Best software for joining tracks WAV

[ucanseetheend]

I have some music which I transferred from other formats to WAV on to my computer. These are well know classical pieces, Also Sprach.. Enigma etc , but there are gaps between the tracks and it ruins the music, I have searched online and tried to join them using one freeware software but the sound was bad, Any recommendation for the best and free software online to do this?

[Ariosto]

I have some music which I transferred from other formats to WAV on to my computer. These are well know classical pieces, Also Sprach.. Enigma etc , but there are gaps between the tracks and it ruins the music, I have searched online and tried to join them using one freeware software but the sound was bad, Any recommendation for the best and free software online to do this?

I am not sure if there is any free software to do this. If you were doing enough editing to justify the spending of about £40 you could get a professional editing progam called Reaper (Cockos inc) to do this. (For a small business licenced version) (www.reaper.fm/)

Oh, wait a minute, I think you can download it free for a trial (at least when I did it was an unlimited trial) so that might be the best way. You could buy the cheap version which is the same as the more expensive one anyway if you use it for home use, if you like it and can use it a lot.

It's not that difficult to use even though its a professional editing version for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). (i.e. any PC computer, and there may be a MAC version, not sure).

You can line up edits and have a gap too of any length. In real edits there are cross fades which will smooth the edit transition.

[johnb]

I'm sure there are many other programmes you could you but you should be able to do this reasonably easily with Audacity - and make any edits as well. (Audacity is a well regarded free audio editor.) As the files are in wave format there won't be any loss of quality (which wouldn't be the case if, say, you joined or edited mp3 files in Audacity).

[ucanseetheend]

I'm sure there are many other programmes you could you but you should be able to do this reasonably easily with Audacity - and make any edits as well. (Audacity is a well regarded free audio editor.) As the files are in wave format there won't be any loss of quality (which wouldn't be the case if, say, you joined or edited mp3 files in Audacity).

Files are in WAV format. so will audacity join them together easily

[Dave2002]

Audacity will be OK, though it probably lacks a few features found in some other software (more pro than amateur) - though I'll be delighted if someone tells me otherwise. If you have two segments A and B which are to be butted together or overlapped it is very useful to be able to play the music continuously in a loop over the join, while advancing or retarding the B segment relative to the A segment. This kind of feature makes that operation much easier than having to edit, then play repeatedly. A related feature would be adjusting the volume levels over the join. Without features like that you are likely to get either a small gap or a click at the point of the join.

If there is no overlapping music it may just be a question of getting the segments lined up very accurately, though another technique you could try is to duplicate a very small section at the end of A and tack it onto the end of A, and then duplicate a very small section at the start of B and prepend it to B. Then adjust the overlap of these new sections A' and B' until the join is imperceptible. A third possible solution (maybe naughty?) is to find where the overlap is, and take an extract from another recording C to cover the gap, though it may be almost impossible to do.

Even a very small glitch (rather less than 1/10 of a second) is likely to introduce a disturbance to the music rhythm or a click.

I have tried some of these techniques when I had multiple recordings of the same piece/recording, such as an off air recording and a recording for patch purposes made using listen again. It took a long time to get anything acceptable, and it's very hard to get a join or an overlap which is completely imperceptible.

Pros may be able to do this kind of thing quickly and effectively, but the rest of us probably don't have the tools, the time, or the patience. If the recordings are commercial, or otherwise available, it may be more effective to buy new copies.

Of course with some possibly rare archive material it is worth putting the effort in, or getting other restorers on the job. There are firms which do that (e.g Pristine audio) and there are a few people who post here who are able to do this kind of thing, or give advice.

[Ariosto]

Editing in programs like Reaper and Pro - Tools is easy. It usually only takes a few seconds, maybe a bit longer if not used to it. The use of cross fades means that clicks and problems are usually removed, at worst at the second attempt. Listen on headphones for any problems at the join or edit.

[Bryn]

I have used various audio editors over the years (mainly an old version of Sound Forge from before Sony took it over). I find the copy and paste method the most reliable. Sure there is something of a learning curve but it's not that steep. I have occasionally used Audacity and it does the job just fine with WAV files. I rarely use cross fades in such editing. Even when copying and pasting from a rip of one CD to its predecessor in a continuous piece I find it best to edit precisely by ear and eye, viewing the waveform at its highest magnification. Sometimes a very brief fade over a half a wave cycle from each side of the join is needed to hide the join. Most often no such fiddling is required.

If you want to join mp3 or aac files, I would recommend mp3directcut, which is freeware (the aac facility was only recently added by its author after over a decade of development). You might have to select to avoid very brief silent filler sections at the start and end of some mp3s. These can be readily recognised as shortish flat lines at the start and/or end of such mp3s when opened in mp3directcut.

[johnb]

I rarely use cross fades in such editing. Even when copying and pasting from a rip of one CD to its predecessor in a continuous piece I find it best to edit precisely by ear and eye, viewing the waveform at its highest magnification.

Additionally, in my extremely amateurish and limited experience, when you look at the join with high magnification you can see any short silences at the join (and cut them out) and some some editors (I'm not sure about Audacity) have the option to redraw the waveform to eliminate any 'cliffs' (which cause a click) at the join (only to be done at high magnification).

[Edit] There is also extensive "how to" documentation on the internet for Audacity, e.g. "How_do_I_combine_two_files_into_one_longer_fi le"
The best thing is to experiment to see what sounds right.

[Dave2002]

Looks like others have found this easier than I have. One of the easiest tools I used was an mp3 editor (not the one recommended here - though I've tried that as well), but I wouldn't recommend converting to mp3 just to use an editor - though at 320 kbps the results would probably be OK. I am intrigued that it is feasible to get editing accuracy to within half a wavelength visually - though obviously that depends on the frequency. At 50Hz, that'd be 25 ms - somewhat less at higher frequencies.

I agree about trying and experimenting, and using one's ears to check, and it can be quite fun. Sometimes it's just easier to buy a new CD though.

Eventually I want to try doing some "rips" from LPs and maybe even transfer old tapes and 78s etc., but for the time being I just don't have the time, and most of what I have has been reissued on CDs and SACDs anyway.

[Bryn]

Dave, using Sound Forge 5.0 at maximum time magnification, 0.025 seconds worth of audio waveform fills the editing window, i.e. about 300mm of screen width in the case of a 15" laptop.

[John Wright]

I agree with Bryn that Audacity should do the trick. I use it to join up speech and music for podacasts all the time, ok mostly in mp3 but WAV too. I do a lot of manual click removal with Audacity cutting and pasting in WAVs works just fine. You can stack up the waveforms of 'tracks' and adjust the silences between (milliseconds or seconds) then save the whole lot as a single wav file. (my podcasts are made up of 22 waveforms, stacked up on Audacity then saved as one) so your silences between music can be set accurately as your ears wish :)

I'm currently using their 1.3 Beta version but I see they are now offering 2.0

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

[MrGongGong]

what you want to do seems fairly simple
so Audacity should be fine
my preference (after trying more or less everything , pro tools, reaper, ardour, digital performer, sadie, logic et al) is Audition (which used to be Cooledit) which I find very accurate indeed and fast workflow

some of the clicks etc will be due to zero crossings which most editors will detect and allow you to trim to (I think most versions of Audacity do this)

[David-G]

What do you mean by a zero crossing? Thanks.

[Bryn]

What do you mean by a zero crossing? Thanks.

It's where the waveform 'crosses' over from positive to negative (or vice versa). Of course, this will not often happen at the some time in both channels of a stereo file, so I tend to do a crafty very short fade to silence during a half wave cycle at such points. That gets rid of any hint of a click on either track, and the fades out and back in are do brief that nobody will notice.

[MrGongGong]

thanks Bryn