Joining ripped CDs - how?

[Gidorra]

OK... is this the correct forum?!
I am ripping classical CDs, and of course many operas are 2CD, 3CD etc releases. But once ripped, there is no such limitation within a folder on an HDD / SSD. So is there a tool where I can join tracks 1-15 of CD1 and tracks 1-15 of CD2 to make it tracks 1-30 etc? There should be no artificial pause/action to keep the music going, only due to the limits of the CD format. I do not want to do this manually for hundreds of CDs, obviously.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Copy and paste to a new directory.

 

[voodooless]

Isn’t the album function of the player indexing the data taking care of that?

 

[Gidorra]

Copy and paste to a new directory.

Then I have 2x track 1, 2x track 2 etc... at least playing them on my PC, they will be played like that, not in order... that is why I want to re-name to 1-30, instead of having 1-15 twice in one folder.

 

[Timcognito]

Maybe missing something but just create a playlist.

 

[AndyZ]

I just rename the ripped tracks from the second CD from 1-15 to 16-30

 

[Vincent Kars]

a tool where I can join tracks 1-15 of CD1 and tracks 1-15 of CD2 to make it tracks 1-30 etc?

You can do so but I don't see why. Most of the time the tracks are sorted under the hood by DISC and TRACK number. See to it that the DISC tag is properly populated.
If your media player don't support this, get a decent one.
If you really want to renumber, MP3TAG can do it: https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Tagging/MP3Tag.html

 

[Vincent Kars]

There should be no artificial pause/action to keep the music going

Any media player supporting gapless playback will do.

 

[Karlinamillion]

MP3 tag will do that, including Flac etc.
If you're ripping with db Poweramp you can offset track numbers.

 

[Philbo King]

I use Winamp for that. You have to enable crossfade between tracks.

 

[DVDdoug]

I re-number the tracks with Mp3Tag (which works on all of the popular formats, not just MP3).

Then I put everything in the same "album" folder. (Personally, I don't bother with the disc number field... it's all one album.)

You have to make sure your player software is configured to play in track-number order.

Yes, it's a manual process but it goes quickly. If you are ripping multiple CDs you can re-number (and otherwise edit/fix-up the metadata) on one disc while you're ripping the next one.

You have to enable crossfade between tracks.

I doubt classical listeners want to crossfade.

Playback can be gapless, but it might be best to avoid MP3 which adds a bit of silence to the beginning and end. (Any
"natural" pauses between tracks/movements will remain.) But you might need to use Audacity or another audio editor to take-out any "excess" silence at the beginning or end of discs.

 

[Vincent Kars]

Playback can be gapless, but it might be best to avoid MP3 which adds a bit of silence to the beginning and end.

IMHO it works slightly different.
Any format having a fixed frame size (like MP3) will inevitably have some white space at the end. By design they don't play gapless but a clever programmer might concatenate files (must be expanded to LPCM anyway) and remove the trailing space.

 

[voodooless]

Any format having a fixed frame size (like MP3) will inevitably have some white space at the end. By design they don't play gapless but a clever programmer might concatenate files (must be expanded to LPCM anyway) and remove the trailing space.

Any modern encoder will store info in the header to account for this. And any modern player will use these in playback. So the input sample count is equal to the output sample count. So in practice, this is not an issue, even though it’s not officially supported by the MP3 standard.

 

[DVDdoug]

Any format having a fixed frame size (like MP3) will inevitably have some white space at the end.

Yes, and some other factors. The lame FAQ has a detailed explanation.

but a clever programmer might concatenate files

Apparently, there are apparently some "tricks" for getting gapless playback with MP3 but I've never really dug-into it. I think AAC (MP4/M4A) might be better with the added frames ignored by the decoder... or something. Most of the problems I've read about were with MP3s.

 

[Daverz]

OK... is this the correct forum?!
I am ripping classical CDs, and of course many operas are 2CD, 3CD etc releases. But once ripped, there is no such limitation within a folder on an HDD / SSD. So is there a tool where I can join tracks 1-15 of CD1 and tracks 1-15 of CD2 to make it tracks 1-30 etc? There should be no artificial pause/action to keep the music going, only due to the limits of the CD format. I do not want to do this manually for hundreds of CDs, obviously.

This is what the DISCNUMBER tag is for. Sometimes this is set properly in metadata databases, sometimes not.

How are you playing back your files? I use both Lyrion (formerly Logitech) Media Server and MPD, and both will recognize multi-disc sets as a single entity if you tag them properly:

1. Rip each disc as you normally would.
2. Use the same ALBUM name for all tracks
3. Set the DISCNUMBER tag for for each set of disc tracks (1 for the first set, 2 for the second, etc.) if it wasn't set properly by your ripping software.
4. Set the same ALBUMARTIST for all tracks

You can also set the COMPOSER tag, which is pretty standard. Lyrion also recognizes WORK and PERFORMANCE tags for tagging classical music.

 

[Karlinamillion]

As a sidebar, one of the things about classical CDs is the metadata choices.
Say an opera. One composer, two lead voices, conductor, orchestra.
Who is the artist? Who is the album artist? Etc etc

 

[CptKaos]

if using EAC you can edit track and CD info shown at the bottom right in this pic

 

[bluefuzz]

So is there a tool where I can join tracks 1-15 of CD1 and tracks 1-15 of CD2 to make it tracks 1-30 etc?

You should be able to do it in virtually any decent cd-ripping software. Ideally, as long as Album-Artist and Album are consistently named you should be able to just use CD1, track 1, 2, 3 etc. then CD2, track 1, 2, 3 etc. and have everything work. However, even if you have ripped everything 'correctly' there is still playback software that may not support 'correctly' ripped cds.

I'd start by checking what your main playback software/devices support before deciding on a strategy.

 

[101geo]

As a sidebar, one of the things about classical CDs is the metadata choices.
Say an opera. One composer, two lead voices, conductor, orchestra.
Who is the artist? Who is the album artist? Etc etc

I always use composer as artist and (Conductor/Orchestra) at the end of the title. I also insert track No (2 digit No's) at start of the track title and copy titles to file names so they match.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Then I have 2x track 1, 2x track 2 etc... at least playing them on my PC, they will be played like that, not in order... that is why I want to re-name to 1-30, instead of having 1-15 twice in one folder.

You can rename them with tagging software to change the filename tag and or use a file manager like Windows explorer to rename the files. It's tedious.