Usually this uni group has buried within it the knowhow to do most things. So might I present a problem to you please?
I have a need to play a CD of standard audio format (cda), with very precise timings. Sometimes it will be played from a PC, other times from an ordinary audio CD player.
The problem I face is that these different ways to play my CD result in differing lengths of gap between the tracks. So I can be a couple of seconds out by the time the fourth track starts. The music has to be synchronised with other events to within about 1/10th of a second, so two seconds is a disaster.
I have 4 tracks on the CD, all in CDA format.
How can I merge these into a single track/file? CDA preferably, but MP3 would work, in that I can then re-convert the single MP3 file back into cda. Preferably without having to buy software. I found one freeware program, but it was limited to 1 minute, I need 10 minutes total.
A subsidiary question is “How accurate is the speed control on audio CD players anyway?” would an 8.05 track play at 8.06 on a different player? Or is the speed digitally synched?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Nao…not riding because of a broken leg…sustained by tripping over a tree root whilst walking. As breaks go it is fairly minor hairline crack, so don’t all send grapes.
It is free and will allows way more than the 10 mins you need.
I don’t have a link but a google search will find it easily.
With this program, all you have to do is load the program, load all 4 songs, then jsut drag them into the same track, which would pretty much just make all four separate songs, into 1 large song with the 4 original songs within itself.
You can then zoom into the files very, very, VERY close, and can cut and paste tiny sections of the song to make it works, or merge them together so that there is no gap in the songs, they jsut move seamlessly from one to another.
I think it has a time stretch effect on the program now, which means you can actually stretch out parts of your songs, keeping the same tune, but making it play shorter or faster as you wish. How it works, I am not sure, but it helps a lot for customizing your songs.
Thats quite a program, but it seems to use a sampling technique, so there will be additional degradation. I was not really happy with the result, unless it has additional features I have not yet found. Output was .wav.
. What I hope for isd a method to just join the existing digital information from my 4 tracks into one new digital track.
I’m not exactly sure about the technical quality stuff, but you could check out Audacity…it’s another audio mixing program. You say you want the option to join all four song infos together. Well, if you open up each song in Audacity, you can copy/paste each one into a new track (so that they’re all together), tinker around with it a little bit if it’s not synched perfectly, and then export it as a .wav or .mp3 file.
Indeed it does the job excellently. Many thanks M.M. That program does exactly what I needed, without it being too difficult. I now have a single CDA file comprising all 4 original tracks, without any noticeable degradation.
For a friend , who was hitting the problem when trying to program some gloclub ultimates for a stage juggling routine. He did a dry run and suddenly found all his hard work was out by two seconds, once a different music player was used. He had a gig yesterday, and had to force feed the sound desk from the laptop, rather than from a CD, so that the timing was perfect. Should now be fine for future shows.
