Making a nonsilent countdown pause between CD tracks in Audition

P

Petrus

Well-known member
I am making homemade CDs with Adobe Audition 1.5.

The problem: with classical music (organ, chamber orchestra) there is always a certain backround ambience and room tone. It is very distracting to have a few seconds of total silence between tracks, as this room tone disapperas for a moment and then comes back. Even some commercial classical disks have this and it sounds truly bad and amateurish.

So far I have just made the tail of the recording long enough to last to the beginning of the next track, with no pause between tracks. Works ok, but I would like to have a disk where there is a countdown before each track (from tr 2) which is not silent but contains the room tone. Well made commercial recordings have this, so it is Redbook legal.

Can I do it with Audition 1.5 and if not, which CD-burning application can do it? As usual, either free or cheap...
 
iTunes can add the 2 second gap, but I'm not sure if that will keep your audio from breaking up.
 
Look at the track properties in Audition. I think the 2 second pause is the default at the start of each track but you can reset it to zero
 
Steve House said:
Look at the track properties in Audition. I think the 2 second pause is the default at the start of each track but you can reset it to zero
Click to expand...

If I set it to zero (and that's what I have been doing), there is no countdown between tracks (P5-P4-P3-P2-P1-0-1-2-3 etc.). If I set it to some value, there is silence. I want both countdown like there was silence, but I want to have room tone in the background during the "pause".

CD Architect from Sony promises this, but there is nothing in the manual about how to do it. I downloaded a demo and try it.
 
There is no intuitive way of doing this in CD architect, either. CD-burning seems to be dominated by rock-pop types who want separate tracks, we live classical guys are totally forgotten. Is done on better classical label CDs, but HOW????
 
How about using the editor to add 2 seconds of room tone at the end of each track, then in audition tell it to use 0 seconds pause between tracks?
 
Steve House said:
How about using the editor to add 2 seconds of room tone at the end of each track, then in audition tell it to use 0 seconds pause between tracks?
Click to expand...

Yes, actually I have been doing this by just leaving longer tails in my tracks and no pause. BUT: I want that pause counter! That does not appear if there is no pause! And I want a pause with sound!

I know this can be done, I have several CDs which work like this.
 
Petrus said:
Yes, actually I have been doing this by just leaving longer tails in my tracks and no pause. BUT: I want that pause counter! That does not appear if there is no pause! And I want a pause with sound!

I know this can be done, I have several CDs which work like this.
Click to expand...

That's what I meant - find some room tone in your tracks and loop it to create a room tone track of the required length. Now take your first music track and after the last note's reverb has died out, splice on as much of that room tone track as you want for the space between pieces (fast crossfade to prevent pops). The result would be the first track is extended by that amount. Do that for all the music tracks and assemble your CD so each track begins immediately when the previous track ends. The last few seconds of the outgoing track would be room tone 'silence' so the music tail off would actually end several seconds before the end of what the system sees as the complete track. So you'll still have your track count and would be able to navigate to each individual piece yet there will be a few seconds of "room silence" instead of "dead silence" between each one when the disc is played continuously. I admit I haven't tried it but I'm certain it would work to do what you want.
 
Yes, Steve, it works aurally fine, but it does not provide the Track Pause Countdown Counter in the CD-player display. That's what I am basically missing here.

Addendum: CD Architect provides this possibility. It is possible to adust just the track length (start and end points) without affecting the actual WAV on the timeline. Basically the parts which are left out of the tracks form the nonsilent pauses. Thanks to the the second support person who finally understood my need.

Question resolved.
 
Last edited:
Change the gap between cuts from what ever it is (frequently 2 seconds) to 0. Bingo. No ambience drop out.

Ty Ford
 
Yes, thanks again. You well meaning people really are not reading my posts.

That exactly was what I had been doing all the time, from post #1.

But, to get audio AND a pause at a same time was my problem. Problem solved with Sony support with CD Architecht.

Now I get a pause with P-counter AND audio in the background.
 
Petrus said:
Yes, actually I have been doing this by just leaving longer tails in my tracks and no pause. BUT: I want that pause counter! That does not appear if there is no pause! And I want a pause with sound!

I know this can be done, I have several CDs which work like this.
Click to expand...

Perhaps part of my confusion is because I don't recall ever seeing a count-down counter between tracks on any of the CD players I've owned and it sounds like that's what you're trying to achieve. Are you saying you're setting it up so that the outgoing track ends with the counter showing the elapsed time for that track and after the last note tails off, the counter resets to something like - 00:05, room-tone continues as the counter counts down to zero, then the incoming track starts at 00:00 as the counter continues on but now counting up? What I usually see is the music in the outgoing track ends with the counter showing the elapsed time, the counter continues to count up for a few seconds during the inter-track interval, then resets to 00:00 as the incoming track starts.
 
Bingo, Steve!

On countless classical disks the counter goes: 3:57-3:58-3:59-4:00-4:01-(P-05)-(P-04)-(P-03)-(P-02)-(P-01)-0:00-0:01-0:02 etc. That pause counter tells when the next track starts and ambient audio plays in the backgrund. Now even I can do it!

Maybe it is also player dependent, some simple players and DVD players just show negative numbers without the P.
 
Petrus said:
Bingo, Steve!

On countless classical disks the counter goes: 3:57-3:58-3:59-4:00-4:01-(P-05)-(P-04)-(P-03)-(P-02)-(P-01)-0:00-0:01-0:02 etc. That pause counter tells when the next track starts and ambient audio plays in the backgrund. Now even I can do it!

Maybe it is also player dependent, some simple players and DVD players just show negative numbers without the P.
Click to expand...

I could have sworn all of mine go something like: 3:57, 3:58, 3:59, 4:00, 4:01, 0:00, 0:01, 0:02 ... the last note of the outgoing piece dying out and room tone during the last few counts before reseting to zero, the first note of the incoming track starting at 0:01. I checked using Macmillan "Celtic Mass for the Sea" and that's the way it transitions between movements. However I also looked at EMI's release of Erik Satie "Oeuvres pour piano" and it goes : 2:58, 2:59, 3:00, -0:02, -0:01, 0:00, 0:01, 0:02 ..... Neither disc muted between tracks. Never noticed the negative counts before. But my player (Sony DVD) doesn't show a 'P'.`
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top