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Author Topic: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?  (Read 3643 times)

doright

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Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« on: September 09, 2007, 09:02:14 pm »

Just wondering if there is any way to merge songs together so that they'll always play back in order?

For example: On the Beatles' Abbey Road album, songs 9-15 (you never give me your money - carry that weight) should always be played together.
It would be nice if during playback of a Smartlist, those songs would play in order (even if list is shuffled).

I can give many more examples of albums that have songs that should be played back to back.

Any easy way to do this?
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rjm

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2007, 09:24:13 am »

I am not aware of any way to do this with MC.

I think your best best would be to join the 2 songs into one mp3 using a tool like MP3 Splitter and Joiner (http://www.ezsoftmagic.com). Note that this joining process does not change the quality of the original songs.
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jgreen

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #2 on: September 10, 2007, 11:00:39 am »

Quoting doright:  "On the Beatles' Abbey Road album, songs 9-15 (you never give me your money - carry that weight) should always be played together."

doright--
This is such an obvious statement of fact that I'm wondering if you're kidding with us.  However, since the ripping process unaccountably produces separate tracks, what I did was take the original WAV files and load them into the MC Media Editor (tools/advanced tolls/media editor), where I then recombined them and saved them off as a new name.  If your files are lossless APE or FLAC, you need to convert them back to WAV first.  If your files are any flavor of lossy (mp3, etc), you need to re-rip to WAV first.  If you <cough> can't find the CD, well, it's time to buy a great album.
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JONCAT

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #3 on: September 10, 2007, 11:29:11 am »

Adobe Audition or Cool Edit Pro lets you Send To and edit then save MAC files. Good for quick editing.

I think the link is posted somewhere on this forum.

DC
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Alex B

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #4 on: September 10, 2007, 06:22:08 pm »

Obviously doright would like to have an option to tag two or more files to be played together as a one item. MC don't have a feature for that. I can imagine that it could be a special playlist that could be added to other playlists including Playing Now. It would then show up as one item.

If the solution to combine the tracks to one disk file is acceptable there is no need to use an external audio editor. The easiest and fastest way to do that is to play the tracks using MC's Disk Writer output mode (Options > Playback > Output Mode > Disk Writer). When the Disk Writer mode is selected a dialox box for the output path and an option to write a single file or split the output to track files are available in the output mode options.

The output file format is always wave and the audio signal contains all selected DSP and track switching options, i.e. MC writes the final output to a disk file instead of sending it to an audio device. If Internal Volume is used it is better to set it to the maximum level and also switch the Volume Levelling feature off unless the intention is to include these adjustments.

The file creation process is very fast because MC writes the output as fast as possible, similarly like the file converter does.

After the combined wave file is created it can be converted to the preferred format with MC's converter.
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BartMan01

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #5 on: September 10, 2007, 08:51:23 pm »

This is a not-so-uncommon feature on pre-CD albums, and no perfect solution.

If you make them one track, then what do you do with the track numbers.
Say for example tracks 3-4 should always go together:  If you join them and call them track '3', then leave 5 as is MC will see this as an incomplete album.   Changing all the track numbers to 'make it work' also presents problems if you really want to leave them in their original state for reference/lookup purposes.

Perhaps a feature MC could add?
 
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pqcgebxm

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #6 on: September 11, 2007, 01:19:42 am »

I second the request to have a feature added to MC to support this. Nothing complicated like creating playlists -- just some way to tag them using a single ID.

There are LOTS of examples of separate tracks on albums which should be played together -- this is common on Jazz recordings. Also common on classical recordings which contain separate symphonies, etc.

Doing this manually be re-encoding the files is a non-starter, in my book.
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hit_ny

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #7 on: September 11, 2007, 05:29:17 am »

Does anyone know of other players that can handle this and if so how was it done ?
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dcwebman

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #8 on: September 11, 2007, 07:15:58 am »

Obviously doright would like to have an option to tag two or more files to be played together as a one item. MC don't have a feature for that. I can imagine that it could be a special playlist that could be added to other playlists including Playing Now. It would then show up as one item.
Alex, I had the same thought about playlists. I had tried a smartlist that would include a playlist with just these songs OR any other songs but I couldn't figure out how to do the OR in the smartlist as I'm still not up to speed in the database expressions. If I included a playlist in the smartlist, it would only work with that one.
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Jeff

BartMan01

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Re: Any way to merge songs so that they'll always play back together?
« Reply #9 on: September 11, 2007, 09:03:57 am »

Really can't think of any 'easy' way to handle this.  Too many affected processes - play lists, smart lists, external devices, etc.  Lots of considerations too - like if 4 tracks should always play together then what happens when you drag the third one by itself to a play list - and then re-sort the list.

One thought:
Create a custom multi value field called 'original track number(s)'.  Then re-rip the tracks as one (EAC can do this).  Use the MC track number field to renumber the resulting tracks in sequential order and use the 'original track number(s)' field to record the original numbers.
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