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I am having this weird issue when joining two audio parts together in audacity, any ideas/suggestions on how to correct this?. (see pictures below).

two audio parts before join

two audio parts after joining

spider23
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Did you cross-fade at the join? The most likely cause of a "spike" in frequency content would be a discontinuity in the audio signal. Discontinuities, which includes abrupt starts or stops, will generate transients, which usually sound like clicks. By cross-fading, you can eliminate the discontinuity.

Phil Freihofner
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  • Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it! I haven't tried cross fade, I can give that a shot. Basically this is the only way to "join" two tracks together, there is no other way besides cross fade to smoothly join two tracks? It seems like a long process, in the sense of I have to do the cross fade, then create those two audio tracks as one by saving it as a new WAV file and then importing it to audacity again as one track to use it as needed in the remaining of the audio editing purposes for the main audio. Is my thinking process accurate? – spider23 Jun 06 '22 at 22:39
  • The more times you do it, the easier it gets. Audacity has tool for merging tracks, so no need to save to .wav and reload. – Phil Freihofner Jun 07 '22 at 15:52
  • Way back when (1980-90's) I used to splice physical tape. Did some work as sound designer for plays, also contributed to "Escape from Noise" (negativland). We looked for high-impact, sudden sounds to mask the splice-points. The timing of the physical splice angle (1/8"? at 15 inches per second) was too short for a proper X-fade, so connecting similar to similar would generate an audible glitch. But with digital, the transient that is generated seems louder, isn't masked by the loud event. Since the X-fade can be a bit longer, these days finding like-to-like works best with digital edits. – Phil Freihofner Jun 07 '22 at 16:37
  • ooh wow! This is art! I will check "Escape from Noise" What is the merging tracks tool in audacity? I appreciate all of your feedback! – spider23 Jun 08 '22 at 22:10
  • Check out: Tracks -> Mix and Render to New Track. https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tracks_menu_mix.html#mix_and_render_to_new_track. With that, you can mix multiple tracks that have the cross fades to a single new track & listen to result without losing the contributing tracks. I shouldn't brag too much about negativland. A good friend in the group, Ian Allen, gifted me a splicing block & taught me how to splice audio tape. I only performed with the group once, but was an occasional guest with them on "Over the Edge," a weekly radio show (KPFA) that has a live "audio-collage" jam. – Phil Freihofner Jun 09 '22 at 13:29