 25 January 2003 20:34 (twenty-three years ago)

i did a mix last week using just Acid Pro 4 - lots of 'bootleg' style mixing, running tracks together etc. - it took about 8 hours of messing around to produce 50 minutes tho :(

anyway, you can fade wavs or mp3s in and out easily with ACID if you dont want to spend time mixing them together so give that a try if all else fails

― stevem (blueski), Sunday, 26 January 2003 17:12 (twenty-three years ago)

four months pass...

has this gotten any easier in the intervening 5 months ?

is ACID PRO still the way to go ?

i really need to mix mp3s onto cd now.
i really really need to.

any (easy to understand non-geeky) updates most *most* welcome.

― piscesboy, Thursday, 12 June 2003 13:06 (twenty-three years ago)

mpg123 and dd

― Jon Williams (ex machina), Thursday, 12 June 2003 13:38 (twenty-three years ago)

easiest method for nonn mixing 0 second gaps is use nero, change the gap between tracks to 0 seconds rather than the standard 2, though this won't work on track 1 unless you have a nifty cdr drive that can burn pre track 1 - like those extra tracks on cd's before track one, kind of thing.

mixing tracks together - the easiest way is to crossfade, again on nero, so that the the beginnings and end of tracks mix together in a hospital radio type way.

acid pro 4 (for all you pc folk) can let you mix all sorts of crap together seamlessly and in time.

ableton lets you do the same but is more fun - though you really need to know your tracks bpm's. sadly ableton doesn't do mp3's yet - so you have to clunk round big wave files or aiff.

acid pro is t he simplest way - probably the main reason 99% of "bootleggers" use it. (and not in the smuggled sony recordable walkman in the gig style)

― frenchbloke, Thursday, 12 June 2003 14:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Well I really liked MixMeister but couldn't get the registration key so that was that..

― Fabrice (Fabfunk), Thursday, 12 June 2003 14:11 (twenty-three years ago)

unless you have a nifty cdr drive that can burn pre track 1 - like those extra tracks on cd's before track one, kind of thing

i wondered about this - is it a hardware issue more than a software one then?

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 12 June 2003 14:15 (twenty-three years ago)

ahoy mr steve

sonic foundry's rather fab cd architect allows you to do the pre track 1 thing, so much so you could fit all of an album and just index the extra track as track 1.

sadly tho, few cd writers support this.

― frenchbloke, Thursday, 12 June 2003 14:20 (twenty-three years ago)

Au contraire, nearly ALL CD writers support this. Just look in the second column from the right in this list, titled "Track 1, Index 1 > 00:03:00". Lots of other sofware allows you to use this capability too: Feurio, Exact Audio Copy, CDRWin, Fireburner...

― Siegbran (eofor), Thursday, 12 June 2003 14:45 (twenty-three years ago)

dangnabbit.

i've tried 5 writers so far with no joy.

actually, i have one of the yamaha's they mention there - doesn't work on that.

― frenchbloke, Thursday, 12 June 2003 15:31 (twenty-three years ago)

one month passes...

has this got/gotten any easier in the last 8 months ?

― piscesboy, Thursday, 7 August 2003 16:34 (twenty-two years ago)

mixing mp3's and fiddling with them has been easy since the beta of acid 3 appeared early on in 2001. it's still as easy, if not more so.

― frenchbloke (frenchbloke), Thursday, 7 August 2003 19:54 (twenty-two years ago)

AtomixMP3 is a little easier to use, I think. But if you need to beatmatch, the sound quality's a little worse than Acid. Basically you have two "turntables", you load an .mp3 on each, and when you want to mix in the next track, usually all you have to do is hit the automix button and you're good to go. If its still off a little, you can nudge the audio files (which are displayed as waveforms at the top of the screen) with your mouse. . . you can either record what you're doing live or as a playlist.

― kix4trids, Thursday, 7 August 2003 23:10 (twenty-two years ago)

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