Actual Reality

Adapted from the archlinux wiki page.

This is a guide for burning gapless audio CDs from mp3s using Linux.

First, make sure you have lame and cdrdao installed. Both packages should be included in your distro’s repositories. In Ubuntu, you can install them with:

sudo apt-get install lame cdrdao

Now, copy and paste the following script into a text editor, and give it a meaningful name, such as “burngapless”:

#!/bin/bash
if [ -d wav ]
then
  echo "wav folder already exists; using existing wavs."
else
  echo "Decoding mp3s..."
  mkdir wav
  for file in *.mp3 ; do
    lame --decode -S "$file" "wav/$file.wav"
  done
  echo "Done."
fi
echo "Creating table of contents..."
cd wav
{
  echo "CD_DA"
  for file in *.wav ; do
    echo "TRACK AUDIO"
    echo "FILE \"$file\" 0"
  done
} > toc
echo "Done."
echo "Burning CD..."
cdrdao write --eject -n -v 0 toc
if [ $? ]
then
  echo "Error burning CD. Try running the script again."
  exit 1
else
  echo "Done."
  cd ..
  echo "Deleting temporary files..."
  rm -r wav
  echo "Done."
fi
exit 0

Make the script executable, and move to a location in the path:

chmod a+x burngapless
sudo mv burngapless /usr/bin

Usage

cd to the directory where your mp3s are located and run the script:

cd ~/Music/mp3/As\ I\ Lay\ Dying/Shadows\ Are\ Security/
burngapless

Tweaks & Shortcomings

• For more detailed progress information, remove the “-S” flag from the lame command, and remove the “-v 0″ flag from the cdrdao command. If you don’t want to eject the CD after burning, remove the “–eject” flag from the cdrdao command.
• If there is no writeable CD in the drive when the script reaches the cdrdao command, it will output “WARNING: Unit not ready, still trying…” for a while before giving up. If you insert a CD right away, it should go through with the burn process. Otherwise, just run the script again (after inserting a CD) and it will resume at the burning phase.
• If you have multiple CD drives, you may need to specify the correct drive to cdrdao using the “–device” flag. For more info, see the cdrdao man page.
• Note: if the burn is unsuccessful, the wav files will be left intact in case you want to try burning the CD again. If you don’t want to try burning again, you must manually remove the wav folder.