by Blorkersson » Mon Jan 23, 2023 3:16 pm
Well!
Thank you all for your replies, although (and I apologise if I seem rude, but) some of them seem to have spectacularly missed the point.
iTunes has a feature called Join Tracks. It only works for Audio CD tracks and can only join adjacent tracks. It cannot join anything else (e.g non-adjacent tracks on an audio CD, digital audio being copied {not ripped} from a data CD, digital purchases or anything already in iTunes) and it is performed at rip time, not afterwards, so this is not a matter of MM manipulating or editing data, apart from not separating the tracks as it rips from the CD. Presumably, the easiest way to "not separate the tracks" is for the ripping software to ignore the track marker as it rips, so ripping the adjacent tracks as one. I'm not a programmer, but surely that's one tiny routine that says "if the user tells you to, ignore the track separator when ripping from the Audio CD".
I've just experimented with my existing copy of the Sgt. Pepper album:
using Audacity to join the mp3 versions that I ripped in iTunes many years ago is feasible - if you already know how to use Audacity, which I do. However, the process took me about half an hour, is prone to making mistakes (i.e. putting tracks in the wrong order) but - it turns out that iTunes has added blank seconds into the separated tracks when they were ripped from the CD, so I had to use Audacity to edit them out. Again, not something to attempt unless one knows Audacity well. I also re-ripped the CD into iTunes with joined tracks and that appears to have worked without the silent gaps found in my original rip.
The LinkedTracks feature from MMW4 that Lowlander mentions appears to do a similar (but not the same) thing. I followed the link in that post to the original request by someone back in 2006. In 2013, that same post attracted the comment that this is a really important feature. I'll admit, it's perhaps less so now that Audio CD users have already copied their CDs into digital form and far less music is purchased as CDs.
I doubt that iTunes will last much longer, it's already gone from the latest MacOS machines. I'll just have to ensure I've ripped everything I want before it disappears. So as far as this specific album is concerned, I've solved my original problem, albeit outside of MMW.
As an aside, but as a consequence of segued albums being split, there was a post recently in the Apple forum from someone who was complaining that a line sung at the end of "Money" on Dark Side Of The Moon is repeated at the beginning of "Us And Them", and that this (in his/her view) was a bug that destroyed the listening experience when listening to only Us And Them. The reality is that that two songs are meant to be heard as one, being crossfaded from the first to the second song. (Oh what the young have missed out on, not experiencing vinyl at the time. The recent phenomenon is not the same.)
Thank you once again for your replies.
Well!
Thank you all for your replies, although (and I apologise if I seem rude, but) some of them seem to have spectacularly missed the point.
iTunes has a feature called [b]Join Tracks[/b]. It only works for [b]Audio CD[/b] tracks and can only join adjacent tracks. It cannot join anything else (e.g non-adjacent tracks on an audio CD, digital audio being copied {not ripped} from a data CD, digital purchases or anything already in iTunes) and it is performed at rip time, not afterwards, so this is not a matter of MM manipulating or editing data, apart from [u]not separating the tracks[/u] as it rips from the CD. Presumably, the easiest way to "not separate the tracks" is for the ripping software to ignore the track marker as it rips, so ripping the adjacent tracks as one. I'm not a programmer, but surely that's one tiny routine that says "if the user tells you to, ignore the track separator when ripping from the Audio CD".
I've just experimented with my existing copy of the Sgt. Pepper album:
using Audacity to join the mp3 versions that I ripped in iTunes many years ago is feasible - if you already know how to use Audacity, which I do. However, the process took me about half an hour, is prone to making mistakes (i.e. putting tracks in the wrong order) but - it turns out that iTunes has added blank seconds into the separated tracks when they were ripped from the CD, so I had to use Audacity to edit them out. Again, not something to attempt unless one knows Audacity well. I also re-ripped the CD into iTunes with joined tracks and that appears to have worked without the silent gaps found in my original rip.
The LinkedTracks feature from MMW4 that Lowlander mentions appears to do a similar (but not the same) thing. I followed the link in that post to the original request by someone back in 2006. In 2013, that same post attracted the comment that this is a really important feature. I'll admit, it's perhaps less so now that Audio CD users have already copied their CDs into digital form and far less music is purchased as CDs.
I doubt that iTunes will last much longer, it's already gone from the latest MacOS machines. I'll just have to ensure I've ripped everything I want before it disappears. So as far as this specific album is concerned, I've solved my original problem, albeit outside of MMW.
As an aside, but as a consequence of segued albums being split, there was a post recently in the Apple forum from someone who was complaining that a line sung at the end of "Money" on Dark Side Of The Moon is repeated at the beginning of "Us And Them", and that this (in his/her view) was a bug that destroyed the listening experience when listening to only Us And Them. The reality is that that two songs are meant to be heard as one, being crossfaded from the first to the second song. (Oh what the young have missed out on, not experiencing vinyl at the time. The recent phenomenon is not the same.)
Thank you once again for your replies.