itunes query
Posted by Five-Centres on 7 July 2008 - 2:21pm.
Someone out there will know this I hope:
How do you make tracks overlap when playing them through the ipod?
I'm doing the music for an event and I don't want big gaps, which is what my playlist has at the moment. I want them to seamlessly segue into one another.
Any pointers very gratefully received.
Thanks
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Can't be done
The cross-fade only works on a computer.
At least I think so.
you could make one big mega mix track
in audacity and import it, this wouldn't allow any chopping and changing mid set.
Unprimed Prine
The really annoying one is when I'm listening on shuffle and a live track comes up which includes the spoken intro to the next song which you then don't get to hear. Especially annoying on John Prine LPs as his intros tend to be 10 minute long shaggy dog stories.
Best bet is to import
Best bet is to import everything into Garageband, manipulate the crossfades in there, and export it back as one giant MP3. It's not as time-consuming as you'd imagine: providng you've already got them in iTunes, it olny takes 10 seconds to import two track then another minute or so to execute a decent crossfade. Plus you can experiment with which tracks sound best in sequence. The longest part of the process is the export back to iTunes, and it may also be worth running the finished mix through the Levelator to equalise the sound levels. Hope that helps.
I put all the music together for my brother's 50th birthday party this way, but cannot take reposnisibility if, like on that occasion, no-one dances to Wishbone Ash and the cry goes up to "play some new".
Absolutely
The Levelator has made all this far easier than it was before.
Then again, what I've learned is that if you're thinking of including a song just on the off chance that somebody might like it, you'd be best to forget it.
Thanks everyone
That's really helpful. I'll check it out.
It's actually for an awards ceremony aftershow party, where no one's really going to be taking much notice as it's not a disco, but I don't want stunning silences to ruin the ambience I hope to create.
One tip
When you've finished your Garage Band mix, export it at CD quality. Then you can run it through the Levelator. It doesn't work on sound files that are already compressed.
Similar situation
However most of my files are MP3s and I like a bit of oomph - do I redo them as wavs?
If re-ripping
then I would recommend high bit rate VBR MP3's as pretty good. Makes the files about as universally useful as well. Pretty simple to do in itunes.
If not re-ripping then converting compressed files is generally not that great an idea as it will have lost data in the compression that woun't be put back in the conversion.
You can do if you install Rockbox
If you want to go that far it's here.
http://www.rockbox.org/
Terrible video but it gives you the proof!
Have you
used this?
Can't say I have...
but I am tempted. Apparently you can dual boot to Rockbox or the normal Apple software.
It's only really useful if you only have non-DRM files in your collection. I've always managed to avoid downloading anything from itunes so this would be another useful step away from being locked in to Apple. That's got to be a good thing in my book.
Tape
Save yourself all this computer trouble, buy yourself a tape recorder and just do a compilation tape; spool back the tape just before a track finishes and press record when the the new track starts! Still works a treat!