Programs For Splicing Tracks

Whenever I record my vinyl to the computer I need to separate the tracks, but doing this on Audacity is such a pain in the butt. Frustrating beyond belief.

Anyone know a free program that is good for separating tracks? I really don't know why such a simple thing seems to be such a difficult, tedious process.

 

Good question-
I haven't used Audacity in years, so I'm not sure how different it is.
I use an ancient version of Wavelab and do it manually. Drag over the portion to be cut Shift+E and a dialog comes up. I save them as 01, 02, 03 etc..
I don't trust 'auto' splitters found in vinyl recording software. In the case of The Moody Blues or bands that have segues flowing into the next track I'll use my ears and discogs for track times.
Pink Floyd The Wall was probably the worst of the bunch. Finding matching segue times that were 'correct' was a pain.

 

I cut and paste the waveform.
1) Simply highlight the section you want to separate and hit ctrl-c. then delete the entire waveform. (if it's saved in your files don't worry, it's still there)
2) To paste the section you want, hit ctrl-v, voila! Then "save as" and rename it. (save as any file type, FLAC. MP-3, etc.)
3) Open the original file again, repeat. this should take only a few minutes.

You can do this with two screens open to save time.

 

I use Audacity also and do it manually, can you really trust anything automated? Shortcuts are your friend....
My process for chopping tracks up is having the album wiki page open, select the song name and copy Crtl+c, go to audacity and move to the position you want the split, Ctrl+b creates a new label, Ctrl+v pastes the track title. Rinse repeat and then export as multiple tracks.
Edit- the advantage of this method is you don’t risk losing anything, so an album should still flow as intended.

 

I use CD Wave, aka CDWAV
MiLo Software

Click on "Buy" on left side of that screen to see that the author has made it freeware. The unregistered version works fully, and payment and registration is still nice but not required.
Often this can split the tracks automatically. Check each of the automatic splits and you can adjust the split, or add or delete splits, if needed. Then you can save the split tracks to unreencoded WAV, or FLAC, or MP3 directly. If everything goes perfectly, you can split the whole album side perfectly in a minute or two.

 

Apprciate the help guys. Figured out how to do it properly on Audacity and now it's a lot easier so I'll stick with it.

 

Wow! that works great. Thanks!

 

I've digitized very few albums. I have been frustrated when using Audacity (manually) and a few others.

When I was doing another a few weeks ago, I did a Google search and found the free version of Wave Editor.

I found it way easier to use than anything else - even though it looks very similar. It took me only a few minutes to figure it out.

Jeff

 

I simply drop one track at a time, clean up the in's and out's, and save as a separate file.

 

Not free, but Vinyl Studio greatly simplifies the job. Only $30, and well worth it.

Step 1. Click 'record', type in name of the artist and album, click ok, drop needle.

Step 2. While album is recording, click 'edit track info', lookup album in discogs. This downloads track names and duration and some other metadata. Can also import album art.

Step 3. Flip album over, click 'record' to record the other side. Note: it records the audio to wav files and maintains a catalog of what is where, plus any alterations in a separate database so it's non-destructive.

Step 4. Click 'split tracks'. A dialog similar to audacity shows the waveform with suggested track splits based on duration downloaded in step 2. They are usually pretty close, but not 100%. Simply slide them over to correct. It automatically plays a little clip of the result for verification. Repeat for rest of tracks.

Step 5. Click 'cleanup'. There are several presets for normal, really crackly albums, etc., with various aggression settings, filter for percussion, etc., or you can make your own and save them. Default settings work great 99% of the time to clean up snap crackle and pop. The crackly album settings work great for records in bad shape. It scans an entire album in a few seconds and shows you the corrections in the waveform and in a table. You can sample before and after by clicking a toggle.

Step 6 (Optional). Apply other filters for hiss, rumble, etc, apply normalization, eq, and some other stuff that I have never needed to use.

Step 7. Click 'save' to output your track files to your music library destination with corrections applied. You can save in wav, flac and other formats, or even mp3 if you wanted. It outputs the usual folder structure of artist/album/track files, but I think you can adjust this.

Done. Takes about five to 10 minutes longer than the actual playing time of the album. (And even that can be speeded up by playing the album at 45rpm and the software will correct to 33 1/3, but I would never use this.) I've done over 50 albums so far, and the results are excellent. CD sounding quality, or better in some cases due to the better dynamic range of LPs back in the day.

Highly recommended:

Record LPs and Tapes to CD and MP3 on your PC or Macintosh

 

audacity is easy. while recording press ctrl-m to add a label at the spot. you can name it and move it. or put them in after recording no problem. then "export multiple" to flac or whatever and you've got your tracks

then I go in and name the tracks and add tags after with media monkey

 

I would go further and say EXTREMELY highly recommended! I've never understood why Vinyl Studio doesn't get more shout-outs here - it's a life-changer if you do a lot of needledropping.

 

Audacity is perfect. I use it on both my Mac and my PC. Perfect. Simple. Free.

 

I use Wavelab 6. I record LP to Phillips 765 CD burner, dump disc in Wavelab and manually insert track markers, edit, and burn to CD.