Native flac .cue splitter

Question

I have some .flac albums I ripped as one big file to save some space (Lossless CD rips are roughly 500MB each). Now that I have more storage I would like to split them back to their original files.

Is there a native .flac/.cue splitter for Debian-based systems?

I found some information but it is either old, just for mp3 or using Wine, and this is not what I want.

Also I found a Nautilus script, but I don't think this will be lossless, also it only performs a very specific task and I'd like some customization options.

Can anyone provide a lossless FLAC .cue splitter with native support, and a lot of conversion options?

Please no Wine.

Solution 1

First you need to install cuetools and shntool. From the terminal type:

sudo apt install cuetools shntool flac

To split a flac file back to the original files using a .cue file:

cuebreakpoints '<cue file>' | shnsplit -o flac '<audio flac file>'  

You can drag the cue file and the audio flac file from the file manager into the terminal in order to autocomplete the paths for '<cue file>' and '<audio flac file>'. When you run the command, the terminal will show you the results of each new flac file as it is created, one new flac file at a time ("split-track01.flac" "split-track02.flac" ...), and then stop after all of the new flac files have been created. It only takes a few seconds to create each new flac file. If your .cue file is accurate, the results will be more accurate and less time-consuming than if you split the flac file manually in Audacity.

Solution 2

There is a app called Flacon which does exactly this.

To install:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flacon
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install flacon

Solution 3

I needed to split large flac and set file name and tag from the cue file, and this worked best for me:

1. cd to a folder with one pair of cue and flac
2. type this: shnsplit -f *.cue -t "%n - %p - %t" -o "flac flac -s -8 -o %f -" *.flac
3. delete the original flac file
4. tag the files using: cuetag *.cue *.flac

Example of output:

Splitting [Edvard Grieg - Complete Songs Vol.III.flac] (76:03.40) --> [25 - Edvard Grieg - Sighs, EG 134.flac] (2:43.08) : 100% OK

reference: CUE_Splitting

UPDATE

I wrote the following script for my convenience. To use it - cd to a directory with one pair of matching ape and cue files.

mkdir -p orig
mv *ape orig/.
shnsplit -f *.cue -t "%n - %p - %t" -o "flac flac -s -8 -o %f -" orig/*.ape
rm -f 00*
cuetag *.cue *.flac
#fix bad file names
find . -exec rename 's/[^\x00-\x7F]//g' "{}" \;

name this script as split_ape, chmod +x it and put in some directory in your path. I made a similar script for flac file as source, just replace every ape with flac in this script.

Solution 4

The easiest way is using K3B.

1.- Open the CUE file in K3B. 2.- Choose convert tracks to FLAC. 3.- Press Start.

It will not re-convert the tracks but only split them into tracks according to the CUE file. It will keep the original name of each track and it takes second to complete the "convertion/split".

Solution 5

and for flac:

    cat file.cue | shnsplit -o flac -t %n-%t file.flac

split the flac file and add to the resulting files track number (%n) and title name (%t)

View more solutions

Comments

[Mark Kirby]

Thanks Karel this worked great, very fast and accurate, just what I need. There was a small bug that I encountered. THIS IS JUST FOR ANYONE WHO HAS THE SAME ERROR - shnsplit: error: m:ss.ff format can only be used with CD-quality files - USE THIS MODIFIED CODE - cuebreakpoints '<cue file>' | sed s/$/0/ | shnsplit -o flac '<audio flac file>'

[karel]

How To Install Flacon 1.0.1 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems. Flacon is a GUI front-end to shnsplit that can be installed from a PPA. I haven't used it myself, because flacon in essence requires adding a PPA to software sources in order to replace running one line of bash from the terminal and I prefer to copy and paste that line of code over adding the PPA for flacon to my software sources.

[mivk]

After splitting, you may want to run cuetag CUE_FILE split-track*.flac to add tags from the cue file to the splitted tracks.

[Admin]

K3B requires KDE, which is unlikely to be present on a Debian system.

[P. Conant]

K3B can be installed easily via the Ubuntu Software Center as any other KDE program. They just don't look as good as integrated GNOME apps but they work perfectly.

[Pilot6]

Please explain what this command does.

[mdneagu]

@Pilot6 I add an explanation to my answer, I hope is helpful. For more details you can "man shnsplit".

[becko]

I also needed sudo apt-get install flac

[Amir Uval]

I tried this on flac file, but one 240MB file turned to files with total of 780MB after splitting. probably can be fixed with a -o flag

[gluk47]

I'd rather suggest shnsplit -o flac '<audio flac file>' -f '<cue file>' -t '%n.%t' to get sensible file names.

[karel]

This suggestion looks like it might be a good idea. I have observed that the break points information in the cue files is never wrong, however the file names and even the track order in the cue files is not always the same as it is in Wikipedia, so sometimes I need to rename the files manually anyway. I'm going to try your improved command on a few flac files in order to decide whether it's convenient enough to recommend it in my answer.

[Antonis Vlachos]

hey thanks... for the edits, i should have point out the install commands indeed

[Admin]

flacon works 100% is amazing thank you!

[Georgy Gobozov]

Works very well on linux mint as well! Donated some $ to author!

[Antonis Vlachos]

I guess this is the standard solution and not the accepted answer, at least i think that the question was referring to a GUI program (hence the wine mention)

[Deepak Verma]

Glad I looked beyond the accepted answer. This seems like a winner!