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audio cd creation help needed.

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Hi Guys,
i have a total noob question here,how can i connect .mp3 files? and is there a way to normalize the sound on a cd,i just burned a cd for my wife and it is pretty quite,she really has to crank the volume to here good,then whe you goto the radio,it blasts you out of the vehicle LOL.
thanks for any and all help
DJ
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Open the MP3's in either Goldwave or Sound Forge and you can boost the audio from there OR you can use NERO to burn the audio CD, Select Audio CD, Drag and Drop the MP3's into Nero's AUDIO1 field, once they are there you can right click a single audio file and edit the file or select all of the files and normalize to your delight!

I hope that helps DJ!


- EDITED

To merge the files I open a new file in Sound Forge set it for 1+ hour then just merge them in there by draging and dropping

“My skill are no longer as Mad as the once were” RiK

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DJ - I've used Sony Sound Forge and Goldwave which are both excellent for joining MP3 tracks together, if that's what you're getting at.

For example, I had a concert that was truncated by commercials, and I took the separate MP3's and edited into one seamless concert with no gaps between tracks. Sound Forge is readily available through http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/soundforgefamily.asp.

Also, when you import the whole shebang into, say, Nero, for burning, you can increase the bitrate which tends to boost the overall volume (I've found), but both Sound Forge and Goldwave give you the option of adjusting the recording volume.

Goldwave is also an awesome program for converting your old LP's and tapes to digital format. There's some pretty robust tutorials on the company's website.

Hope this helps. Oh, also, the "professional" choice would be Pro Tools which is a pretty advanced mixing program, but it's freeware which is nice (at least it was a few years ago) and tends to be a system hog.
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Originally posted by: TheCassidy
LOL - yeah, what he said.


Something about Great Minds right

“My skill are no longer as Mad as the once were” RiK

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"select all of the files and normalize to your delight!"

Maybe those programs are different, but I was under the impression that "normalizing" audio simply reduced the dynamic range within that particular file - and does not adjust the volume across multiple songs.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Normalizing to peak does not affect dynamic range; normalizing to RMS, if the level is set too high, will either clip the waveform or compress the dynamic range, depending on the software.

Not 100% sure what Nero does but I'm fairly confident you can set it to normalize all tracks to a common level.

Originally posted by: TheCassidy
Also, when you import the whole shebang into, say, Nero, for burning, you can increase the bitrate which tends to boost the overall volume (I've found), Audio CDs are not compressed, the bitrate is fixed at 1411kbps. Or did you mean something else?

Originally posted by: TheCassidy
Oh, also, the "professional" choice would be Pro Tools which is a pretty advanced mixing program, but it's freeware which is nice (at least it was a few years ago) and tends to be a system hog.
The old freeware version of Pro Tools only works on Windows 98. Current versions of Pro Tools will not work without the required hardware.

BTW I made a minor edit to your post.

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I highly recommend a piece of software called MP3DirectCut - http://mpesch3.de1.cc/

It is a very simple yet very useful audio editor for editing MP3 files, but changing things like volume, normalising, removing sections etc, it does so with out recompressing the MP3, so if you want to keep it as an MP3, the quality doesn't suffer when you save your changes.

A really good advanced freeware audio editor is Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

With this method, do whatever you need to then save it to WAVE file aftery you're done, so you dont lose quality by recompressing to MP3. Then burn via NERO

Pro Tools is complete overkill, normalising and basic editing is the same whatever you use, Audacity will be just as effective. When normalising to peak, set it to peak at -0.1dB and you're sorted, that will help things alot, but each track will still be slightly different as they will have all been mastered differently and will have different RMS volume levels, and the radio will ALWAYS be louder as the radio stations but an extra compressor in their mixing chain at the end before things go out, to conserve bandwidth etc by squashing the sound as much as possible (why music on radio sounds so fatigued and nasty compared to on CD)

Hope this helps.

www.bardothodol.net

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"With this method, do whatever you need to then save it to WAVE file aftery you're done, so you dont lose quality by recompressing to MP3. Then burn via NERO"

Why not make it a WAV to begin with, and make your edits there, and then burn to Nero? (Unless, of cource, you are making an MP3 CD)

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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thanks everyone,i will look into all ideas.
thanks again
DJ
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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
"With this method, do whatever you need to then save it to WAVE file aftery you're done, so you dont lose quality by recompressing to MP3. Then burn via NERO"

Why not make it a WAV to begin with, and make your edits there, and then burn to Nero? (Unless, of cource, you are making an MP3 CD)


I'm not too sure what you mean. By opening an MP3 file in an audio editor, the editor decompresses it and in its temp directory creates a WAV file of the track, which it works from. Unless you press save at any point (ie, save as MP3) you are working with a WAV to begin with. When you do a final save to WAV once your done, it will save changes to the temp WAV file and then save it where you ask. Works different to how Video Editors like VirtualDub work, as obviously they don't convert the video (say for instance if its a DivX file) to an uncompressed format before you tinker around with it and add effects.

Is that what you mean?

PS, if you are making an MP3 CD, use MP3DirectCut like I mentioned first, so you aren't recompressing an already compressed file.

www.bardothodol.net