Silence at beginning/end of tracks when assembling an album?

mjbphotos

mjbphotos

Moderator
Wasn't sure where to put this, suppose it could be part of the mastering process, but its not really anything to do with mastering.

I've noticed some bands/artists will have a few second of silence after the fade-out on their tracks - some more than others.
I usually trim the start of songs so that there's a fraction of a second pause before the music starts, but I'm not consistent with it.

I put a 2-second 'pre-gap' between songs when I burn a CD, guess this would not be necessary if each song had a silence at the end.

is there any 'standard'? What do you do?
 
I usually leave a second or two of silence at the end of the tune, fade out or cold. The beginning gets about a half second.
The tunes that have a couple seconds at the beginning drive me batshit.
 
I don't think there is a particular standard for this, but I believe some older CD players won't read the CD properly and will miss the beginnning of tracks off if enough space isn't left.

I'm going back to a half remembered part of a university course a few years ago, so I might be misremembering.
 
I am glad you asked this, up to now I just start. But if I create a CD from Reaper, I instruct Reaper to leave some space, but my markers are end to start, no gaps.
 
This really is all about mastering. It may not be as exciting as compression tips or EQ settings, but this is the real essence of what mastering is.

The answer to the question is that it completely depends on what's going on in and around the song. Not super satisfactory, I know, but it has to be about the flow of the album. Some songs maybe you need a little break to catch your breath, or just a second to savor the last ringing moment. Maybe it's a transition between two very different arrangements and there needs to be a bit longer gap as a sort of reset. Or maybe you're really rocking and you don't want to sit around waiting for the next song or you really want a sudden jarring transition so you start the next song real quick. Worse yet, maybe you want to cross fade between the two songs so there really is no gap at all!

But that answer sucks. For a single, and as a general rule of thumb/starting place, I usually like to have about a beat or two at the start, and usually not much more than a measure - quite off a "finish the measure" - at the end. Yes, that means that the absolute time is going to be different for different tempos, but it tends to work for me. Course, everything I mix is super slow. Maybe at more reasonable tempos you'd go a little longer, but I do think you should try to think of these things in musical time - bars and beats - rather than minutes and seconds.

Figuring out how to split a crossfade is a whole other deal.

I think most folks would agree that the majority of the gap between two songs should come at the end of the first so that if you skip or shuffle to the second, there isn't so much dead air to wait through.
 
I can tell you that whatever the post-gap is (the silence at the end of any given track) is part of that track. I haven't used pause markers since the 90's. That "blank data" is part of the flow and it needs to be there. Even on shuffle.


This doesn't count the 150-frame pre-gap before the first start marker... That's part of compliance and it's not going to be played anyway.
 
Regardless of song spacing and album flow I leave a 100 milliseconds of silence before every tracks start marker unless there's a xfade.

Spacing between songs is usually done by feel. Depends if songs have drastically different tempos or keys etc.
For some stuff, it's nice to come in on beat where you count from the last note of the song before and drop the new song on the down beat, but there's really no rules.
 
If you listen to the sequence of songs that are to go on the album-as, a fan or unknown person might like to hear the sequence unfold, just imagine the impact space or no space would have between songs. Here, you must engage your own sense of mature objectivity. Especially if it's your songs! Your album! That said, only concern yourself with the post roll. Pre-roll is usually about 0.5 sec. (1/2 second)
 
mjbphotos said:
Wasn't sure where to put this, suppose it could be part of the mastering process, but its not really anything to do with mastering.
Click to expand...
Assembling a CD has everything to do with mastering. Spacing, trails, song order, pre-gap, etc are all part of the mastering process. And for that reason, I'll move it over to the mastering section.

For me, I'll edit the individual wave file to have about a 100msec gap in front of the song and 2 or more seconds after the song's tail ends. Then I'll drag them into a timeline in Wavelab and set the spacing there. I can adjust the end of the song so the spacing between songs is tacked onto the preceding track. Same as Massive mentioned.

Once I get my CD completely assembled, I'll give it a good listen all the way through, toss it in the can and send the individual wav files to a mastering studio and let them do it. :rolleyes:
 
there are no rules when it comes to gaps from my experience, every project varies, but listening to it as one whole album helps, having wavelab 8 also helps to make it easier.
 
My question kinda pertains to this subject. I don't use a computer to record, I mix down to a CD recorder. It has the ability to have songs that run together to be track separated. Should I send the final mix CD to a mastering engineer this way or should I send songs that run together as one track and let the mastering engineer handle track numbers and send him a note to where to start new song? I hope I've explained that right.
 
I get both - frequently. If you have a particular flow you're looking for, either send a "one chunk" file and let the mastering guy break it up (but keep your flow) or export as individual files with the flow intact (same thing, really). Some send in a long low-res MP3 file with the "end result" and that works too.

If it helps (and it may be in this very thread) someone (Tom?) mentioned leaving ~100ms of space before the first purposeful oscillation -- I subscribe to that also. I typically leave 70-100ms of "blank" or ramp-up time before that track actually starts. You don't want your track markers to be right up against the first sound you want to hear.
 
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