How do you make a compilation CD with EAC?

Marbles · « **on:** 3 Jul 2005, 05:37 pm »

I have no problem copying whole CD's, but I can't seem to figure out how to make a compilation CD.

Thanks for any help.

mgalusha · « **Reply #1 on:** 4 Jul 2005, 01:25 am »

Rob,

You can extract the tracks to individual WAV files with EAC and then just use Nero or your favorite CD burning software to create a compilation disc.

Edit - just realized that maybe you were looking for a little more specific info. If you click the icon that says "WAV" with a arrow pointing from a CD to a hard drive the program will prompt for destination directory and tell you that fileanames will be ignored. It will create each file based on the track title.

Once you have extracted the desired tracks you can use EAC to write the new disk. Just click the Tools menu and chose "Write CD-R" and start dragging the tracks you want to record into the CD Layout Editor window that will open.

You will see the timeline start to fill in along the top and this will let you know how much space is being used and how much remains.

Once you are statisfied with the layout, click the CD-R menu in the Layout Editor and choose Write CD. At this point open a beer or pour a nice glass of Scotch and kick back while you new ass kickin' compilation CD is burned. I suggest burning at either 4X or 8X. This usually gives the lowest error rate.

Mike

Danberg · « **Reply #2 on:** 4 Jul 2005, 02:49 am »

While your on the subject, this is also from a computer newbie regarding burning a compilation of songs. Can you mix form one song to another? In other words, fade up the next song while the pervious one is fading out?

How is that done? Please be descriptive and explain the step by step process. Or a source the easily explains how.

Danberg · « **Reply #3 on:** 4 Jul 2005, 02:49 am »

While your on the subject, this is also from a computer newbie regarding burning a compilation of songs. Can you mix form one song to another? In other words, fade up the next song while the pervious one is fading out?

How is that done? Please be descriptive and explain the step by step process. Or a source that easily explains how.

mgalusha · « **Reply #4 on:** 4 Jul 2005, 04:22 am »

Dan,

The software that Marbles was asking about does not provide this capability. I also fired up Nero to see if this was an option and I didn't see a mix option on the menu.

You could use an audio editor like Audacity and edit the tracks to fade them in and fade them out and then record the disc with a no gaps between tracks option. This would approximate a mix.

To do a true mix you could use an audio editor such as Audacity to create one big composite track with the songs you like mixed together. This will be a fair amount of work and the exact method will depend on the editor you choose. I only mentioned Audacity because it's open source and this won't cost you anything to play around with. There are plenty of commercial products that will do as much and more. One thing to keep in mind is that if you create a large composite track and then burn it, you won't have individual tracks when playing the CD. You can create a special file called a CUE file that can add track numbers but this is probably more involved that you want to get since you mentioned that you are fairly new to this.

Don't know if this has been much help but I hope it at least gives you some ideas. Best of luck.

Mike

dogberry · « **Reply #5 on:** 4 Jul 2005, 02:17 pm »

I think what you might be looking for is an option called crossfading.

Rip to WAV and not MP3 so you don't go lossy. If the sound levels vary a lot from CD to CD you might want to experiment with normalizing. I would never use this for ripping a CD to MP3s, but if you're making a comp. and one CD has significantly lower volume than another, then it will make your whole CD sound like ass.