Use Adobe Audition to Split a CD into Smaller Parts

1. First off - start up Adobe Audition in "Edit Waveform View" (Under the "View" tab at the top if you need to change it.)

2. Now we'll need to load the Wave file in from CD. Put The CD in the drive and select "File" and then "Extract Audio from CD..."

3. Adobe Audition will report all Wave files it finds on the CD - if more than one, select the one you want.

4. Depending on the size of the file (and speed of your computer) this may take a minute or so to load. Once it does, you should see a Waveform displayed in your Adobe Audition window.

B. CLEAN THE FILE (Optional)

If you are happy with the sound as it is, you can skip this step. But if you want to remove ambient room sounds or artifacts created by your sound card Adobe Audition provides a pretty decent "Noise Reduction" tool, located under the "Tools" tab.

1. First, you need to select a section of the file with just the sound you wish to eliminate. Use the "Magnify" button if you need to zoom in on the Waveform. Then highlight the selection by right clicking your mouse.

2. Now click on "Effects" and select "Noise Reduction" and within that category is a specific "Noise Reduction" function that we want to use.

3. We will get a pop-up window. One of the functions on the upper right is "Get Profile from Selection" since we have already defined our selection that is what we want to do - hit the button. Once Adobe Audition has used our selection to create a Noise Profile we want to "Save Profile" so use that button, give the profile a distinct name, and save it to your hard drive. Close the "Noise Reduction" pop-up window.

4. In order to apply the Noise Profile to the entire Wave file we need to change our selection so hit "Edit" and then "Select Entire Wave".

5. We need to restart Noise Reduction so, "Effects" - "Noise Reduction" - "Noise Reduction" again and we get our pop-up window again. This time "Load Profile" and direct it to the Noise Profile we saved previously and click "OK". This is a CPU intensive process and will take a little while to finish - depending on the size of the file and speed of your processor it could take an hour. You can use the computer for other things while doing this but that will slow the process further.

When the process is finished, give the "Noise Reduced" file a listen - did it improve the sound? Sometimes Noise Reduction can introduce artifacts (most notably, sibilance) so give a careful listen and decide - is it better than the original? If so, now would be a good time to save the file.

C. SPLIT THE FILE

This is a fairly straight forward process.

1. Highlight the part of the file that you want to stand alone by dragging across the file with the left mouse button (use the Magnify buttons to adjust the view if necessary).

2. Select "Edit" and then "Copy to New" and Adobe Audition will insert your selection into its own window as a new file.

3. Now all you need do is select "File" then "Save As" and give the new Wave file a unique name like "Track 01".

Repeat as many times as necessary to split the entire file into as many sections as you wish BUT remember to keep the selections OVER 4 seconds in length as most CD-Burning software won't burn files under 4 seconds long.