# Question about joining tracks.



## GreatFugue (Aug 16, 2015)

For those of you who like to join all movements/parts of a composition into a single file when you're ripping a CD, how do you handle a very large work? I've really enjoyed not having to manage and tag a bunch of tracks that are only a couple of minutes long each, and it makes sense to have a single composition as one unit, but that system really fails when it comes to larger compositions. The "track" ends up being hours long and I lose the ability to mark my place if my listening is interrupted. 

Is there some way of keeping everything as a whole but still be able to save my place (besides just writing down the time) that I'm not aware of? Does anyone else use this system?


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I always join tracks in symphonies and concertos. I don't generally join piano works, like Liszt's Années de pèlerinage or Chopin Mazurkas. If a work spans two CDs (quite rare) I rip them to WAV and join them in an audio editor, then bring them back in to convert them to AAC. I used to join operas by act, but I've stopped doing that because sometimes it is nice to compare specific arias and I don't random shuffle operas. Operas are in a separate iTunes library set to play by "album" not "song".

There may be players that allow for bookmarks. I'm not sure. I usually just play stuff through, so I haven't thought about it.


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## GreatFugue (Aug 16, 2015)

Thanks for the input, bigshot. I'm re-ripping my CDs because I lost my old FLAC collection, but it wasn't very well organized to begin with, LOL.

Using an audio editor to join seems like a lot of work, though.

Not sure what OS you use, but if you have access to a terminal emulator and can install cdparanoia (it's the work-horse behind most CD rippers in Linux), I'd recommend it for joining tracks. Say you want to join a symphony (tracks 1-4): it's as simple as "cdparanoia 1-4 [filename].wav" or use the "-B" option to keep tracks separate, "cdparanoia -B 1-4" and it will output to "track1.cdda.wav ... track2, etc".


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

It is a lot of work, but the situation rarely comes up, except with Bruckner and sometimes Mahler.

I really like joining by work, because it allows me to put my library on random shuffle and have music playing all the time streamed through my house. I still sit down and pick stuff to listen to, but it's nice to have the music be a part of my everyday life too.


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