How joining works
Files are concatenated in the order you arrange them, up to fifty in a single job. Drag to reorder before exporting: the sequence in the list is the sequence in the output. Formats can be mixed freely — an MP3, a WAV and a FLAC can go into the same job, because each is decoded before being joined and the result is encoded once into whichever format you choose.
With no crossfade, tracks butt directly against each other. That is what you want for spoken word, where a gap or an overlap both sound like mistakes. For music it usually sounds abrupt, which is what the crossfade setting is for: up to thirty seconds of overlap where the outgoing track fades down as the incoming one fades up.
Choosing a crossfade length
- 0 seconds — hard cut. Correct for interviews, audiobook chapters, and anything where the joins should be inaudible rather than smooth.
- 1 to 2 seconds — enough to hide a join without being noticeable as an effect. A good default for stitching takes of the same piece together.
- 4 to 8 seconds — the usual range for a DJ-style blend between two tracks of similar tempo.
- 10 seconds and up — an overt effect rather than a transition, useful for ambient or continuous-mix material.
A crossfade is limited by the shorter of the two clips: you cannot overlap five seconds into a three-second file. If a transition sounds shorter than you set it, that is why.
Practical notes
Sample rates are reconciled automatically, so joining a 44.1 kHz podcast recording to a 48 kHz one works without you converting first. Levels are not. If one file was recorded much louder than another the join will be obvious, and no crossfade length hides it — run the quiet file through the Volume Changer, or the whole result through the Audio Compressor, before or after joining.
Choose WAV or FLAC as the output if the merged file is going into further editing, since joining several lossy files and re-encoding to another lossy format stacks up compression artefacts. Everything is decoded locally for preview; the join itself happens on the server after you export, and the uploaded files are deleted as soon as your download completes.