How to save Audacity WAV recording to a CD with multiple tracks
Question:
I am converting music (my old “Dixieland” jazz band) from cassette tape to cd using Audacity 1.2.6. It is going well until I burn the exported wav file using Express Burn Plus 4.26.
At first, all the runes were exported as one file. The result: I cannot select a particular tune, or tunes, from those burned onto the cd to play on my Technics SL-PD9 compact disc changer. I can do this using commercial discs.
I used Label Track and each tune was then exported separately. How can I achieve what I want to do? Am I trying to do the impossible? (It wouldn’t be the first time). Any help which you may be able to give me will be greatly appreciated.
Answer:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but here’s what I understand to be your problem:
You recorded everything fine, and can play it back fine in Audacity, but after you export your audio and burn it to a CD, the CD is one long, single track – you don’t have the ability to change from track to track!
Using the Audacity “Label Track” is not the function you want to use. All that “Label Track” does is allow you to annotate particular parts of the audio (like if you’re a composer, and want to flag a particular part of a song). It does not separate audio into individual tracks.
If you want to make sure your Audacity recording contains multiple tracks, then the solution is pretty easy. When recording with Audacity:
1) Record only one track at a time.
2) Export it with Audacity as a WAV.
3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you’ve converted every track on your cassette into a WAV file.
4) Burn your CD. When burning, select to burn the many WAV files you’ve just created.
I personally don’t use Express Burn Plus, but any good burning software will know that, when burning an audio CD, you selecting multiple WAVs means you want each WAV to be its own track.
nola:
I have a Digitech USB cassette Player which uses Audacity to record a cssette to my computer and then to a CD. However, it tells me when I go to play the CD it is not finalised. Can you tell me how to finalise the CD please?
2 January 2010, 5:32 pmKen Baker:
I have just recorded a cassette using Audacity. While recording I have been listening to the tracks and they have been fine. But when I play them back on Windows Media Player before converting to CD, the level of each track goes up and down in volume. Have you any idea why this is happening ?
6 June 2010, 12:06 pmThank you,
Ken Baker.