"Gapless" tapes

Music, Cassettes, Recordings
1

I have several LPs that are recorded with each track blending into the next - DJ style. Each side is therefor one long track. I have digitally cleaned up the audio on them and would like to transfer them to DCC and include the song info for each track. When I have tried this, there is an audible gap between the tracks. On the DCC 175, I tried to specify the gap as 0 seconds in the compilation but I think that it defaults to back to 1 second. I have been able to record them as one long track by switching the recording mode to Analogue but then I have not been able to set markers or track info to locate the individual songs. Is a “gapless” recording with track info possible?
Thx!

2

The way to do this with DCC-Studio is far from perfect, unfortunately:

  1. Record the entire album to hard disk, either through the analog or digital Line In, or by copying a tape recording to hard disk
  2. Open the recorded track in the Editor in DCC-Studio
  3. Place markers at each place in the audio where you want a track marker to be recorded later. You will want to name each marker but the names aren’t important; I would just use numbers 1, 2, 3, etc.
  4. Use the Selection controls to select the audio from the beginning of the track up to the first marker. Then Cut the selection to the clipboard (Ctrl+X or use the scissor button). Then create a new audio track using the track number and use Paste (Ctrl+V or use the clipboard button) to paste the clipboard into the new track. Save the new track with the artist and title you want it to have. It’s a good idea to use a file name with the track number in it: E.g. “MIX01.TRK”, “MIX02.TRK” etc.
  5. Repeat step 4 until you have TRK files for all tracks. Close the master track file but don’t save it, in case you want to do it again.
  6. Close all editor windows and Create a new compilation. Set the interval to 0 seconds. Now add MIX01.TRK, MIX02.TRK etc. to the compilation.
  7. Record the compilation to tape.

The cumbersome process is necessary because the program cuts and pastes audio data by the frame. When recording a compilation, it just streams frames of MP1/PASC data to the tape and they can be recorded non-stop.

I don’t remember if I ever used DCC-Studio to record a non-stop album (like a live album or a DJ mix) with markers, so I don’t know how well this works. IF the program is smart enough to “look ahead” and buffer the data, and you have the pause set to 0, the audio will be non-stop. Otherwise (if DCC-Studio needs time to close the first track file and open the second track file and doesn’t do any buffering), you will have a short (fraction of a second) silence between tracks and it’s simply impossible to make a real non-stop tape with markers using DCC-Studio. You will have to record the entire side of a tape at once, and add markers and titles later on with a DCC-730 or DCC-951.

As an alternative, you might think of using a CD grabber program to grab audio files separately, and then use an MP1 encoder to encode the tracks and DCCU to create track files based on the MP1 files, and then use DCC-studio to make a compilation and record it to tape. However, this will not work: The tracks on the CD are separated at the border of a CD sector and the number of MP1/PASC frames per second is not evenly divisible by the number of CD sectors per second, so whenever you convert a CD track to MP1/PASC, it will probably have a short silence at the end to make up for rounding errors. Instead, you would need to convert the entire CD to MP1 first, and then cut the MP1 into separate files at MPEG frame borders.

I have a feature in mind for the DCCU or DCCSE program to generate multiple TRK files and a CMP (Compilation) file automatically from either a cue file or a TRK file with markers, to make the process a little easier, but I’m very VERY busy with work at this time so it will take a while before that idea will see the light of day.

===Jac

2 Likes
3

Jac,

Thank you for the process outline and taking the time to give a detailed explanation of of the “how’s and why’s”. It’s fascinating and very much appreciated. I will try this and report back.

Thanks, David