Easily split FLAC files with .cue files: Flacon

[Thad E Ginathom]

Once upon a time I was more at home with the freedom and power of the command line than with a Windows environment. Because I was using it every day, I had shell-scripting syntax in my head, and could juggle with admin-staple commands like find. Now, it has been so many years since this stuff was my daily bread earner that I have to go back to basics even for a simple script.

It is easy to find out the command line to split a multi-track FLAC file using input from a .cue file using shntool. Google will reveal all. For a one-off, it's also little or no trouble to do it. Yesterday, I found myself needing to do this with multiple FLACs within a directory structure and, while contemplating/searching-about scripting the job, I found Flacon, a GUI front-end to the splitting and conversion commands. Fast and easy: job done!

One small feature I particularly like: when editing the file-name creation mask, one can see the result, assuming, of course, that one has a flac file selected. It is a lot easier than combining imagination with trial and error when juggling %this and %that strings.