Editing Audio Files for Best Performance

If some or all of the song files you will be using with your system were NOT ripped and prepared using our TunePrepper™ ripper/prepper, they may need some "stroking" to help them automate smoothly. Here are some steps you can take to make them sound their best when played back through the TuneTracker System™.


A LITTLE BACKGROUND

When professional music suppliers prepare their music for use on automated systems, they normally edit their files to optimize them for smooth transitions and better volume matching from one song to the next. These optimizations make the radio format sound smoother and more professional. We recommend you do the same with your pre-existing music selections. If you have a large collection of music, this may seem like a challenging undertaking, and if you are strictly a hobbyist, it may be that you would rather not bother. However, for anyone who is serious about presenting a tight, professional sound, we highly recommend doing so.

At BeOSRADIO, we perform the following edits to all of our songs, for best results with the TuneTracker™ System:

•   Trim all blank space from the front of each song
  
•   Trim all blank space from the back of each song
  
•   Normalize the song for maximum volume on peaks
  
•   On songs with long, slow fades, we trim them back to a point where there is still significant volume left, then create a one-second fade-out. This may seem drastic, but in our experience it makes for good-sounding transitions on this system.

All of these operations can be performed in a two-channel audio editor, but it's slow, tedious work, and if the original file you work on is an MP3, you will suffer from a generation of quality loss.

The very best way we have found to prepare MP3 files for automation is to run them through a shareware program called mp3Trim. This terrific program allows you to process large numbers of MP3 files in bulk, doing all of the operations listed above (except shortening fade times...that must be done song-by-song rather than in bulk) without actually loading and saving the file itself.

mp3Trim runs under Windows, so you'll need process them there and then transfer them into your BeOS installation...which can potentially all be done on one machine if you have it set up for dual-booting between the two operating systems. But whatever small inconvenience that represents pales in comparison to the time and audio quality you lose trying to do it in a two-channel editor. Take it from us...we've tried it both ways!

There is no substitute for doing it right to start with, of course, so if you have the option of using TunePrepper™ to rip your songs from scratch, straight into your TuneTracker computer, that's the best bet of all.




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