Cross Fades-Bouncing-Gapless CD Masters

[Brian S]

Hello All

I'm a first time poster and a long time user of Digi systems. Going all the way back to Sound Designer. I'm much more adept at "traditional music production" using PT as an enhancement to a 2" or other hardware based MT.

I've recently made the switch to PT 6.1 HD3 rig on a dual 1.42 G4 system 10.2.8.

I'm mixing inside the box and bouncing. Then importing the bounces into a new file for a bit of "masterering". A little overall eq and a bit of peak limiting. I'm very pleased with how everything is sounding.

Here is my problem:

The client wants a crossfade between two songs. I import both songs into the "master file". Line them up and do a crossfade. I precisely highlight tune 1 to from the beginning to the middle of the crossfade and bounce. I precisely highlight tune 2 from the middle of the crossfade to the end of the file and bounce to disk. Load songs into Toast 6. I get no crossfades and hear a gap as the burned CD goes from track to track. Thinking that the fades are "control info" only and are not real time. I buss the crossfaded file to a new track. Seperate regions at the crossfade point and bounce each song individually to disc. I still get no crossfade and I still hear a gap in the burned CD. I tried numerous mutations of the methods listed (about 5 hrs with client waiting-argg.)

So hear's the deal. Is there any way to have 2 crossfaded tunes with a new CD track number and not hear a gap on the final CD using PT and Toast 6. btw the burner is the internal G4 OEM pioneer.

Sure would be nice to have a drag and drop code option for track numbers. Bounce the batch as individual CD files. Burn the disc and dance all the way to the bank.

Thanks

Brian S

[Jeff D.]

Most likely cause: Are you actually burning a CD and listening to it, or are you just previewing the CD in the Toast window? The Toast preview always puts a gap between songs, even when there isn't one. You need to burn the CD and listen to that in a CD player to determine if your crossfade is OK.

If that doesn't do it:

- In the Toast prefs, "Prefer Disc At Once" should be checked.
- How are you exporting from PT? If you are higlighting a region and then selecting "Bounce to Disk", you need to keep in mind that any TDM plug-ins you have on that track or on a master fader are introducing a delay that will be in the bounced file, but not visible as you edit the waveform. Instead of bouncing to disk a better method might be to bus the mastered audio to two more tracks within the session, create regions in that file, and then select the regions. Once you've selected the regions you can export them as files using cmnd-shift-K.
- If you get rid of the delay but still hear a pop, you may not be placing your edit on a zero crossing. For a completely pop-free transition you need to try to position your edit where both channels of the waveform are passing thru 0 at the same time.

Most people do it an easier way - they export the files from PT and then insert the CD track markers (and even do crossfades if you want to) in a program like Jam or Peak or Waveburner. Those programs will automatically find the zero crossing and make perfect ID markers anywhere in a file.

Good luck,

Jeff D.

[Brian S]

Most likely cause: .........<snip>

Good luck,

Jeff D.

I've allready tried the steps you mentioned. They were the first things I checked. I also thought of the buss to another track and do the edit in the middle of the "rendered" crossfade of the "submix" track. It was better but there was still a gap. I even re-imported the bounced files into a new PT session and I could see flat lines where the crossfade was supposed to be. I had another project awhile back that was a live to hardware 24 tk-transfer to PT for the mix. I mixed in the box and bounced the same way. The exact same rig. It worked pretty well. Most edits translated as gapless to the Toast CD with no problem. But there was inconsistency. The only differences for this project is the crossfades. All edits were region seperation edits on the live project. No crossfades. That's why I thought the record to the new track thing would work. The other difference is I used bounce file type aiff for the live project and I'm using broadcast wav for this project. I'm thinking of rebouncing as aiff but I don't think that will make any difference.

Thanks for trying

Brian S

[Huby SEA]

Most people do it an easier way - they export the files from PT and then insert the CD track markers (and even do crossfades if you want to) in a program like Jam or Peak or Waveburner. Those programs will automatically find the zero crossing and make perfect ID markers anywhere in a file.

I don't think the zero crossing realy matters, since one cd-player won't go exactly to the same spot as an other brand's cd-player.. Lots of player got smore then 100 ms of random in thier star-points..

For Brain S: Yeah those good old days with Sounddesigner.. It was much simpler those days to index tracks He're how progress wants you to index tracks under OS-X these days..

Try it this way ( I hope you've got still a copy of Jam somewhere, since this thing won't work with toast only)..

1- Prepare your mix in a protools 24bits session entirely with all crossfades, plugins, the whole lot, all maixed to a stereo master fader.
2- put as last plug-in on this master fader the Powr dither plugin to 16 bits, (setting 3 is nice!!)
3- Select your whole mix from the beginning to the end , and adding +/- 400 ms of silence at the start and end of your mix,
4 - bounce your whole mix to disk in 16 bits resolution, using the 44K split stereo (=multiple mono) SDII file format (this becomes the bounced file).
5- when finished, close your session and create a new 16 bits session using SDIi as fileformat, and create 1 stereo track (or two mono tracks), and imlport your freshly bounced 16 bit split-stereo files.
6- put your curser where the start-point of the second track of your mix has to begin, and press Apple-E. do the same with track 3 and on.. (!! NOTE: you'll have name these regions you create so you'll recognize them in Jam later-on).
7- when finished cutting up your mix, go to the AUDIO menu (on your right), select 'select unused regions', and then select 'Clear selected', then just select REMOVE (!! don't select 'DELETE' !!).
8- then in AUDIO again select 'Select All', and then you select "Export region defenitions' , and press OK.
9- quit Protools and launch Jam (this works also under Sys-9). Drop the 'previously bounced' and now 'defined' files into the Jam window, whilst holding the Apple key pressed, and select all the regions you wish to burn. Make shure you've set the prefs of Jam to 0 seconds gap by default.
10 - Save an Image file to hard-disk if you use Jam 5.01 under OS-X, and then burn this image file with Toast to CD,
or you can burn directly a CD if U use Jam 2.6.2 under sys-9.

SIGH Progress...

Hope this makes sence,

Greetings,

Huby

[Jeff D.]

Huby - Zero crossing matters for people playing the album straight through, so that they won't hear a pop between songs. You're right, those indexing around the CD expect a jump when they start a song in the middle of a medley and probably won't care.

Brian - You've tried everything I would have tried, it should work! With PT 6.1 I have had weird problems when using bwav as a session file type - sdII and AIFF have given me no trouble. But it could be that I'm just unlucky... no one else seems to be complaining about bwav problems.

[Randy Wright]

Brian,
You could also do your crossfading of tracks in a program like Wavelab that allows that kinda thing. It would be much easier this way. You could bounce the original songs in their full length then cross fade them in wavelab.