Removing gaps between tracks on TAO CDs or CDs sourced from non-sector aligned WAV files.
Two of the more common problems that arise in CDR trading are Track-at-Once (TAO) burned discs and discs that are burned from WAV files that are not aligned to a proper sector boundary. Luckily, these two problems are fixed fairly easily using Cool Edit Pro and some of the fantastic features it has. I still use Cool Edit version 2.1, but I think the features are pretty much the same in it's new incarnation, Adobe Audition. There are several other programs that do this, but none quite as nicely as it's done here. Cool Edit is able to open a set of WAV files and piece them together into one long segment, allowing you to see exactly where a silence begins and ends. Second, Cool Edit has an auto-smoothing feature that will blend together two sections of audio that are joined together by the deletion of what's between them. This ensures that when you remove the silence the two portions around it flow smoothly; other programs without this ability can leave a small click at the junction.
First, and most importantly, make sure that auto-smoothing is enabled. Go to Options > Settings > Data. The default settings shown here should be sufficient for removing silence and smoothing the audio.
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As the first step to removing the gaps, open an entire set of WAV files that are intended to flow together using the Open Append command. If you're unsure how to do this, there is a quick tutorial
over here. Once you've got a whole set opened, the window will show the long WAV file with cue list data storing the track splits. Your silences will be near these points.
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When zoomed all the way out, it doesn't look like there are gaps between the tracks, but when we zoom in a bit we'll start to see the offending silence. So, go ahead and go to the first cue point and begin zooming in on it. A tip for those of you with a wheel-mouse: place the cursor on top of the cue point and spin up to zoom in and spin down to zoom out. This is quite handy for big files like this. Note that in this example the silence falls all within a single track, but many times the silence will span two tracks and the cue list split will be in the middle. Just follow this example exactly the same, and the cue point will be moved to the audio just outside of the portion you delete so that the track split stays in the same place.
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Now that we've zoomed in far enough to see the silence, we can go ahead and select it to remove it. Keep zooming in on one side of the gap until you can see the individual samples. Select the exact point and where the silence begins and drag over to create a selection.
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Now zoom start zooming back out a few steps at a time, continuously stretching the selected region as you go.
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Keep zooming out until you get to the other side of the gap. Now stretch the selection until it covers the entire gap PLUS a little bit more.
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Now you can start zooming in on the end of the silence, slowly shrinking the selected area to get closer and closer to the end of the silence. Eventually, you'll be close enough to position the end of the selection to the exact sample where the silence end.
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Now that we have the silence and ONLY the silence selected, go ahead and press the delete button. The entire silence will be deleted and the two sections of audio surrounding them automatically smoothed. Some other audio editing packages will not do this smoothing. Now, all you'll need to do is zoom back out and repeat this feature for every spot where there should be continuous audio that has been separated with silence. It can be somewhat time consuming, but it one of the simpler techniques in audio editing, and repairs a rather common problem.