Making a digital "mixed tape"


Hi All.  I am putting together a playist for a memorial ceremony for a friend and am using Jriver v 21.0.9 for music management on my laptop.  However, the intended "mixed tape" needs to be saved in a format that other machines can play without having JRiver installed. The "mixed tape" could be in any format (MP4, wave, flac, anything) - though I am assuming all songs should be saved in the same format. On JRiver, I see how one can save the contents (e.g. library) or a playlist to a file, and see that I can export a playlist to a burnable CD, but in this case, I want to export the music to a single file on my hard drive, and then share it with the guy doing the video for the memorial.  Any help would be most appreciated.  Can I do what I need in JRiver?  If not, what other (preferably free) software would do this. If I recall right, I think iTunes might do this, although I'm not psyched to install iTunes on my Dell laptop.

Thanks, Peter

peter_s

I am 99 percent sure that JRiver will not export to a single file. You might want to ask in the JRiver forum to be certain. One bit of software that I know will do what you want is Acoustica CD burner. Not only can you export to a single file, but you can mix the tunes together so that there is no silence between tracks, and you can adjust the mix to your preference so the tracks overlap into a smooth segue.

You can send a playlist to thumb drive via JRiver. I have done it numerous times. Ask the guy what format his softwares can decode and put that format on yor thumb drive.

Of course. But the OP wants to export the playlist as a single file, and I do not think JRiver does that. Acoustica can export as a single file to CD, thumb drive, or you can just save it (such as to HD) as one large file.

By exporting all the tunes as one file, the OP can save it in a single format. It sounds like the tunes @peter_s has are in different formats, so he’s trying to avoid having any incompatible formats in the playlist.

@cleeds is correct about my intention of having all files in a simple format that is compatible with most music playing programs.  I don't really care if it's a single file or multiple songs, but would like to ensure that the songs are all readable and are played in the designated order. 

@tpreaves When you send the playlist to the thumb drive, are you using the "export playlist" function. Then you specify the format for all the files saved on the thumb drive and JRiver does any necessary conversions?  Is this correct?  And the thumb drive can be played without the use of JRiver?  Thanks.

@peter_s when you export a playlist in JRiver, it will save as an M3U file. An M3U file does not contain the actual tracks themselves, but rather pointers to those tracks. For that reason, other computers or players won’t be able to execute the playlist unless they are connected to your network. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think JRiver can save a playlist and the files it contains to a thumb drive. It is limited to burning to CD.

If you want to be certain, you can ask your question on the JRiver forum. You'll get a definitive answer.

 

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just don’t see why a thumb drive isn’t put into the computer and music files dragged or copy and pasted into the thumb drive ?

 

seems so much simpler 

 

 

Read the OP. He has various file types and wants to ensure they’ll play on another player. So he is looking to have them into a single common file type that will enable it to be played without issue.

Audacity used to allow mixing of songs into one big music file. It was free last time I checked. There are many others that can do it that costs money but some of them allow you to test the software for a week or two and that might be enough for you.

OP, I'm using JRiver since many years, it is not suited for your intended task. You may want to try fre:ac (www.freac.org). It's a free audio converter. The Windows version is available stand-alone from their website or from the Microsoft Store. fre:ac converts freely between all supported formats. No matter if you need WMA to MP3, MP3 to WAV, M4A to MP3, WAV to MP3 or any other conversion, fre:ac supports any combination of formats. fre:ac can query the CDDB/GNUdb online CD database to find artist and title information prior to ripping. No need to enter track names manually. fre:ac can be installed on a USB stick or external drive so you can take it with you and use it on any computer. It will also store its configuration files on the portable drive. That way it will always start up with your custom settings. Activating the hidden function for the task, you are able to transfer all music tracks stored on a computer's hard drive in one single file. Cheers!

OP, in addition to the above, here the tutorial to create a single file

 - Drag the files you want to merge from Windows Explorer into the fre:ac window (below 'artist')

- 'coding', 'coding options', mark 'code in one single file'

- start the conversion/merging with the command  'coding', 'start coding'

- 'store under' dialog windows will open

- add a file name and a destination folder, confirm with 'save'