How to bounce a project into separate, sequential, seamless tracks?

[shtik]

There's nothing wrong in creating a 60 minute long "master" track in PT, much easier since the OP intended to use some plugins to even out the tracks.

After all this is bounced to one long 60 minute track along with the appropriate process, fades and timing, THEN it's time to move it to a CD burning software with track separation option (i.e. add track start point), as others suggested.

BTW, the cheapest I've found, and cheaper than what was suggested here is Hofa CD burn & DDP: http://hofa-plugins.de/pages/start_e...urn-ddp_en.php

Don't know about that 588 thing.. but I'm not sure it will get you the seamless play that you're after. When bouncing one long track out of PT and working with one of the applications suggested here, you're actually burning that one long track onto a CD, and marking the locations where you want the player to move on to the next track. So that when you play it, you'll hear the 60 min. track seamlessly from start to finish with the track number changing as you did. Of course you'll be able to skip tracks if you wish.

[Eric Seaberg]

I also have DSP Quatro, but the BEAUTY of soundBlade is that you load in your audio files, drag them where you want them to 'blend' and do the edits or crossfades, then place your CD track marks by hitting an F-Key... just like adding a 'marker' in ProTools.

This is the EASIEST WAY to take your 74-minutes worth of continuous music and add the track marks you want where you want them. It's easy, and it sounds great! It also saves as a DDP session so you can send it to a CD replication facility.

LOOK AT IT! The price is worth it!! When I first bought Sonic Solutions' system in 1998 it was almost $65,000 to do what you're, pretty much, able to do now for $299.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Eric Seaberg

It also saves as a DDP session so you can send it to a CD replication facility. LOOK AT IT! The price is worth it!!

Especially so for us old Bias Peak customers Thank you very much for pointing this out...

[zhuzh_michael]

Wow, thanks for all the suggestions. I can see that some of you are serious pros when it comes to this stuff. For me, this is really just a small personal project that I want to share with friends and family who might be interested in my music, so dropping upwards of $300 on software to complete this relatively small task is definitely out of the question for my purposes, and I'm even hesitant to invest in those in the $70-$100 range.

Surely there must be some freeware tool out there that can take an audio track and split it into separate tracks, right? I mean, if nothing else, I could just bounce the full 60 minutes, import it back into Pro Tools, chop up the regions there (I may adhere to the 588 principle purely out of superstition ) and then bounce them each separately. At that point, I could edit all the track information somehow (Title, Artist, Track number, etc.), right? Would I have lost any quality from the original 60-minute bounced track?

—Cheap Bastard

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by zhuzh_michael

Wow, thanks for all the suggestions. I can see that some of you are serious pros when it comes to this stuff. For me, this is really just a small personal project that I want to share with friends and family who might be interested in my music, so dropping upwards of $300 on software to complete this relatively small task is definitely out of the question for my purposes, and I'm even hesitant to invest in those in the $70-$100 range.

Surely there must be some freeware tool out there that can take an audio track and split it into separate tracks, right? I mean, if nothing else, I could just bounce the full 60 minutes, import it back into Pro Tools, chop up the regions there (I may adhere to the 588 principle purely out of superstition ) and then bounce them each separately. At that point, I could edit all the track information somehow (Title, Artist, Track number, etc.), right? Would I have lost any quality from the original 60-minute bounced track?

—Cheap Bastard

If you want to keep quality - don't do any kind of dithering/bit reduction until the very end. Work in as high a bit depth as you can for as long as you can.

As far as title and artist there's no way to put in that info in PT. You need a program that does that kind of thing like CD Architect or whatever. And if you're posting this material online you need access to the software they use to do the titling, etc. If you ever do decide to do CD's keep in mind that not all cd players will show track title and artist (commonly called cd text).

Once again - that 588 thing is BOGUS. You could go 588 samples and not split at a zero crossing and that's what you need to pay attention to - split audio at zero crossings to give you any chance of not having clicks and pops in the audio.

[southboundloco]

If this is only a one off thing then just trial any CD authoring software that you like. They usually have at least 14 day full feature trial. Just make sure to finish your cd within that trial period. It shouldn't take you longer than a full day or two.

[shtik]

Oh, forgot to say that the HOFA CD & DDP that I recommended earlier is downloadable as a demo that's fully functional for 14 days (including DDP).

So after you're finished mastering your project in Pro Tools, just go to the link that I provided and download the demo, edit your CD, burn it, export a DDP file for safety, and you're done... Completely for free (for 14 days...)

Of course, if that's just a one time project that you need to do.

Good luck!

(yeah now I saw southboundloco's post that's saying the same)

[zhuzh_michael]

southboundloco and shtik: That's a great idea! So, the trial gives you unrestricted access to all the features during the fourteen days? If one of these programs is compatible with Snow Leopard, then that will work perfectly for what I need. Thanks for the tip!

[southboundloco]

Originally Posted by zhuzh_michael

southboundloco and shtik: That's a great idea! So, the trial gives you unrestricted access to all the features during the fourteen days? If one of these programs is compatible with Snow Leopard, then that will work perfectly for what I need. Thanks for the tip!

Yup full featured for 14 days, at the least...

[brianjanthony]

for what its worth, DSP Quattro also does DDP, and you can drag in a 3 hr stereo file and simply click where you want CD track markers, and you can cut them and visually drag them and crossfade them. You can also add VSTs and AUs to any of the individual regions (or the whole CD). It's under $100, and I think they do offer a trial.

All the ones listed are great. I've used many of them and own some of them. And these guys won't steer you wrong. For what you want to do, just grab the one that "feels" the best to you and gets the job done. my humble 2c