What is a CUE sheet, and how do you make one?
A CUE sheet is a tiny text file that tells a player where each track or chapter starts inside one audio file. Here is how to generate one.
A CUE sheet is a plain-text file that describes the structure of one audio file. Instead of physically cutting an album or an audiobook into pieces, you keep the single file and hand the player a list: track 1 starts here, track 2 starts here, and so on.
What is inside one
REM Generated by Audio Splitter (https://audiosplitter.io)
TITLE "My Audiobook"
FILE "my-audiobook.mp3" MP3
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Chapter 1"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Chapter 2"
INDEX 01 12:34:56
INDEX 01 is the start time in MM:SS:FF, where FF counts frames at 75 per second - an old CD convention that CUE sheets never dropped.
When a CUE sheet is the right answer
- You want the chapters to show up in a player without splitting the audio.
- You are archiving: one file plus one small text file is easier to move around than thirty files.
- You are feeding a CD ripper, a DJ tool or an audiobook player that reads CUE.
When to split the audio instead
If your player ignores CUE sheets, or you want one file per chapter on a phone, cut the audio. You can do both: split the file and export the CUE sheet, so every clip is independent and the chapter list is still there.
How to generate one here
- Load the audio and place a start/end marker pair at each boundary.
- Export the clips (or skip this if you only want the list).
- Use Export CUE sheet - the file is built from your markers, using the real file name, the start times and the chapter titles.
A CUE sheet is part of Pro; splitting the audio itself is free and unlimited.