question about splitting files for MP3 player

[videoman]

I just bought a cheapy MP3 player (Sandisk Sansa c240) to use for playing music during my breaks for my live band, and I'm having trouble finding an easy way to accomplish what I want to do.

I make compliation CDs of tracks with my own crossfades. (I use Sony CD Architect) But when I want to put these tracks on the MP3 player, I have the choice of either one long 75 minute MP3 or I can put the individual tracks on the player without the crossfades. I want to be able to access different tracks quickly.

Is there an easy software that will allow me to split the large file into seperate tracks? I realize the MP3 player will still give me a small audio gap when it switches between tracks, but I can live with that. I'm looking for an easy program where I can lay out the whole track, pick 20 index points, and have it split it into 20 seperate MP3 files I can then load in the player with a mininum of time spent indexing, finding split points, renaming files, etc. Making the original compilations--doing the crossfades, adjust the volumes, etc--already takes more time than I would rather spend on this.

Does anybody know of any software that does this easily?

[lv70smusic]

I'm a little confused. Are your compilation cds already indexed by track or are they just one long track? If your cds have separate tracks, then it seems like any decent ripping software will preserve those tracks when you extract the audio and convert it to mp3 format. Or am I misunderstanding your question?

[videoman]

I'm a little confused. Are your compilation cds already indexed by track or are they just one long track? If your cds have separate tracks, then it seems like any decent ripping software will preserve those tracks when you extract the audio and convert it to mp3 format. Or am I misunderstanding your question?

HA! I KNEW there was going to be an easy answer to this question sitting right in front of me that was I just simply missing! Duh! I was trying to get from my CD compilation straight to the MP3 player--the quickest solution is obviously to burn an actual physical CD first, then rip that CD BACK to MP3s and dump them into the player!

I can't believe I'm so stoooopid sometimes. Thanks!

[lv70smusic]

You might not even need to burn cds first. ExactAudioCopy, for example, can be configured to convert WAV files on a computer into MP3 files. So if you have the tracks as separate files on your computer (and it sounds like you do), then all you would need to do is tell EAC to convert the files in that directory to MP3s. (Be aware that the default setting for EAC will delete the WAVs after making MP3s from them, so if you want to preserve your initial WAV files make sure you change the applicable setting. I'm not in front of my home PC right now and I cannot recall exactly where this setting is, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find.)

HA! I KNEW there was going to be an easy answer to this question sitting right in front of me that was I just simply missing! Duh! I was trying to get from my CD compilation straight to the MP3 player--the quickest solution is obviously to burn an actual physical CD first, then rip that CD BACK to MP3s and dump them into the player!

I can't believe I'm so stoooopid sometimes. Thanks!

[videoman]

. So if you have the tracks as separate files on your computer (and it sounds like you do),

Actually, no I don't. Once I construct my compilation with volume changes and crossfade in CD Architect, I have ONE file. CD Architect allows me to save it as a WAV file, but it is still just ONE file. The only way to 'save' the compilation (that I know of) with my crossfades AND my track-point selections is to burn it to a CD.

And this earlier suggestion works for me: I can burn it to a CD, rip that CD back to the computer, and THEN I have all the tracks in seperate files I can then move to my MP3 player. The one glitch still is this: that brief loss of audio during track changes. One of the reasons I like using CD Architect in the first place is because I can burn segued tracks to CD without that small glitch that other burning softwares sometime create. But now when I burn the CD, rip it back into seperate tracks, and then put those tracks onto the MP3 player, I get that little glitch. It's only a minor annoyance for my purposes, but it WOULD be nice to be able to eliminate it.

Does anyone know of any software that allows me to split a large MP3 file into seperate tracks and have the MP3 player recognize those seperate tracks while still playing them as one continuous 'album'?

[Feisal K]

can the sansa understand CUE files? this would help even if you were going to burn a CD with that single large WAV file but have markers for the individual "tracks" in a gapless CD

[videoman]

can the sansa understand CUE files?


Not as far as I know. (I did pay only $60 for it.) Is this common in most other MP3 players? It's probably not too late for me to return/exchange the player if you know of one that understands CUE files.

[Feisal K]

'fraid not :( I don't even use a proper MP3 player (my phone takes care of transient entertainment)

[lv70smusic]

The gap you are hearing between tracks is a function of the playback device, not how the tracks were created or loaded onto your player. I don't think that SanDisk has made a player that supports gapless playback, at least not with their own firmware. (I'm not sure what is possible with the Rockbox firmware, if one even exists for your specific player.) The gap on my Sansa e280 is very brief (well under a second) and doesn't bother me too much, but I don't listen to a lot of albums that contain tracks that blend together.



And this earlier suggestion works for me: I can burn it to a CD, rip that CD back to the computer, and THEN I have all the tracks in seperate files I can then move to my MP3 player. The one glitch still is this: that brief loss of audio during track changes. One of the reasons I like using CD Architect in the first place is because I can burn segued tracks to CD without that small glitch that other burning softwares sometime create. But now when I burn the CD, rip it back into seperate tracks, and then put those tracks onto the MP3 player, I get that little glitch. It's only a minor annoyance for my purposes, but it WOULD be nice to be able to eliminate it.

Does anyone know of any software that allows me to split a large MP3 file into seperate tracks and have the MP3 player recognize those seperate tracks while still playing them as one continuous 'album'?

[videoman]

'fraid not :( I don't even use a proper MP3 player (my phone takes care of transient entertainment)

I'm not even sure what a 'reading a cue track' is. If we're talking about a player that will just read the track changes already encoded in the WAV file, no problem. If we're talking about some other piece of data I have to create and download into the player, then I'm not interested.

I want to keep this as simple and non-time-consuming as possible. Creating the comps in CD Architect is all the time I really want to spend doing this. I'm willing to go the extra steps of burning a CD and then ripping back to the computer (because I can take out the trash or feed the cats while that is going on), but I'll just have to live with the gaps if nobody has yet created a software that does this fairly simply.

[videoman]

The gap on my Sansa e280 is very brief (well under a second) and doesn't bother me too much, but I don't listen to a lot of albums that contain tracks that blend together.

Oh yes, it is very brief. And likely won't even be noticeable in the situations I plan on using the player most: low-to-mid level background music to play in bars/at parties while my band is on a break. Just one of those little minor annoyances that I figured if there was an easy way to get around...why not?