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introduction : recording decks to pc : editing sound files for CD : recording to minidisc : Track-Marking Your Mix You will now all being well have your mix in WAV file format. As we've already said it'll be one huge data file that you could have burnt to CD as one track. Refining the mix is great option and gives a much better finished product that shows more care and attention has be paid to presenting your mix. How easy is it to do? Firstly I would say that again software will play a large part in this but it only requires very basic functions so most should be able to cope with it. Open your sound file if it isn't open and on your screen already (use the TEMP file to do all workings on if you are using Soundforge or work on a backup copy - NEVER THE ORIGINAL - especially if you are a WAV editing noobie). The WAV file You will notice on the WAV file there are two lines of identical audio one nearer the top and one nearer the bottom of the screen with a central line running through the centre separating them. This is true if you originally sampled the mix in stereo. If you recorded in mono you will only see track of sound. There are shapes that look like triangles on their sides with a centre line running through it horizontally. The first noise on the track is likely to be a kick-drum or such like (depending on your first tune selection obviously). Each Beat is represented by this triangle shape so you will notice as for dance music they are in collected in groups of fours. Each peak that is there represents a thump or noise (kick-drum etc.) Where the breakdowns are in the tune (which uses higher frequency sounds/musical notes) the graph looks relatively flat. It is therefore easy to visually spot (without even listening to it) what is a beat and what is the breakdown. You can then use this to help you quickly scan through the file to find the next tune etc. If you're in doubt on this click into the file, just press Play and watch the monitoring line run to the right of the screen playing the sample as it goes. When you press stop, the PC will always skip back to where the monitoring line is (usually a default setting unless you've changed it. Don't be afraid to click into the file itself. You won't break it! Try putting the monitoring line in different places, and playing it. You will soon see what I mean. Depending on where you click can determine left or right channel playback only or if you click on the centre line, it will play both, as long as you have opted to record in stereo. If it's a mono file you will only have one stream of audio to adjust. Using the monitoring line allows you to fine tune exactly where you put your markers throughout the mix, so if you aren't happy adjust where the monitoring line is and press play again. This will (eventually) represent the sound where the track mark will be on the CD. One tip I would give is work from the LAST track and work your way back to the beginning. The reason for this is that the PC will process it faster. If you remove/delete the clicking/silence a the beginning of the mix, the PC has to remove that tiny 2 second gap and then shift the other 700mb along to fill the gap. This takes ages (several minutes even on a fairly powerful PC). Using the mouse scroll the slider so it shows you the very end of you mix. If you have a gap at the end of crackle or silence etc. click into the sound file from where the sound fades out (and no peaks are left) and using the left mouse button click and holding the button sweep the mouse to the end of the audio file so it highlights the section you no longer want. On some software you can click the mouse at the end of the audio file, then press Shift (bottom left above the CTRL key) and then End (between the main keyboard and the number pad) together and it will automatically highlight from where you left the Monitoring Line to the end of the sampled audio which is the easier of the two options. Now whilst it's still highlighted go to Edit menu then Cut. If you use the Delete function it will only clear the sound that is there, not actually shorten the length of the track, therefore leaving a 5 second silence rather than crackle at the end of your mix. Once you are happy that the ending is clean, scroll left back through the sound file (towards the beginning) and find the point where the last tune drops (either at the beginning of where you started mixing or where the mix finishes where the first breakdown occurs). This will be where the final track mark will be on the CD for the last tune. When you have adjusted it to where you want using the mouse to place the Monitoring Line, double click on the centre line of the sample so that the whole last track is highlighted, or alternatively if your software allows press Shift and the End key together to highlight from the Monitoring line to the end of the track. Ensuring this stays highlighted, go to the Edit menu and now select Cut. Once it has cut this and put it on the clipboard, go to the Edit menu and Select Paste as New. You can now save this file on its own, using the Save As function - ensure it's the saving settings are same settings as when you sampled it (i.e. 44.1Hz stereo in WAV format). Label it accordingly, with the track number as the first part of the file name (you'll need this to organise when burning the data to CD later. When saved close this file leaving you only with the main mix loaded into the software. Repeat the process working backwards track by track until you have all the files saved as separate tracks on your hard drive. When labeling the tracks if the track number is less than 10 always put a 0 in front of it. Instead of calling it "9. DJ Mandrick - My Tune" call it "09. DJ Mandrick - My Tune" The burning software you use will automatically list them in numerical order when you select them. Otherwise it will put track 1 then track 10, then 11 etc to the end, then it will list tracks 2 to 9. Should your burning software not put them in the correct order you can sort them automatically by simply clicking on the "track" field header at the top of the column. This simple step prevents you'll have to manually move them around to get the order right before burning them to CD. Once completed and the files are saved separately, If you're in Soundforge and you selected to use the TEMP file, close the main mix WITHOUT saving any changes. This will leave the original unchanged. You can then use this file to create a full MP3 of your set or you can convert to another format, for example Real Producer to allow your mix to be streamed over the net. Real Player or Re alOne as it is now known, doesn't give such good playback result quality as MP3 but the overall size of the finished file is far smaller. A full mix of MP3 works out at about 10mb per minute, whereas a full 60 minute mix created in Real Producer is about 10-15mb in total. This is much better for storage space if you are limited on your web hosting space, as I currently am. If you wish you can also place all your markers and double clicking anywhere in the sample will highlight all audio between the two nearest markers to either side of where you are clicking so it is possible to very quickly highlight a whole track. You can then copy and "Paste to New" as described then save them on your HD individually For a more automated process, you can set all the markers then convert the markers to regions. Software such as Soundforge can then be prompted to Extract all Regions to tracks. You can then export them as a batch process (the PC does them all one by one saving them to a specified area on your HD, and even save them as MP3s directly if required so you don't have to convert them later. I would recommend saving them as individual WAVs as previously stated, then use another program to convert the WAVs to MP3s keeping both very separate. The reasons for this are outlined in the "Burning the Finalised Tracks to CD" section of this tutorial. If you've sampled the original mix at 44.1Hz 16bit stereo you can always convert the sound to down and degrade the quality to Mono etc. from the top quality original and save the lower rate separately. If you sample in Mono, converting to stereo will not create panning effects. It will just give you two channels of mono, one through each speaker. Some Other Useful Tips Using the WAV format guarantees your burning software will be able to covert your files to CD format. Using other formats (AIFF as an example) creates complications. Your software may not have the drivers built in to cope with these formats and will fail when you try and burn your tracks. It may only be accessible in the program you recorded it in, but WAV format is a universal format that all editing programs can read. Using the monitoring line to select the tunes means you get clean cuts in the tracks and not one sound bite will be missed. When burned using the appropriate software the mix will be pasted back together flawlessly creating a full mix with no breaks between tracks Always sample at 16bit, 44.1Hz Stereo wherever possible - you can sacrifice quality later if required by converting it to a 16bit Mono and roughly halving the physical size of file. However converting an original 16-bit Mono sound file to a 16 bit stereo will not create panning etc. which is what would happen if it had been recorded like this from the beginning. It will just give you two channels of Mono but one through each speaker on playback. Always sample at the best rate you can afford and adjust to suit for other needs later. MP3s Avoid wherever possible converting the tracks to MP3 then burning those MP3s to CD. You will find certain software will cut off the last bit of the track when converting WAV to MP3, and when you burn to CD you'll get little gaps between tracks. Also converting to MP3 means certain less audible frequencies are removed (very high treble and very low bass to reduce the range of the frequency band) to allow the file to be compressed to a smaller more manageable size. There are two ways I know of to convert an mp3 with seamless trackmarks to CD. The first is to use a Cue file. This is a file of simple code that instructs the burning software to Index the file at various stages. The drawback is that you need to be using a program such as Nero (and a fairly new version) as most programs have no idea what to do with any file with a .cue file extension. The other method is to convert the mp3 to WAV A great program free software program that converts audio files from one format to another is dBpowerAMP Music Converter Please be aware that using this or any other software to convert mp3 to WAV will not in any way improve the quality of the original MP3 which is a compressed file format. You can then section it as described above. Yes, MP3s are more hard-drive friendly, but the quality and clarity may suffer as a consequence. In the most part MP3s are fine but when converting them ensure you are converting them to at least 160kb per second if you want to maintain the quality. The lower the kb/second rating the more frequency bands are omitted with more treble and bass is chopped out to allow the data in the sample to be reduced, giving a smaller sound file. The higher the kb/sec rating the less it chops off and the higher the final playback quality of MP3. Ensure you burn at least one master copy from the separated tracks from full 16bit CD quality Stereo and keep it safe. You can then delete the original file from your hard drive if space is tight. You can always rip it again later from the master CD (to WAV or MP3 if you have the software.)
Firstly you will need some Burning software. Standard packages are Nero Express (which I use) or Roxio's Easy CD/DVD creator and in my opinion both do the job equally well. Open the burning software on your PC. Boot up the program and chances are a wizard will appear. Ensuring the CD drive is selected (especially if you have a separate DVD burner or CD/DVD combo drive) Select Create Music/Audio CD or whatever is closest to this description. Select the track/s you've recorded onto your PC (usually by opening them on the desktop or from "My Computer" selecting them with the mouse and dragging them into the Nero/EasyCD window from your hard drive). Also ensure the order is correct on screen as this is the order in which they will be burned. If you have labelled them correctly as described it should put them all in correct numerical order anyway. If for whatever reason this doesn't happen, select the tracks you wish to burn and then manually move them in the window to get the track listing in the correct order. Pop your blank CD in and before you burn it (if you've cut the main mix down into separate tracks) ensure the tick box is checked to "Remove Gaps Between Tracks." Once done, click "Burn" Congratulations - after a few minutes you are now the proud owner of your new, professionally edited CD. Track marks will work and depending on how accurate you were with the track markings you will find when you skip through the CD, tracks will fall correctly, on the beat or at sensible places such as the breakdowns of tunes. Goldwave Users You are quite fortunate here - you can drop track marks in and burn from within the program, using the drop down menu. Just remember to select DAO (disc at once) when burning. Soundforge Users Another method is use the Special menu and select insert Marker where you want the track mark to be. When you are all done with your sectioning you can use the Convert Markers to Regions. You can then double click anywhere in between two marker points (ensure you do one at eh very beginning and very end of the file) to highlight your selected track. You can then cut and paste to a new file and save each one individually, naming the files as you go. If you want to do all at once you can use the In the tools you can then Extract regions. It will do this for you as a batch process. Locate the files in My Computer where you saved them and rename them by clicking on each one then pressing F2. the title of the file will appear in blue highlight. Just type in the track name in the format as previously described. Open your burning software, pull them in by either using Add file in Nero by locating the files or drag and drop the files into Nero from the My Computer window where they are located. There are many means and ways of achieving the same results. It just depends which you find best and most likely there are others not mentioned here. turntablism, scratch guide, Recording decks to pc, scratching tutorials, beatmixing tutorials, beatmatching tutorials, CDJs tutorials, turntable tutorials, vinyl, vinyl care, vinyl storage, technics, vestax, flares tutorials, skratchin, sxratching, dj mixers, free dj tutorials, turntablism tutorials, dj tutorials, download dnb mp3s, drum and bass, dnb download, mixes, dj glossary, calibrating needles, deck setup, hifi wiring, monitoring, speakers tutorials |
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