mkaudiocd - Burn m3u Playlist to CD

Make audio CD (CD-DA) from a variety of audio formats.

This python program was created for the purpose of burning standard "Red Book" audio CDs from m3u playlists.

When a computer is used that doesn't have a CD burner, output to BIN/CUE can be chosen and the disc burned later.

Given an m3u playlist, mkaudiocd will:


Output BIN/CUE from playlist.m3u to the user's Music directory

mkaudiocd /path/to/playlist.m3u -o ~/Music

Burn songs in playlist.m3u to audio cd

mkaudiocd playlist.m3u --burn

Output BIN/CUE of playlist.m3u to current directory using ~/Music/flac as a base directory

mkaudiocd playlist.m3u --dir ~/Music/flac -o .

Burn BIN/CUE to a disc using /dev/sr0

cdrdao write --device /dev/sr0 music.cue


Install the requirements for your distribution


sudo apt install ffmpeg normalize-audio shntool cdrdao


Enable RPM Fusion for your system from https://rpmfusion.org/ and run the following to install all requirements:

sudo dnf install ffmpeg normalize shntool cdrdao

To install (or upgrade) mkaudiocd, clone the git repo (or download the zip), cd to the directory and install

git clone git://mantlepro.com/mkaudiocd.git
cd mkaudiocd
sudo python setup.py install


mkaudiocd requires the following tools to be on the system or users' $PATH:


usage: mkaudiocd [-h] [-d DIRECTORY] [-n {mix,batch,all,none}] [-o OUTPUT]
[-b] [--dev DEV] [-V]

mkaudiocd - Copyright (C) 2017 Josh Wheeler. This program comes with
redistribute it under certain conditions. See
https://gitlab.com/mantlepro/mkaudiocd for details.

positional arguments:
playlist              m3u playlist

optional arguments:
-h, --help            show this help message and exit
base directory for audio
-n {mix,batch,all,none}, --normalize {mix,batch,all,none}
mix (default): adjust track gain up or down to a
common average. batch: normalize gain to match the
quietest song. all: normalize to 0dB regardless of
average, none: skip the normalize process
-o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
output bin/cue
-b, --burn            burn cd
--device DEVICE       path to cdrecorder
-V, --version         show program's version number and exit

If playlist contains relative paths to music that can't be found, add the directory using --directory

mkaudiocd --directory=/path/to/music playlist.m3u

By default, mkaudiocd will look in paths: $HOME/Music, current working directory, and the same path as m3u playlist as base directories.

The --output feature can be used to store a BIN/CUE to be burned later. This feature is helpful if your audio library is on a computer that does not have a CD burner but wish to transfer the BIN/CUE to a computer that does.

Arguments may be abbreviated e.g. --out for --output, --dir for --directory, etc.


In the event that the CD plays only static, byte order may need to be swapped.

Test byte order (big endian, little endian):

aplay -f S16_BE --rate=44100 -c 2 music.cdda
aplay -f S16_LE --rate=44100 -c 2 music.cdda

If music is heard using S16BE, it's ready to be burned to a cd

cdrdao write --device /dev/sr0 music.cue

If music is heard using S16LE use --swap

cdrdao write --swap --device /dev/sr0 music.cue

Byte order can also be verified visually / numerically using cdrdao show-data file.cue.

cdrdao show-data file.cue
cdrdao show-data --swap file.cue

A correct output shows signed numbers ascending and descending. If numerical randomness is seen, the output will be noise.