How do I get multiple tracks on a CD full of audio?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #67, I look at ways to manage long audio files for playback.

Audio tracks

So, I want to be clear here: you’re using the word “tract” which may have
specific meaning to you in the sermon and motivational speaking arena. I
believe you’re talking about “tracks.” The different tracks that you’ll find on
an audio CD.

I’m also not sure if you’re speaking about audio CDs or digital CDs (data
CDs that happen to have mp3 files stored on them). Regardless, the answer as it
turns out is pretty much the same in either case. Each track needs to be a
separate mp3 file. That’s all it really boils down to.

Multiple mp3 files

You can (if you like) create your sermons or your speaking as a single mp3
file. It can be as long as you like. As you can see here, I typically do about
half an hour’s worth and I do keep it as a single mp3 file.

If I wanted to have separate tracks for each question that I answer in an
Answercast, I would actually have to break it up into several separate mp3
files.

Now, on an audio CD, that just works. If you follow my instructions for
how to burn an
audio CD using Image Burn, you’ll create what’s called a .cue file (a “dot
cue” file) and in that file, you will list each track in the order that you
want them to be played.

When the audio CD is then played in an audio CD player, the tracks get
played in that order – exactly the way I think you want it to happen. When
somebody hits “go back to the beginning of the track,” then they’re going back
to the beginning of that specific track and not to the beginning of the entire
CD.

Data discs

Now, if we’re talking about data discs (data CDs where you basically just
have an mp3 file or a collection of mp3 files stored on a computer CD), then we
need to do things ever so slightly different. But it’s common technology.

What you need to create in addition to your collection of mp3 files is
called a playlist. A playlist, like the .cue file I talked about earlier, is
nothing more than a list of the mp3 files and the order in which they should be
played.

That way, your mp3-playing software on your computer (I happen to recommend
VLC, but there are many) will play those things in the order that they’re
listed – simply by double-clicking on the playlist file (or a .pls file is what
it usually is.)

That allows you to again have a single sermon (if you will) as a .pls file,
but then have that .pls file reference separate segments as different tracks on
your sermon.

Reversing audio files

So, that’s the approach that I would take. I don’t know of a really good or
standard way to say bookmark or mark the middle of a single mp3 file that
would allow you to return to it.

I’m sure that there are audio programs that might allow you to do something
like that. The problem is that whatever it is they do, there’s no real standard
for it, so it’s not something that you would be able to then create and publish
and have other people be able to use it with arbitrary software.

You’d be mandating what software they needed to use to listen to your mp3
files or to your recordings.

The .cue file creating an audio CD: that will work in any audio player,
assuming that you’ve got the right media and so forth. But an audio CD works in
just about anything.

And the data CDs… well, they work in almost anything these days too, but
again, it’s the playlist that happens to control what gets played and in what
order.