Importing CD Album With One Track to iTunes?

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
I'm in the process of ripping all my CD's in to iTunes, but I've hit a problem... I have a CD album (Lovesexy by Prince) that although it contains 9 songs, has been manufactured so that the CD only appears to have one track . Is there a way to split it back in to the separate songs for listing in iTunes?



Thanks,



Dave.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Dave Abrey

    I'm in the process of ripping all my CD's in to iTunes, but I've hit a problem... I have a CD album (Lovesexy by Prince) that although it contains 9 songs, has been manufactured so that the CD only appears to have one track . Is there a way to split it back in to the separate songs for listing in iTunes?



    Yes, but with some help from other software.

    Yes, but you might not want to.



    Here's the potential problem: If the songs don't have silent gaps in between, that is, music and sound keep playing during the transistions from one song to the next, then making separate AAC or MP3 files out of each song will result in an audible drop-out between the songs when you play them back one after the other. You can avoid this problem by keeping everything in AIFF format, but that takes up a lot of disk space.



    If you'd still want to go ahead, here's one possible procedure:



    1) Go get a copy of some music editing software like Amadeus.

    2) Set iTunes to rip to AIFF.

    3) Rip the one big megatrack.

    4) Have iTunes show you where the song file it ripped was stored. (Right-click or control-click on the song title and choose "Show Song File".)

    5) Drag the song file over to your editor software.

    6) Use the editor to find all of the song breaks and save the separate pieces. You can either save as AIFF from the editor and (a) stick with AIFF, (b) use iTunes to convert to AAC or MP3, or (c) save directly to a compressed format supported by your editing software.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    you can segment songs within itunes by going to File > get info > options and set the stop & start time it'd take some time though.



    i love lovesexy, but i always hated that aspect of the cd. i like all the little bits between songs, the talking stuff, he kind of swiped that from james brown's 70's albums.

    there was a line about someone named crabtree having more holes than a golf course, man i haven't heard that in ages.
  • Reply 3 of 9
    Guys,



    Thanks for the tips . I didn't realise that iTunes could split tracks - could be quite useful. Besides, it gives me a chance to listen to the album again, something I haven't done for ages .



    Cheers,



    Dave.
  • Reply 4 of 9
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by superkarate monkeydeathcar

    you can segment songs within itunes by going to File > get info > options and set the stop & start time it'd take some time though.



    As far as I know, this option doesn't edit anything away from the song file, it just changes the start and stop times for playback.



    There are nine songs in this one track. To achieve what Dave's talking about by using start and stop times, you'd have to have nine full-length copies of the one-track CD, each set to different start and stop times. This might be easier in some ways than obtaining and using a sound editor, but it's not good if you don't want a single CD to use up the space of nine CDs.



    This does give me an idea, however... I'd like to try this with some joined tracks and see if I can get gapless playback this way. Hmmm...







    ...Nope. Doesn't work. You still get a drop out between songs.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    Quote:

    Originally posted by shetline

    As far as I know, this option doesn't edit anything away from the song file, it just changes the start and stop times for playback.



    There are nine songs in this one track. To achieve what Dave's talking about by using start and stop times, you'd have to have nine full-length copies of the one-track CD, each set to different start and stop times. This might be easier in some ways than obtaining and using a sound editor, but it's not good if you don't want a single CD to use up the space of nine CDs.





    i believe that's true, to segment it nine times you are going to have nine full versions on your HD, no?

    probably not as big of a deal as it would have been a few years ago.....if you transfer it to an iPod, would it transfer the entire file? or just the edited version?

    that could be a fix, then use that software that takes tracks from iPods back to iTunes. but i'm not sure.
  • Reply 6 of 9
    arnelarnel Posts: 103member
    One quick thing - there's no need to go through iTunes to rip a CD to AIFF and then go and hunt the file.



    If you open the CD in the Finder, all the tracks are available as AIFF files anyway, and you can just copy them onto your desktop...



    Much simpler!!!



    Neil.

    a.k.a. Arnel
  • Reply 7 of 9
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Arnel

    One quick thing - there's no need to go through iTunes to rip a CD to AIFF and then go and hunt the file.



    If you open the CD in the Finder, all the tracks are available as AIFF files anyway, and you can just copy them onto your desktop...



    Much simpler!!!




    Nice! Thanks.
  • Reply 8 of 9
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by superkarate monkeydeathcar

    .....if you transfer it to an iPod, would it transfer the entire file? or just the edited version?



    I haven't actually tested this, but I'm fairly certain the entire file would be copied. Start/stop times are just extra properties attached to a song file. Slicing up compressed audio files isn't a straight-forward task (there are frame boundaries and inter-frame dependencies to deal with -- it might even mean decoding/reencoding part, if not all, of the music), so I doubt iTunes would bother with anything more than an expedient complete copy.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    gordygordy Posts: 1,004member
    Once the huge AIFF file is in iTunes, as noted earlier, segment the first song using the stop/end times in the songs info window. Then select "Convert Selection to AAC" (or, MP3 or AIFF, whatever's set in preferences). iTunes will create a new file with only the cropped song. You would then repeat this process with every song you wanted on an individual track, by changing the start/stop times of the original song file. When done, delete the original file.



    Good luck.
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