SPLITTING A MIX CD

[Steve]

.:. SPLITTING A MIX CD .:.

 

 

As people are using multitracking a lot more these days I thought I'd post up a simple step-by-step guide for splitting a mix or composition into separate tracks and burning it with no gaps whatsoever. I've read various ways to do this, including splitting the mix manually and using cut and paste, but the method I use is by far the easiest I've found.

 

 

 

 

Step 1: Now your mix is compete, the first thing you need to do is create a mixdown. To do this in Cool Edit, click "File" then "Save Mixdown As...". Make sure you save the mix in the wav format (Windows PCM). You will now have one big wav file that is your entire mix.

 

 

Step 2: Open Cool Edit and select "File" then "Open Waveform". Browse to your saved mixdown and open it. You should now be in Edit View not Multitrack View. If not, press F12 to go into Edit View.

 

 

Step 3: Insert track markers. Make sure you are at the very beginning of your mix and press F8. This inserts the first marker. You must insert a marker at the very beginning for this to work. Now, scroll through your mix inserting markers by pressing F8. If you insert one in the wrong place, you can drag it left and right or delete it by right clicking the arrow head at the top of the marker line and choosing "Delete". Continue this all the way through your mix, making sure you insert a marker at the very end of the mix too.

 

 

Step 3: Click on "View" then "Show Cue List". Highlight all of the cue points and select "Merge". Next, highlight all of the cue points again and hit "Batch". A dialog box will appear letting you choose the format of the files and where to save them. It's best to save them to their own folder. Also, ensure you save them as wav files again (Windows PCM), not mp3s. If you try and burn mp3s you will get a tiny gap or click in between each file, no matter which program you use. As mp3 files are compressed, you will also lose a small amount of quality.

 

 

Step 4: You will now have a folder with all your tracks in it. Open your burning program (Nero in this example) and create a new audio disc. Add all the files and then hold down shift and click the 2nd file down followed by the last file - this should highlight all of the files except the first one. Then right click and choose "Properties". Change the gap between the files from 2 seconds to 0 seconds. The first track must have a 2 second gap at the start of it so don't worry about that one. Now you can right click each file in turn, choose "Properties" again and rename them. This is good if you are going to play the mix on a CD player that supports CD text as the names of the tracks will be displayed while the disc is playing. When you're ready, click "Burn". You must burn in Disc At Once or Disc At Once 96 mode for this to work well. Burn your first disc slowly so you get a good master copy and there you go. Done! Play your master copy to make sure it's all good and then use something like CloneCD to copy the disc as many times as you require.

 

 

 

 

If anyone needs any help with this stuff then just ask. I've used this method to make quite a few discs now and the results are always perfect. The instructions above seem long winded but the only bit that takes any time is inserting the track markers in the right places. Use the zoom function of Cool Edit to zoom right in so you can get each marker in exactly the right place.

[Steve]

If you're using Audition, at the start of step 3, hit Window then Cue List rather than View then Show Cue List as in Cool Edit Pro.

[iexist]

awesome thread. ima need this for my next mix.