[Five]

legacy Cool Edit Pro / Adobe Audition tutorial, 2004

Originally Posted by RainDawg

Opening a set of files using "Open Append"

The "Open Append" command is a remarkably useful tool for remastering a group of WAV files at once. This command will open a selection of WAV files, combine them together into one long track, and store cue data into the WAV file to remember where the original track splits were. I use this feature for many of my remastering examples because, generally, you want to apply the same effects to entire sets. It is also useful in making sure multiple tracks that flow together remain seamless; editing files one at a time can result in discrepancies between the amplitudes on the track splits, causing a click if these tracks are played together. Here's a quick tutorial for opening and exporting a set of WAV files.

Head to File > Open Append. Select all of the files you are going to be working on in the dialog box that opens. Before you press OK, make sure to go to the "File Name:" box and make sure everything is listed in the right order.

[image missing]

It will take a few minutes to open up all of the WAVs, but when it's done, you'll see one long waveform split apart by cue list data, with the original file names shown along the top. Below the waveform there should be a window in which this cue data is displayed. This will take a form of a list with each of the original file names and the start/end points of the sections they cover.

[image missing]

At this point, go ahead and perform whatever editing you wish to do to your set. When you're done, and ready to export the long track back to individual WAV files, go ahead to the rest of this tutorial.



Once you're done editing, go to the cue list info window, and select the entire list. Press the "Batch" button to bring up the output. First, select the "Use Cue Label as Filename Prefix" to have the output files named the same as your source files. Choose an output directory that is different to the location where the original WAVs are stored and select PCM from the "Output Format" dropdown menu.

[image missing]

Press OK and watch as Cool Edit writes your newly smoothed WAV files to the selected directory. Note that the output files will not be sector aligned. You will need to use shntool or FLAC Frontend version 1.7.1 or later to correct this before burning to CD or you will recreate the very problem you just fixed!