Combine multiple mp3s to form one larger audio file.

[fatw41]

Forgive me I've gotten roughly 2 hours sleep in the last 48 to 55 hours and my brain may not be functioning at maximum capacity.

I've been hopelessly dependent on Windows Movie Maker and Windows XP for the last 5 or so years for compiling my projects. I have multiple mp3s which I often need to combine to make much larger audio files. Let's say that each mp3 is one unique line of a story. I would drop all these files in movie maker and then copy and paste other mp3s either silence or language comments/translations between the individual lines.

In a nutshell what I need to do is rearrange the order of the mp3s by dragging, dropping, copying and pasting wherever it is necessary. Under windows 7 with windows live movie maker I am not readily able to achieve this. In windows XO I could first have all the story mp3s in movie maker, and then from the index of recent or imported files copy and paste other particulars. This seems really impractical with windows live movie maker, and now that my old desktop that has faithfully been running XP for so many years stopped working I'm struggling to find a workable solution before the backlog of unfinished work becomes so large that it collapses under its own weight.

I've used audacity before, but it's also not ideal in this situation. I'd like something where I can easily drag and drop mp3s just like we do with most video editing software out there. Another major headache with audacity is that the version I tried a few months ago seemed to lack intelligence when handling numbers and would follow a ridiculously strict ordering system that meant that an mp3 named "1099" would be listed ahead of an mps titled "2"

Really need to find a workable solution. Free or paid software is both acceptable, but of course free is better.

I can provide more information if necessary to help you understand exactly what I'm looking for.

Thank you so much to all the kind souls who take the time to answer me!

EDIT: Oh, and since I'm no longer going to have windows XP I need something that can run on Windows 7 (64 bit)

 

[faalin]

Try acoustica mp3 audio mixer. Its been about 7 or 8 years since i played with it but it was very easy to use and could just drop files in and move them around to get what you want. If i remember right you could drop movie files in and move the audio around to match for stuff.

 

[fatw41]

Try acoustica mp3 audio mixer. Its been about 7 or 8 years since i played with it but it was very easy to use and could just drop files in and move them around to get what you want. If i remember right you could drop movie files in and move the audio around to match for stuff.

Thanks, I'll take a look at it and see if it meets my requirements.

In the meantime if others have other possible solutions I'm all ears!

 

[rwpritchett]

I've used Audacity to glue mp3's todether.

http/audacity.sourceforge.net/

 

[fatw41]

I've used Audacity to glue mp3's todether.

http/audacity.sourceforge.net/

Thanks for the response, but audacity has a few built in features that seem to rule it out for my specific use. Chief among these is that it lists files in a way that stipulates 108 comes before say the number 3. Because my files are mainly based on numerical values, but they need to be sorted in ascending order this really is a major headache for me. I've actually used a solution that can be described as anything but elegant when I was forced to use audacity. I used some other software to rename my files based on the alphabet and then i opened them with audacity.

For the life of me I cannot easily figure out how to drag and drop files once they have been opened in audacity. Say for example I open about 50 files simultaneously, but I need to rearrange the order after doing so. I also need to insert other mp3s between some of the others, how exactly can I achieve this using audacity.

With microsoft movie maker under windows 7, this was as simple as importing the files to a playlist (can't remember the specific term). You could then easily drag and drop items from that playlist to the storyboard where you could move things around at will like a jigsaw puzzle. Gosh that was perfect for my needs, but it seems as though audacity can't achieve this in a simple way. I would love to learn that I am wrong and that what I'd like to achieve is pretty straightforward with audacity, but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.