Extracting Audio from CDs and Editing Thread

[avaserfi]

Recently I have been focusing on transferring my CDs to wav files so I can listen to them via my PS3. After finishing extracting all my discs I turned on Dark Side of the Moon and noticed how different the changeovers are between the actual disc and the ripped version.

I was wondering what most people on the forums do to deal with this problem.

Do you rip your discs into a singular file? If so how do you find specific songs when you want to listen to them?
Do you edit your sound files accordingly? If so where do you get the information to edit these files?
What program do you use to extract audio?

Any information that could be deemed useful would be appreciated as it seems audioholics is missing a audio editing thread and it seems that would go hand in hand with this hobby.

Currently, I am experimenting using Sound Forge as it was recommended to me from MDS.

 

[Adam]

avaserfi,

I don't have that album, but what sort of differences are you experiencing in the song transitions?

For years, I've been using iTunes to rip CDs. iTunes offers several file options, including WAV.

Adam

 

[avaserfi]

Taken from a PM with MDS as he knows far more about this than I do. It includes an explanation and some common problems that can be found when ripping certain disc types. (I am sure he will be popping into this thread soon enough too )

What I'm talking about is the fact the mastering engineer sometimes puts the track markers in odd places so that the disc plays continuously with no gaps or they put the markers such that a song with an intro and then the main portion of the song will be separate tracks if you select 'Read by Track'. Either of those cases are problematic if you want to save individual songs.

Example: Steve Miller Band - Jet Airliner. The songs starts with a long instrumental and then you hear a whistle and the lyrics start. If you rip by track you will have two tracks because the intro is actually called 'Threshold'. For those cases you can either rip both tracks separately and then copy Threshold and paste it at the beginning of Jet Airliner or you can select Read by Time (think that's what it is called) and enter the start and end times you see in the dialog box showing the tracks on the CD.

Example: Dio - Holy Diver. This disc has a defect where the track marker for the begginning of the next song (Gypsy) is actually before the end of Holy Diver. When you play the CD you hear silence and then a little blip of music and Gypsy starts. I take that .5 seconds at the beginning of Gypsy and paste it to the end of Holy Diver so that now Holy Diver is complete.

Example: 'Mix' CDs or things like Pink Floyd. All the songs are mixed continuously and flow from one to the next. If you rip them as individual tracks, some will start abruptly and others will end abruptly. That is harder to fix but you have take portions from one and paste it to the beginning or end of the other and also fade-in/out. Figuring out where to splice can only be done by ear and I usually use headphones when I have to do that.

Hope you don't have any Donna Summer CDs-they are nearly impossible to separate cleanly.

 

[Adam]

avaserfi, does the PS3 have a way to set the audio gap between files? If there was no audio gap, then wouldn't the songs flow together just like the original CD?

 

[avaserfi]

The ps3 plays files in sequential order with no gap, but that isn't the problem. Some discs are actually mixed to meld together which can't be done by just changing the audio gap. This happens because of the way the disc is actually mastered with tracks overlapping on the disc but since they are ripped separately have abrupt endings and beginnings, and some editing needs to be done, I am just not sure how or if there is a quick way to do it since I am just looking into it.

 

[Adam]

avaserfi, check out this site. It talks about joining tracks in iTunes and specifically mentions Dark Side of the Moon.

 

[avaserfi]

I have tried doing something similar by ripping a whole disc as one track to eliminate this problem, but it seems that the PS3 doesn't recognize flags so the only way to find a track in merged tracks is to fast forward which can get old if you can find a way to get a PS3 to recognize these flags though .

 

[Adam]

Does the PS3 have any sort of cross-fade capability that would minimize the abrupt changes between files?

 

[avaserfi]

Does the PS3 have any sort of cross-fade capability that would minimize the abrupt changes between files?

Yes it does, but that crossfade wouldn't be the same as the cd and I am too much of a perfectionist to let that go...damn me and me psuedo-ocd.

Not trying to put a band-aid on the situation. Plus the idea of audio editing sounds fun :-D

 

[Adam]

Hmmm. Again, I don't have Dark Side of the Moon, but I do have some compilation discs. I just tried listening to transition between songs on "Dance Mix USA" on iTunes, and they were seamless.

Is this an issue that you first noticed on the PS3? Also, have you tried using iTunes to rip the songs? I'm just wondering what's causing the the issue that you're experiencing.

 

[avaserfi]

I just re-ripped the disc and with iTunes and found out why you iTunes works for the situation better than some other players. When iTunes gets a new set of songs it searches a database for the appropriate playback information to set up the proper playback information. Unfortunately the PS3 doesn't access this information.

 

[Adam]

I just re-ripped the disc and with iTunes and found out why you iTunes works for the situation better than some other players. When iTunes gets a new set of songs it searches a database for the appropriate playback information to set up the proper playback information. Unfortunately the PS3 doesn't access this information.

That might be it, but I don't think so. I just ripped a compilation disc using iTunes on a computer that had no previous record of the disc, and I disabled the internet connection first so that iTunes couldn't access Grace CDDB (even though I already disabled the feature in iTunes). The playback between files was still seamless. I double checked the song info, and neither the "part of a compilation" or "part of a gapless album" boxes were checked. So, iTunes itself is not inserting any audio gap between files, regardless of if it "knows" what the song is.

Have you tried playing the files that you ripped using iTunes on the PS3? If not, I'd say give it a try. Perhaps iTunes rips songs differently? Sorry that I can't help out more, but I don't have a PS3.

 

[MDS]

Pink Floyd CDs are a very difficult choice to start with to learn audio editing techniques. Since avaserfi specifically mentioned Dark Side of the Moon, let's start with that.

I have the '92 remaster. Track one is Shine On You Crazy Diamond and is followed by Welcome to the Machine. Welcome to the Machine starts a full 30 seconds before Shine On is over. That is a particularly bad example from the perspective of ripping individual tracks. The Wall and The Final Cut are even more difficult to make into clean individual tracks.

For DSOM what I ended up doing is listening with headphones for the very first hint of Welcome to the Machine starting and place a marker there. I then adjust the marker to be at a zero crossing and copy from that point to the end of the track and paste it to the beginning of the Welcome to the Machine track. Now I have Shine On that ends with WTTM at the end and WTTM with a portion of Shine On at the beginning. You could just chop off the extra portion and fade-out but in this case that sounds even worse.

For those two tracks I ended up using a very long exponential fade-out (for Shine On) and fade-in for WTTM.

PF is difficult to make into clean individual tracks because they are mastered to play continuously as one long selection. The general 'problem' exists on other types of music as well but is nowhere near as difficult to deal with. Sometimes all it takes is copying a very small selection from one track to another - like my example of Dio - Holy Diver.

 

[Adam]

MDS, I get what you're saying. Avaserfi mentioned a different issue, however, in his opening post. He didn't say that the WAV files weren't starting and stopping at the beginning and end of each song. He said that the change overs on his WAV files were different from those on the original disc. If the CD already starts track 2 at 30 seconds into the second song, that's a different issue than that of having the WAV file transition sound different. If the CD has no audio gap between tracks, and the WAV files have no audio gap between files, then they should sound the same as each other when played back -correct?

 

[MDS]

I guess I don't understand the issue. Having songs that were part of a continuous mix start or end abruptly occurs when you rip them as individual tracks. If you rip the entire CD as one single file it will play as one single file and there is no facility like a CD index marker to delineate the individual tracks.

WAV files do have a facility for adding meta-data but not all players are going to recognize that meta-data. As an example, iTunes adds its own tag called 'engiTunNOR' to the ID3 tag of an MP3. It is a number it uses to normalize the level of all songs so they appear to all be at the same volume but no other media player understands that tag and just ignores it.

 

[Adam]

Having songs that were part of a continuous mix start or end abruptly occurs when you rip them as individual tracks.

I agree that this occurs if someone doesn't play the files in order. What I'm trying to understand (and perhaps help avaserfi with) is his issue with the PS3 apparently not providing a seamless transition between songs when they are played in order. When I do it on iTunes (with or without the aid of the Grace CDDB song info) - with no cross fade, no gapless assumption, no special selection of any kind that I can see - it just works. It transitions from one song to the next without an abrupt break or pause. It's just seamless, and that's what I think avaserfi is wanting on his PS3.

 

[jliedeka]

It's much easier if you are ripping to WAV files to burn a copy of the CD. I use cdrdao which creates one big WAV file and a TOC file. That doesn't help much for the PS3 because you wouldn't be able to navigate the big file.

For songs that are cross-faded together, it would probably help to merge them together into one WAV. I would rip everything into one big file, then use the TOC as a starting point, navigate to the point in question using a player, then use a tool like sox to pull out exactly what I want.

I did that on a smaller scale when I was making ringtones for my phone. I ripped a few songs, trimmed them with sox and then converted them to mono mp3s.

I don't know if that helps.

 

[avaserfi]

Adam and MDS, I guess I might not have been as clear as I should have been with my OP. I mis-described my situation and got you thinking on the wrong course Adam. I said that they transition wasn't seamless but in reality it wasn't the same as with the CD with overlap between tracks not matching up because I ripped as individual tracks and when I tried to rip as one file the PS3 did not recognize the meta tags.

If my explanation is still confusing please let me know and I will try to explain further but it seems MDS is on the right track with my problem.

 

[Pwner_2130]

So what you're saying is that if you play Dark Side of The Moon on the PS3 with, say, 8 seconds of cross fade, it's not enough to get across the 20 second gap on the actual track?

 

[avaserfi]

So what you're saying is that if you play Dark Side of The Moon on the PS3 with, say, 8 seconds of cross fade, it's not enough to get across the 20 second gap on the actual track?

Well, yes I guess, but my goal was to actually try and edit the tracks properly so no matter where I played the files they would sound appropriate.