Create professional-quality CDs from live recordings

When you record live music, you end up with one, long audio file. With Adobe® Audition™, it’s easy to divide a recording into CD tracks, add track titles, and burn an audio CD. In this tutorial, you’ll also learn how to add polish to a CD by crossfading the audio between tracks.

1. Insert the recording in a session, and split the recording into clips.

In Multitrack View, create a new session file and choose Insert > Audio to insert the recording. Select the Time Selection tool in the toolbar, and press the spacebar to start playing the recording. As you listen to the recording, click in the track display a few seconds before where you want the second track to begin. (The exact number of seconds depends on how much audio you want to crossfade between tracks.) Then, choose Edit > Split. Repeat for the remaining tracks.

Keep in mind that all edits you make in Multitrack View are nondestructive—you can return to the original, unedited clip at any time. For example, if you want to remove a split between two clips, select the second clip, and press Delete. Then, select the first clip, and make sure that the Clip Edge Dragging button is selected in the toolbar. Position the pointer over the right edge of the clip until a double-line with arrows appears, and drag the clip boundary to it’s original (pre-split) position.

2. Position the clips on separate session tracks.

Select the Move/Copy Clip tool, and drag the second clip into the second track of the session. Position the clip so that it overlaps the first clip by a few seconds. (Again, the exact number of seconds depends on how much audio you want to crossfade between tracks.) Repeat for the remaining clips so that each clip is on a separate track and overlaps the previous clip.

At this point, you may want to remove excess audio from the end of each clip. For example, our recording had long stretches of applause that we didn’t want to include on the CD. We used the Time Selection tool to select the unwanted audio at the end of each clip, and pressed Delete. (Alternatively, make sure that the Clip Edge Dragging button is selected in the toolbar, and drag the edge of the clip inward.) To make it easier to differentiate between the clips, we also assigned each clip a unique color by right-clicking the clip and choosing Clip Color.

3. Crossfade the clips.

Select the Time Selection tool, and select the range of audio you want to crossfade between the first and second clips. Depending on where you dragged in the track display, one clip will probably be selected. Ctrl-click the other clip to select it. Then, choose Edit > Crossfade > [crossfade option]. Repeat for the remaining clips.

We chose the Sinosudial crossfade option because we felt it created the most natural crossfade. The other crossfade options are Linear (which produces an even crossfade), Logarithmic In (which produces a steeper slope at the end of the fade), and Logarithmic Out (which produces a steeper slope at the beginning of the fade). After you apply each crossfade, play the recording to listen to the results. If you’re not satisfied with the results, you can manually adjust the control points in the clip envelope. For more information on editing clip envelopes, see Adobe Audition Help.

4. Add track cues.

Select the audio you want to place on the first track of the CD, and press Shift+F8 to add a track cue range. Repeat for each track on the CD.

Adobe Audition interprets each track cue range as a CD track when you mixdown the session to a CD project. You can also add track cues by selecting a range of audio, clicking Add in the Cue List window, and choosing Track as the cue type.

5. Mix down the session, and add titles for the CD tracks.

Choose Edit > Mix Down To CD Project > All Audio Clips. (If the Edit Original Options window appears, click No to continue.) The audio for each track cue appears as a separate track in CD Project View. Select the first track, and click Track Properties. Enter a track title, and click OK. Repeat for the remaining tracks.

At this point, you may want to normalize the amplitude of the audio. Because all the tracks on the CD are from the same mixdown, you can switch to Edit View and use the Normalize effect (Effects > Amplitude > Normalize) to set a peak amplitude. Adobe Audition automatically updates the audio in CD Project View. You can also stay in CD Project View and choose Edit > Group Waveform Normalize. This command lets you normalize multiple open waveforms in a batch process.

6. Burn the CD.

Insert a blank, writable CD into the CD burning device. Click Write CD, and choose the device you want to use to write the CD. Then, click Write CD.