News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

April 28, 2006

music

Come together

Posted Apr. 28, ’06, 6:17 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Music

iTunesChances are you’ve wanted to merge two music files together before. Whether it’s because they’re two tracks that somehow complete each other, or because you have a giant number of separate tracks for a single audio book, or maybe you’re just trying to create that perfect segue.

Problem is, iTunes only lets you join tracks together when you’re ripping from a CD (those shiny, round things that music used to come on, before the Internet), using the Advanced…Join Tracks menu command. What happens, though, when you’ve already accidentally imported all 21 tracks of “Fingertips” from They Might Be Giants Apollo 18 as separate tracks, and you really don’t want to go through that again?

Well, if you ripped the music into the AAC format, there’s help for you. Dan Frakes checks out the aptly named iTunesJoin collection of AppleScripts on the Mac Gems blog. While Dan found that the app does to do what it says on the tin, there are some limitations: it can only merge unprotected AAC files ripped at the same bitrate without a loss in quality. So, if you’re trying to put together some MP3 files, it is possible, but you’ll lose sound quality. Also, protected AAC files (the kind you get from the iTunes Music Store) can be merged, but the resulting file will be lower quality, and you won’t be able to play it on your iPod.


1 Comments

Johnny Astro said:

It's funny that you mentioned "fingerprints", since I was just thinking today how funny it was to have these 5 second songs randomly appear when I'm listening to my iPod. I would never join them together! That song was MADE for iPod listening!

April 28, 2006 10:50 AM

Leave a comment

 



Visit other IDG sites: