Blending Tracks on a CD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jorock
  • Start date Start date
J

Jorock

New member
Does anyone know how to effectively achieve the effect where one track on a cd is still fading out and the next track right after begins, with some remnance of the previus track still playing out?

I attmpted this in pro tools with 2 finished masters on separate tracks in the one session dedicated just to bouncing them with this effect. Using grid mode I made the first track end at a specific point, and at that same point I highlighted the start of the second track all the way till the end, however, once I have put this onto a cd, there is a a slight pop when the new track starts. I have tried a miniscule fade-out and fade in of the end and start of the two tracks, and tried with no fade, I still get a little click ocne put to cd, or tested on my ipod. Any suggestions?
 
Start by using a CD authoring program (not ProTools...).

Other than that, getting hiccups between tracks on MP3 players and iPods isn't unusual. They're not playing a stream of PCM data (such as a compact disc).
 
Kinda a thread hijack, but does anybody know of any CD authoring program that can make Red book compliant CD's that's not CD Architect? I know Wavelab has something similar to that but I don't want to shell out $500 for something I will only use a small bit for.
 
Kinda a thread hijack, but does anybody know of any CD authoring program that can make Red book compliant CD's that's not CD Architect? I know Wavelab has something similar to that but I don't want to shell out $500 for something I will only use a small bit for.

SADiE is very good for red-book CD mastering. I use it every day. May be a bit pricey for your budget though...
 
I remember using Adobe Audition in college to fade tracks together. If I remember right, CD audio is measured in H:M:S:F (F being frames.) In order to get a seamless fade across CD tracks, I had to make sure each track ended on a frame. If the track ended between frames, that would cause a pop and/or pause before the next track.

I'm nowhere near a mastering engineer, but I hope this helps some.
 
It shouldn't make a difference - The markers will be placed to the nearest frame - But it doesn't even matter if there's any audio data at the marker (usually, there isn't for that matter). If you're placing markers on active audio (as you would with continuous audio or crossfades) you just have to be careful of where you're placing the markers to avoid nasty-sounding starts.
 
For those who are interested I managed to solve the problem by using Roxio Creator (PC). By importing a wave of the two songs together with the crossfade as one file, you can insert a splice and save the two separate audio regions as separate audio files with no quality loss. When you add those files to a burning session, the play seamlessly together :)

took me a friggin while but I got it!
 
I did it something like that in Cubase. When it came to putting all the mixes together for CD. I put every tune into one project in Cubase, each tune on it's own track, laid out so they played one after the other. For the 'segue' type stuff it was just a simple matter of sliding the beginning of, say, track 2 to overlap with the end of track 1 as desired . Then I did all the neccessary 'mastering type stuff' to each individual track, flicking between tracks from time to time to check for consistancy, mixed the whole CD down as one big wav file, put the wav into nero. Used the indexing functionality in nero to tell it where I wanted each track to start and finish, and set it to burn.

Short answer is that I acheived it by 'mastering' in a multitracker rather than a wave editor. It might not be the proper way to 'master', but being as I'm merely 'mastering' and not mastering, I don't care, and that's how I plan to do it in future because it worked very well.
 
Last edited:
An inexpensive program to create CROSSFADES between songs is Jam which comes with Toast.

I think it's $99. You can also create crossfades in a daw like mentioned by creating 2 stereo tracks, placing the songs on different tracks doing fade in and out on the songs, bouncing, re-import, and edit. When you edit you have to make sure it's not in the middle of a waveform but right at the vortex of the wave or it will create a click.

TW

Online eMastering Worldwide
http://waltzmastering.com
 
For $$99 you may as well get CD Architect of Wavelab Essentials :P
 
Back
Top