Joining /concatenating mp3 – and other- files

 

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This is soem4thing that I doa lot this period for a weekly program I so with a  buy from USA.

Let me be more practical and get immediately  into the useful information :

 

I two programs   form the far past he one is mP3 surgeon primarily used for trimming and cutting mp3 files ‘as a surgeon’ directly into the chunks instead of decompressing and recompressing the files  that mans without any loss in audio quality. The  program however has been stopped  updating a lot ago ie around 2005 A few more utilities inside it mainly the joiner a mp3 into wav converter a batch , an mp3 catalog  and a ID3 batch. A simple but professional program that requires 30Eu after the trial

 

The other program is nearly the same but much simpler : mp3trackmaker that  cuts  a long mp3 based in winamp’s relative positions in between songs with a separate tab for joining files. Is was a commercial program for very long time but more recently the developer offered it for free (as Irfanview older times ) 

Do you remember this program? Winano was a breakthrough audio fileplayer of the early times of mp3 period. This program reads the position df winamp and defines points where the file can be cut.  

 

Both do the job very well but recently someone shown an old technique  on how to use a DOS command to join files

Tis is something very simple

copy /b first-mp3-file.mp3 + second-mp3-file.mp3 merge.mp3

where first-mp3-file.mp3 and second-mp3-file.mp3 are the filnames with merge.mp3   the resulted file name

 

This can be easy to be made providing that you will join a few files What you can then? The bet way is to use one of the above programs Both programs can help you define the sequence of these files. Otherwise  just dong the

Copy/b *.mp3 result.mp3  can copy the files in ‘random’

This is not exactly random as someone can think but there is a logic behind it: DOS system and Fat recognize the file position  as added in the directory: first  added first shown . The logic continues this way until a file is removed . The next added file will positioned in the vacant seat

As I noticed in his page

The unsorted files are made the way they are added in the directory Newer files are put into the bottom of the file directory If a file is deleted from this directory If you add a new file , it can be registered in the deleted files position I know that after experimenting a lot a few years ago. This also happens with your MP3 listing

 

 

Something important with file concatenation:  

AS he poster ithe above page inisisted he could use the same technique with other file formats

For this reason I uses a very good audio converter and experimented sometime with various other formats with these results as below:  

-FLAC AC3 play OK !

The resulted file is shown in the windows player  with full length and both files are played

 

-OGG, AAC   M4a , m4b , mp4 , wma v9 and wma10: Only the first file is played.  

The poster also claims that he cold join  .DOC and excel files . This is a big mistake . h ecan do that as far as the files are only text . However  both todays’s DOC and XLS files are binary and compressed . I did that and understood that only the first if thse files can be shown!

 

To advise again if the files :

-have different bit rates they are played well
-If the first file is mono only and the second is stereo , the result will be mono only
-If the fist file is 44 kHZ and the second is 48000 only the first file will be heard. The remain flies will seem as VACANT!