Fading MP3 into eachother

Stoner

Getting married in Rome next week. We have been looking at our MP3 collection for the music afterwards. But we discovered that one song following another sounds crappy due to wait time etc. I was hoping to use an MP3 player hooked into the hotel PA system so what ever software i get will have to work on one of our players ( creative Dukebox, Zen Xtra, Zen touch or ARCHOS AV400)
Anyone any ideas?

I could also burn some mp3 cds for a mp3 playing cd walkman that i can connect to a pa.

Not to sure if this can work and i dont really want to copy all the songs and hack the start and finishes of them.
anyone any ideas?

thanks

aidan_walsh

I'm sure many media players support cross-fading now. Winamp 5 (maybe 3 too) has it by default, I know, and there is a plug in for it in Winamp 2.x.

Wertz

Don't make the mistake of trying to burn a cd from WMP with the crossfade feature on (not sure about other players); crossfade is PB only.

I'd suggest getting a trial version of mixing s/w...something like virtualDJ, audiotools, PCDJ or similar. They have an automix feature that will beat/pitch match and crossfade and you can usually record to mp3 too. Dunno if the trial versions are fully functional or not though. I use semi-pro version of virtualDJ.


If it's something like your wedding you obviously wanna make sure it all goes off nice...spend the time to do it right, not that hard. If it meant speding €40 on an app or firing up your BT client then what the hell...

tman

i briefly used an app that would've been perfect for this cause...
http://www.download.com/Acoustica-MP3-Audio-Mixer/3000-2170_4-10188373.html?tag=lst-0-1
fairly sure that's the one... it was too basic for my needs - no pitch control or anything like that - kind of like a crippled version of sonic foundry's acid...
should be perfect for making a continuous mp3 made up of multiple tracks
(its a trial version... i can't remember if there are any limitations on what you can do with it)

Wertz

Wertz wrote:

Don't make the mistake of trying to burn a cd from WMP with the crossfade feature on (not sure about other players); crossfade is PB only.
..

Although you could prolly record the playback with a source recorder...try opD2D

BloodBath

Hire a dj


BloodBath

Lump

Winamp crossfades.

John

Creamy Goodness

Lump wrote:

Winamp crossfades.

John

yeh but he's talking about burning it to a cd, so that he can slap it into his cd player and walk away and it do the fading.

afaik as said above winamp only crossfades on playback.

Lump

Oh right, I'm blond.

Lots of sound programmes will let you do it manually. But for automatically I don't know.

John

Gilgamesh

well, Nero burning ROM has a fadein/out feature in it, maybe you can do it with that, isn't really true crossfading but there should be a plugin

Stoner

thanks for the help lads, Looks like a laptop is the man so with one of the software sets you guys suggested. No luck on the DJ, we looked into the ones the hotel suggested ( along with their KD Lang singers) but we were not happy with their stuff.

So is bringing a laptop with the software on it the best option for everyone?

Lump

Yea, bring a laptop, but put it somewhere safe The nero crossfade doesn't work too Well.

John

Nephew

I hope its not going to be all Bruce Springsteen and Goo Goo Dolls songs.

axer

Whats wrong with Bruce Springsteen???

Nephew

You know the way kids dress up for Halloween, well lets just say Stoner forget to take off his Bruce Springsteen costume.

stevenmu

Doesn't winamp still have the wave out plugin ? You could setup up your playlist, play it through the wave out and get a big .wav file with your tracks then convert it back as one big mp3 and stick it on one of your players. Of course you're loosing a bit of quality going MP3->Wav->MP3 but probably not anything that'll be noticeable over a hotels PA and you'll need a decent bit of hard disk space for the intermediary Wav file. The big downside is that you're losing flexibility in your playlist because it's all one big track, but it's free. At worst it's an idea for a backup plan in case the laptop fails.

Stoner

Good Idea, as i will have a back up, I'll do that so,
plan a laptop ,
plan b win amp crossfaded playlist on

clint_silver

some ideas for you to think about from someone whos DJed...

For fading, the acoustica software posted earlier will do the job but not automatically. Open the software, load in A.mp3. click the vol control and drop the vol at the end of track A. Load in B.mp3 under it and start with low vol so it comes in while the first one is fading out etc,etc. You'll have 1 big mp3 at the end that you can save, then burn that.

Have you tried Nero and clicking the "no pause between tracks" before burning option?

If I was doing it, Id say use the Dj software as was mentioned, virtual DJ, traktor, mixmeister, pcdj etc, they'll all let you match BPMs (very important), not all will let you save off a playlist and not all will auto Xfade tho so watch for that. Think you know your songs and which are fast or slow? Let the BPM analyzers in most DJ software at your mp3 list to show you what you know.

You could pay someone a few quid to set you up with some cds which are mixed properly.. give them your mp3s or ask them to burn 8-9 cds with different genres on it.. as its your wedding, dyou wanna take a chance on you knowing what other people want to hear all night from your collection?

Try no fading, (trust me here) you really only want to have fading when youre trying to seamlessly integrate songs in more later dance genre songs. Most of your 60s,70s,80s, Abba, Rock, Wham,etc dont need mixing. Just get your cue points rights in the songs for stopping and starting.

Lastly, mate of mine is getting married in Barcelona in a few weeks, DJ recommended to her by the hotel is costing her 900euro for 3 hours and 300 for every hour after that. As she knows noone else, she has to pay it, I did offer but shesd paid a deposit. Ive got my learn spanish in 3 weeks book out as I type.

mordeith

I've mixed a fair few CDs using the eJay Mixstation software. While it's beatmatching and crossfading are good, I find that if one song has to have it's tempo changed to beatmatch (which it invariably will), the result doesn't sound quiet right as the song plays. There will be little noise artifacts and the pitch during some sounds or vocals will not sound good. So unless you've someone to actually man the laptop and reset the pitch I would recommend buring CDs and as previously suggested, making your cue points nice and neat.

Wertz

clint_silver wrote:

Lastly, mate of mine is getting married in Barcelona in a few weeks, DJ recommended to her by the hotel is costing her 900euro for 3 hours and 300 for every hour after that. As she knows noone else, she has to pay it, I did offer but shesd paid a deposit. Ive got my learn spanish in 3 weeks book out as I type.

*speechless*

300 an hour for a WEDDING DJ??!?!

Fook that! I need to get out of this country...

@ OP; taking a laptop is a headache you don't need IMO. I'd definitely go with making the mix prior to the event and uploading the mp3 to your iPod or whatever. Use any trial/full version of any mix s/w mentioned and use OPd2d to encode it directly to mp3 (beats the wav route).

As for what Mordeith said, most of the DJ s/w available will have a feature called time stretching which uses an algorithm to change the pitch/tempo whilst keeping the actual "tone" (ie vocals, chords, mid/treble) the same. Avoids that sped up/slowed down sound that can really kill a song...

Nephew

Easy CD-DA Extractor lets you do this in the audio file format converter section. So you could play directly off your mp3 player. You can download a 28 day demo from their site.

vibe666

virtualdj is the badgers nadgers for automixing mp3's (beatmatching and the auto crossfading between tracks woith some quite fancy mixes is very good most of the time), and you can pick your playlist, and let it run and output to wav to burn straight to cd. that way you know it's oging to sound alright on the night cos you'll have listened to it, and you're not going to get your laptop nicked.