creating an audio cd in 2025

In Windows, the best tool is Windows Media Player in Windows 10:

...and that's pretty much all you need to know there. Fairly easy to figure out.

In Linux, three things are required. FFMPEG to encode proper WAV files for CD audio, Brasero to burn and/or make BIN/CUE files, and VLC for playback to test out the disc once burned.

If you don't have FFMPEG, Brasero and VLC installed, install those first.

Get all your audio ready. It doesn't matter if it's video or audio files. Could be WEBM, MP4, MOV, OGG, MP3, whatever. Just dump everything you want to burn to disc in a folder.

Navigate to that folder in Terminal and run this:

mkdir for-cd;for i in *;do ffmpeg -i "$i" -ar 44100 "${i%.*}.wav" -y;mv *.wav for-cd -v;done

This will a) create subfolder for-cd, b) make WAV versions of all the files at a proper 44.1kHz, c) move all the WAV versions to subfolder for-cd.

Launch Brasero and start an "Audio Project", which is for a traditional audio CD.

Drag-and-drop all the WAV files in the for-cd subfolder into the Brasero window.

Do two things to each track.

Right-click the track to add the song title and band/artist name:

After that, right-click the track again and select "Insert a Pause":

Doing this will insert a 2-second pause between that track and the next one.

Add title/artist info for every track, then add a 2-second pause for every track except the last one since that's the end of the disc.

At the bottom of Brasero, your disc title is there. Change it to whatever you want, such as "My Custom Mix Disc".

There is a drop-down at the bottom of Brasero. You can either burn direct-to-disc right then and there, or you can burn an image file. The latter option makes a BIN and CUE.

If you are the type that prefers to directly edit the CUE file with a text editor before burning a disc, yes, you can do that. I specifically mention this for those that still prefer to use the command line utility cdrdao (which literally means CD-R Disc-At-Once). Some Linux users really like that utility but hate the process of making the BIN and CUE files. Well, just have Brasero make the BIN and CUE, edit the CUE to suit, then burn the disc with cdrdao afterward. Job done.

Or, if you don't want to deal with any of that, just have Brasero burn the disc.

Once the disc is burned, that's when you launch VLC to test it out. Insert the burned disc in the drive, launch VLC, and at top left click Media > Open Disc. A new smaller window will appear. Click Audio CD, then the Play button at bottom.

If all went well, your audio CD will start playing and you'll see all the CD Text stuff you input in Brasero for each track.

So what was that other reason for using CD-R I was talking about?

Published 2025 Feb 27