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Split one flac (+ cue) file into separate tracks (update: including embedded cue files, ape) 2009-02-09

You may have backupped your music cd’s using a single flac file instead of a file for each track. In case you need to split the cd-flac, do this:

Install the needed software:

$ sudo apt-get install cuetools shntool

Split the album flac file into separate tracks:

$ cuebreakpoints sample.cue | shnsplit -o flac sample.flac

Copy the flac tags (if present):

$ cuetag sample.cue split-track*.flac

The full howto can be found here (aidanjm).

Update (April 18th, 2009):
In case the cue file is not a separate file, but included in the flac file itself do this as the first step:

$ metaflac --show-tag=CUESHEET sample.flac | grep -v ^CUESHEET > sample.cue

(NB: The regular syntax is “metaflac –export-cuesheet-to=sample.cue sample.flac“, however often the cue file in embedded in a tag instead of the cuesheet block).

Update (March 5th, 2017):
In case the source file is one unsplitted ape file, you can convert it to flac first.

$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg


$ ffmpeg -i sample.ape sample.flac