Editing multiple WAVs in Audacity

[acidjack]

Hi all. I have been ripping my old masters off of CDR to FLAC and processing using Audacity (normalization, EQ, etc.) One thing that is annoying me is since they are ripped from CD, I rip in a bunch of songs, and then have to individually edit each one. Is there a way to get Audacity to load them all in a single window and apply the same 3 changes to all tracks simultaneously?

Any help much appreciated!

[auriel]

To my knowledge there isn't. Each track can be open in the Audacity window, but the program would act like there's multiple layers to one final track. What I've done when I've done this, is open the first track in Audacity, then open the next track in a new window and copy the second track and paste it to the end of the first track in the other window. Basically you'll reassemble one long track of the show, and then apply effects to that.

[cicada]

I realize you are looking for help with audacity. Can I make a simple request to you? Please don't normalize. I can't complain when others share their recordings here and elsewhere... after all they are shared for free. But, I have so many recordings that cannot be repaired and I simply will not play them when the sound is rendered unlistenable by aggressive normalization.

I love a hot master from back in the day. You know the kind. However some of my favourite masters were notoriously under-recorded. We have a volume control on our stereo systems to deal with this issue. In fact, I have found all the audio processing to be fairly destructive. I prefer the raw recording, which I can tweak on whatever stereo I happen to use for playback. Let's face it, very few of us have true monitoring facilities to get a sample of the actual sound. The changes we make to these recording based on what we are hearing is more a function of the system (speakers/ headphones and other gear). But, when I give it to my buddy, his system is completely different.

Sorry for the soapbox (and you might actually have a golden ear for sound... that I don't have). There is a way to apply normaliztion carefully for a problematic recording, but consider doing absolute minimum processing possible. Don't be afraid to ask about specifics before making changes when you feel they are required. While you might be most proficient at this stuff, I speak from experience when I say... I wish they removed "normalization' from these software programs completely. So many of these recordings are not salvagable after it has been used.

On a positive note, good for you for spending the time and energy to get these recordings out into the daylight. Enjoy your bliss!

[ffooky]

Just a suggestion. When I've had to do something like this in the past I used shntool to make a cue file of the original (consecutively named) files, joined and processed the lot and then cut the large finished wave according to the cue, again with shntool. I don't know if Trader's Little Helper includes these functions but shntool runs under Windows.

[Five]

yes, if you normalize one track at a time you will do a lot of damage to the show. it must be joined first (or leave it alone).

[Karst]

You could try maybe buying something like Audio Cleaning Lab. It is quite cheap and lets you import the wav's as one lot. If you really want to put some EQ on it, the programme lets you run it over all the tracks. It is not as powerful or versatile as Audition but has more features then Audacity.

[procella]

foobar2000 is able to join flacs and wavs. Add the files and right click on 'convert to single file'.