Workflow – phase 3 – Split into tracks and convert to playback format

I use Audacity and Foobar in this phase. There may be other programs that have features to help you more in some of the steps, like locating tracks and finding album information, but this is freeware and I think it works fine.

  1. Search the internet for a tracklist for your album. Note that the list you find may come from a CD which contains bonus tracks and there may be other differences.
    Keep the internet window open.
  2. Open your edited WAV file in Audacity and view the entire recording (fit to window). Make a preliminary marking between the tracks (Ctrl B in Audacity). Then adjust the markings by zooming in and out and listening to where tracks start and end. When this is done this you should check that you have the same number of tracks in your recording as in the tracklist.
  3. Copy and paste the track titles from the list to the track labels.
  4. Open the “Meta data editor” (the “file” dropdown bar) and enter information about artist, album, year, genre etc.
  5. Chose the function to export the recording to multiple files. At the same time you give the folder names for artist and album where you want the result to land.
    This is the final result which you should arcive (see below).
    Examples from step 1 to 5.
  6. Create the playback formats you need.
    Open Foobar and fetch the album tracks by using the ”add folder” function.
    You can create, store and reuse the conversion methods you need (quality level, where to store and how to create album and artist folders and file names for the tracks).  A typical workflow could contain two methods – “Vinyl to MP3” and “Vinyl to streaming”.
    Mark the files you want to convert and select “conversion” using the method you have created. Foobar will start the work and report back to you when it is done.
    (Repeat until you have created the different formats you want)
    Examples from steg 6
  7. Clean out leftover files and save archive copies in a safe place.
    Before you are fully confident with your workflow you should also save an archive copy of the original recording before you have edited it.
    Personally I only archive the final results.

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