Recently I had a lot of trouble trying to split large non-stop re-mix cds into smaller individual mp3 tracks. I did a search around the internet and there were some utilities available for free, but they had some problems.

Usually most of us use a free mp3 player called Foobar2000 to do this, but in vista this function in Foobar2000 does not work, and most of the plugins are bit complicated to use by the normal user. I found a nice free and simple utility to do this. Therefore I thought of writing this tutorial so that everyone will not go through a hard time to do this.

Here are the steps

Before you start you should have a folder containing the non-stop mix along with the cue files in a folder like this…

1. You definitely need a CueSheet (.cue file) to split, if you have .cue file goto step2. If not Create a Cue Sheet, Here is how to do it.

1.1 Assume an MP3 named faithless - live in berlin.mp3, containing a live recording of the band Faithless’s live performance in Berlin in 1998. At this concert Faithless performed eight of their own songs; the tracklisting would be as follows.

Faithless - Live in Berlin 1998
01. Faithless - Reverence
02. Faithless - She's My Baby
03. Faithless - Take The Long Way Home
04. Faithless - Insomnia
05. Faithless - Bring The Family Back
06. Faithless - Salva Mea
07. Faithless - Dirty Old Man
08. Faithless - God Is A DJ

1.2 Given the fact that the mp3 is one file containing the entire performance, burning it to a CD as-is would make it impossible to skip to individual songs.

1.3 To design the cue sheet, one must first find the points in the MP3 at which each song starts. Note that the times are cumulative, so each track must have a later time than the previous one. In addition, the first track will always start at 00:00:00.

Example Track Times
01. 00:00:00
02. 06:42:00
03. 10:54:00
04. 17:04:00
05. 25:44:00
06. 30:50:00
07. 38:24:00
08. 42:35:00

1.4 Once the times are decided, open up any plaintext text editor, such as Notepad or TextEdit, and begin typing the file. The first lines will denote the disc information, and for this example will appear as:

TITLE "Live in Berlin, 1998"
PERFORMER "Faithless"
FILE "faithless - live in berlin.mp3" MP3

1.5 This will be followed by the information for each track, indented from the rest. The INDEX 01 line reads the same for each track, with the exception of the time value that follows it. TITLE and PERFORMER are optional.

TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Salva Mea"
PERFORMER "Faithless"
INDEX 01 30:50:00

1.6 After all the tracks and track times are added into the cue sheet, the finished product should look similar to the following

TITLE "Live in Berlin, 1998"
PERFORMER "Faithless"
FILE "faithless - live in berlin.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Reverence"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "She's My Baby"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 06:42:00
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Take The Long Way Home"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 10:54:00
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "Insomnia"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 17:04:00
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "Bring The Family Back"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 25:44:00
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "Salva Mea"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 30:50:00
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Dirty Old Man"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 38:24:00
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    TITLE "God Is A DJ"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 42:35:00

1.7 Save the file with a .cue extension into the same directory as the original audio file.

2. Download a free cue splitter called Medieval CUE Splitter From Here

3. Install the Program, open the app and click File >> Open cue file

4. Select the cue file. and the relevant mp3 file.

5. Click Split… like the screenshot below

6. Specify a location to save the split files.

7. Thats all, now you can split any non-stop mp3 mix file into individual tracks.

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