iTunes 4 - Join CD Tracks greyed out

I realise that but whenever I put a CD in it is always greyed out, no matter what I do.

As previously mentioned, you can only join consecutive tracks on a CD. However, I've found that unlike iTunes 3, you have to have the song list sorted by Track Number (the first column) in order to activate the Join Tracks menu item, along with highlighting the desired consecutive tracks.

On some CDs, sorting the song list by track number results in some tracks jumping out of order (ie. track 5 jumps to the end of the listing). I'm not sure why this happens, but you can drag and drop the wayward track back in the proper spot, then select the sequential tracks desired, and the Join Tracks command should then be available.

Back in iTunes 3, I don't recall ever having to sort the CD song list by track number, but that's the only way I can get the command to become active in iTunes 4.

A solution that allows joining non-consecutive tracks is to first import the desired songs as AIFF files, create a playlist with these tracks in the desired order, burn an audio CD from this playlist, then rip the songs as MP3 or AAC from the newly created CD that has the tracks in the desired order, using the Join Tracks command.

Hope this helps.