Audio CD Image Files

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I have both Nero (v6) and Ashampoo Burning Studio v7.

I cannot figure how I can burn an image file that will play, so that I can play my CD’s from my hard drive.

Isn’t it possible to have it all in a single playable file instead of ripping and storing single-track audio files?

Regards,
Chuck Billow

Chuck Billow

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Good morning

I do not use either of these so cannot comment, however I use the free Windows Media Player and you can easily change the settings to automatically copy to H/D any CD that you are playing, it thens makes a library of all of your CD titles by Genre etc. and you can make your own bespoke playlists by picking different tracks from different stored CD’s, hope that helps

Cheers

Steve

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Steve:

Hi.

>>
picking different tracks from different stored CD’s
<<

By storing, are you just referring to separate individual ripped tracks? That's the part I'm looking for a way around.

Regards,
Chuck

Chuck Billow

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Hi Chuck

If in the WMP you select ‘Rip’ and then ‘More options’ you can set up to rip all of your CD’s as soon as you insert them (see screenshot below), this stores the whole CD to your H/D, this Christmas ‘She who must be obeyed’ had me rip her extensive collection of Christmas CD’s onto my laptop and we used it as a random jukebox during the festivities.

You can take individual tracks from any stored albums on your HD and make bespoke playlists, I have one for in the summer when I am having BBQ’s which I cal ‘Easy Listening’ and it will play non stop for hours on end.

Hope that helps

Cheers

Steve

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Chuck, I think a song is a song and as far as I know you can’t combine multiple “song files” into a single, playable file. If there’s a way, I think it would have to be a specialty third-party program that I’ve not come across.

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The songs on a CD are not a single file. To get a single playable file you’d have to RIP the CD and then combine the individual files into a single file. You could use an editing program something like Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder. Then you could delete the individual files. That seems like a lot of work for a negligible benefit.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks to all for some great advice and hints.

Regards,
Chuck Billow

Chuck Billow

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(Edited by HansV to make URL clickable – see Help 19)

Have a look at:

http://www.pistonsoft.com/mp3-joiner.html%5B/url%5D

and happy new year to all

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Philip:

Thanks for the tip.

Happy New year to you as well!

Regards,
Chuck Billow

Chuck Billow

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To All:

After going back over some of the great info spawned in this thread, I thought I maybe should add (another) thank you and a tidbit of info:

I am, after years of screwing around on computers, just now trying out copying music to my PC.

But, in the fore-period, I developed likes and dislikes for a couple different players, Windows Media Player and Winamp among them.

Now I find that player lists from one don’t necessarily talk to lists from another — imagine that!

That’s what then started me on a search to see if there was/is a way to just have a CD (image?) On your hard drive that could play directly from any player.

My life (and yous-all’s ) would be a lot easier if I cold just be satisfied with what “they” give me in the first place, ya think?

But then, if that was the rule, we’d all be driving Model A’s, mightn’t we?

But I truly do appreciate (and learn) from all the effort all have put in!

Happy New Year to all!
Chuck

Chuck Billow

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Edited to modify the subject: my post is not about combining Audio CD Image Files but about joining Audio Files

Two more alternatives:

1) Why not use playlists? For example: http://www.assistanttools.com/articles/m3u…st_format.shtml%5B/url%5D. I guess most music software such as Winamp allow for creating m3u playlists from a menu.

2) I believe this solution will work only for MP3- (and not WMA-) encoded tracks. Say you have a folder with:

Track01.mp3
Track02.mp3
…
Track10.mp3

If you have Winzip installed (probably any other archive manager with similar characteristics will do), right click on Track01.mp3, then select “add to zip file”. When prompted, set compression to “none”. Then click “Add”. Then, in order, add Track02.mp3, Track03.mp3, …, Track10.mp3, every time setting compression to none.

Finally, rename the resulting Track01.zip to e.g. FullAlbum.mp3, the complete album ready to play.

BTW, I recall having read this solution in the Lounge some years back.

HTH

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> add MP3 to zip file … set compression to “none” … rename the resulting Track01.zip to Album.mp3

Neat trick. Does it cause volume problems between tracks? I have found that when I binary joined MP3 files which play continuously on an album, the volume equalization causes problems; at the track change point, the volume will drop or jump. For that reason I have ripped certain albums or certain track combinations as *.WAV, then run a binary join on the WAV files, then converted the final to a single MP3 file. (Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon comes to mind.)

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Hi John,

> Does it cause volume problems between tracks?

I’m not sure. In practice I don’t join MP3s. I like playlists best, since I can listen to whole albums while keeping tracks (and files) separate for whatever other purpose. I remember doing the binary join thing (it’s done via DOS-like commands, right? I’m not very literate in DOS) when I read about “ZIP joins” for the first time.

My belief is that in essence they are the same, save for a little header that Winzip will add to the ZIP file, even with Compression = None. If you check file size at the byte level, you’ll notice a slight difference bewteen the original MP3 and the no-compression ZIP equivalent. Somehow this header does not interfere with audio reproduction.

The fact that you can binary-join WAV files makes me think you can also ZIP-join WAV files (being coherent with my theory above).

Here’s a link to a related thread created a while back, FWIW.

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When I join tracks, it’s only to maintain continuity that was on an album. And I confess that I have been using the WAV editing capabilities of Exact Audio Copy to join the files, rather than binary joins using the command line.

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I found the original thread I intended in the first place.

David Raisley mentions the copy command (what I understand is what you call “binary joins”) and Jezsik introduces ZIP joins, in both cases for MPEG files.

Reading on I see you posted too contributing a batch procedure to join files. A long while back this was.

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Well my friend, you have an astounding memory and I compliment you! I start the new year with a mea culpa for my post 685,478 above to Chuck, for I too participated in the old thread you reference and had no recollection of it. My even includes the fact that yesterday, when I tried your suggestion using a few of my .mp3 files and WinZip, I forgot the no compression requirement, just as I DID in the old thread and had to go back and try it twice.

PS to JohnBF: I didn’t notice any volume swings between songs, John, but my experiment was only done with 4 songs (…some old Village People tracks… yuck, huh? ).

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> Well my friend, you have an astounding memory and I compliment you!

Al, your post count exceeds 10,000 while mine hasn’t even struck 900. It’s likely that you participated in roughly 10 times more conversations than I, which makes it much harder to remember everything!

Happy new year to y’all!

Edited to correct a grammar error

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I have to consider the volume equalization issue because:
I set Exact Audio Copy to “Normalize” the volume at 98%, or
I set iTunes Playback “Sound Check” playback volume at an average level, which it does when it imports any new files,
… or both.

All files are MP3 in this situation. Which is why I have gone back to ripping to WAV when I combine tracks, to get exactly what I want. It annoys me that EAC and the few other rippers I have tried (usually iTunes and MMJukebox) don’t have a “combine as continuous tracks” option.

And it depends how picky you are – generally I use playlists for home listening, but there are some tracks on certain albums that bleed into one another, but when ripped as MP3, on playback there’s a gap between tracks, and the relative volume will change. I mentioned DSOM, but there are plenty of others, Jade Warrior’s work is another example of track continuity, where unwanted gap and volume changes annoy me.

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I understand your concerns, John. It IS a difficult problem to deal with I’m sure. I just went back to do a tiny bit more testing on my sample and this attachment shows that there IS a bit of volume change from one track to the next, albeit in this case small. I didn’t try to get numbers, just a small visual of the difference. Unlike you, I didn’t do any “normalizing” when I downloaded the songs and they were downloaded some time ago with iTunes.

(The clip is of only the top edge of one of the stereo tracks.)

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Doc:

“Village People”??

I thought I was the only decrepit one out there?

Chuck

Chuck Billow

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The simplest way to join multiple files together with no added headers is to use the COPY command from a command prompt.

Start by putting all the requred files in a single folder, with the same file extension, then use a command like
COPY /b *.mp3 combined.mp3

If you want to copy just some files, or you want to control the order in the output file then try
COPY /b a.mp3+c.mp3+b.mp3 combined.mpt

StuartR

Edited by StuartR to correct a syntax error and add some more info

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