Background:
I have ripped all my CD's (about 1000 of them) using Lame and CDex and am now filling in my collection with the help of others. I am anal and only want full albums or nothing at all.

Many files are ALBM files that require to be split into individual files (I am not into using cue-type playlists or the MP3Cue stuff plugins). I use Itunes and/or Winamp to play my files and I want individual files for each song.

I originally used the software that came with my Audigy 2 card on one computer and also used Adobe Audition for the other that has the old Vortex2 card. This works quite well as you can see the beginnings and ends of songs and edit meticulously and also get rid of the added space between songs. The obvious issue here being the going back and forth of formats which is slow, completely unnecessary, and will cause potential audio quality degradation. This brought me to search for alternatives.

I have looked through the forums here and tried everything listed but am unhappy with what I have found. I am hoping there is a software I am missing and/or a method I have not considered. I hope someone here can share their experience with me.

CueMaster & MusiCutter:
I started out by getting CueMaster to download the Cue files based on album name. I then proceeded to use MusiCutter to import the cue file and cut the files up. What I find is that there are so many cue files listed you don't know which one is THE exact version you have (most of the ALBM files i download seem not to have embedded cue files or ID tags to help me with this problem). The result is that for at least half of the albums the cue points were just plain wrong.

Cool MP3 SPlitter
What a pain this is to try and get the exact point in time where the file starts and stops! If you try to use the time indicator as a reference it doesn't work as the time is not an actual elapsed time...the reference point for zero is not consistent (very strange). If you use the frames there is no easy way to find the right point. Overall a nice concept that would work if they just added a graphic waveform there the likes of CoolEdit/Adobe Audition.

MP3DirectCut
There does exist a small problem of inconsistency of the graph and reality...a margin of error (already alluded to in other posts in the forum). What you see is not what you get!

I tried a slew of other programs that were either just plain cruddy or even locked up trying to simply open the file.

I don't mean to sound like John and Wendy Whiner from SNL, but nothing here is really working for me

Any suggestions???

Thanks in advance

I fear you absolutely have the Cue sheet associated with your own rips, as cd drives (and sometimes albums) are slightly different... but you have already noticed that...

Mp3Trim Pro (the software I rely on for such tasks) can split mp3s losslessly, or even regenerate cuesheets by analyzing the complete file - though such a method is pointless with live recordings or other albums that lack silence between tracks... and even with common albums, it often detects too many tracks (actual tracks are given several split points whenever they have silence in them, so you have to edit the cuesheets prior to splitting).

Well... what about ripping from original CDs again ?

HotShot,

Thanks for your reply. I may not have stated something clearly. I am talking about albums that are downloaded or copied from other people, not albums that are in my possession. So essentially I have no control over what format things are in and whether or not the cue sheets are embedded.

Regarding Mp3Trim Pro, I will get it and try it out...hopefully it offers a better solution!

Thanks

Oh yes it was clear, as should have been my smiley =)


The mp3trim solution is not optimal (especially if you have 600 albums to process...) but is worth a try.
Greetings,

if any of your albums are ALBW, you might want this tool: http://www.infamus.com/albumwrap/extractor.html

Your right about musicutter and cue master. the cue sheets are wrong by bits/seconds etc.

I add the step where you manually correct the cue sheet using mp3cue with winamp and that fixxes up the cut points. Its not too bad. Adds about 10 min to your processing time.

If you completely pick the wrong cue file,you usually find that out pretty quick,and getting another one is easy.

Mp3cue is a good utility if you use winamp.

Hotshot,

I have downloaded the non-Pro version of MP3Trim...I am still "Looking" for the pro version. It looks pretty cool so far, will let you know how I fare once I get the pro version.

Dreamliner,

Thanks a bunch for the link. That seems like common knowledge that I should know, but didn't (that's what I get for staying within my own CD's for so long---such a bad little boy I am!). Either way, it turns out that about 60 per cent of the files I had already downloaded were ALBW files so it worked perfectly! Really cool stuff! Thanks again!

Kennedy,

It's good to know I wasn't the only one having trouble with those apps!

This thread needs closing