adding a few seconds at the beginning of a song

I would like to add a few seconds of silence at the beginning of a song. (Live performance routine requires a couple of seconds for transition and I can't get physically back to the ipod to make it pause while things happen) Can I use the start time / stop time options for this? How?

I have the playlist just exactly as I like it right now. I don't want to insert pauses between all the songs ... I just want this one song to have a three or four second pause at its beginning

HELP!!
thanks

iMac G3 bondi :: imac G5 isight, Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Mar 22, 2008 3:20 PM

Reply
5 replies

Mar 23, 2008 9:57 AM in response to kt misener

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to use another program to create a several-second silent track, then insert that in the playlist. I use SoundStudio (free download at that link).

If you don't want to use another program, find a track in your library with several seconds of silence (like the space before a "hidden track"), set the start/stop times to play as much silence as you like, then duplicate it to get a silence-only track.

Apr 26, 2008 5:39 AM in response to jere7my

I tried that lots but itunes does not seem to want to add the new, copied, adjusted, renamed song back into the library? I did everything, copied the song and added the time and the rest ... but could never get itunes to recognize that new song. Tried dragging and dropping as well as manually choosing Add To Library. I tried restarting the machine and updating itunes but it never worked so I gave up.

Apr 27, 2008 11:52 AM in response to kt misener

Hmm...you should be able to do this entirely within iTunes, without dragging and dropping anything.

1) Select a song (in iTunes) with a long-enough period of silence.
2) Set its start and stop times to be within that silent period, by using "Get Info > Options".
3) Convert the song to a new MP3 or AAC, using "Advanced > Convert Selection To..."
4) You should now have a new track with the same name that's only a few seconds long. (If you don't see it, try sorting on the "Date Added" column to bring it to the top.)
5) Rename the track to something like "Silence, 3 seconds".

Apr 27, 2008 2:23 PM in response to kt misener

Use the freeware Audacity to produce a 4 seconds of silence file. Audacity may be able to produce the MP3 file, or if not you can use iTunes to encode your 4 sec silence to MP3.

Use a program like MP3Trimmer to combine this silence file with your file.

I suggest combining with MP3Trimmer rather than importing both into Audacity and then reexporting because if you re-export it will re-encode your music MP3 causing additional quality loss. MP3Trimmer file combining is splicing files rather than re-encoding.

Mp3Trimmer is shareware but with fairly liberal trial conditions. There may be freeware that does this but I have MP3Trimmer so I haven't investigated further.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

adding a few seconds at the beginning of a song

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.