Join audio files into one track

How to merge audio files

1. Open the editor and drop all your files in. Each becomes a row with its own play button, so you can check which is which.
2. Drag rows into the order you want. Tick the ones to include.
3. Set a gap in seconds after any piece, or add a silence block of any length as its own row and drag it between two files.
4. Leave match levels on if the recordings were made at different volumes, and choose crossfades instead of hard cuts if you want pieces to blend.
5. Press join. The result arrives as a new row you can edit further, or save as MP3 or WAV.

Details that matter

• Mixed formats are fine. Join an MP3 to a WAV to an AMR memo; everything is decoded and resampled to match.
• Silence blocks are first-class: a two minute pause between sections is a row you can see, move and edit, not a number hidden in a dialog.
• Edit before joining. Open any piece, cut out a cough, and the join uses your edited version automatically.

How much silence belongs between pieces?

The gap is the difference between a join that sounds deliberate and one that sounds like a mistake. Rough guidance that holds up well:

The instinct to leave a large gap between every section is worth resisting. In a continuous listen, two seconds feels like a pause; four feels like the file has stopped working.

Gaps versus silence rows

Two ways to make space, for two different jobs. The GAP field on a row adds a short pause after that piece, and is the right tool for ordinary breathing room. A silence row is a block of quiet that lives in the list as its own item, which you can drag between any two files and re-time afterwards. That is the right tool when the silence is part of the content rather than punctuation: a timed pause in a practice session, a gap for someone to answer a question, a deliberate rest between exercises.

Joining recordings that do not match

Pieces from different sources rarely agree on anything. TidyAudio resamples everything to a common rate automatically, so mixing a 44100 Hz WAV with an 8000 Hz phone memo works without any preparation. Loudness, though, is the thing listeners actually notice, and match levels handles the worst of it by bringing each piece to the same peak before joining.

Peak matching has a known limitation worth understanding: a piece with one loud cough in an otherwise quiet recording will be scaled by that cough. When the joined result still feels uneven, the better fix is to open it afterwards and run volume levelling across the whole track, which judges by speaking level rather than by the single loudest moment.

Fix the pieces before you join them

Anything you edit stays edited: open a row, cut the fumbled intro out of it, and the join uses your edited version. Doing the cutting and cleaning first is usually less work than doing it to one long file afterwards, because each piece is short enough to navigate quickly.

Common questions