· CueID

How to split a DJ mix into separate tracks, or make a CUE sheet for it

Two ways to make a long mix recording easy to navigate — split it into one file per track, or keep it whole with a CUE sheet. Here’s how to do both on a Mac, iPhone or iPad.

A two-hour mix as a single file is lovely to listen to start to finish and awkward to do anything else with. You can’t skip to the track you like, and your music player shows it as one enormous song. There are two ways to fix that, and which one you want depends on how you listen.

Option 1: a CUE sheet (keep the mix whole)

A CUE sheet is a small text file that sits next to the audio and lists where each track starts, along with its title and artist. The recording stays exactly as it is, gapless and untouched, but players that understand CUE sheets let you skip from track to track as if it were an album. foobar2000, VLC and many hardware media players support them.

This is the better choice for mixes, because the transitions are the point. Cutting a mix into pieces always lands somewhere in the middle of a blend.

Option 2: split it into files

If your player doesn’t read CUE sheets, or you want individual tracks on a phone or in a library, splitting is the answer. You get one audio file per track, cut at each start time.

How to do either with CueID

Both need the same thing first: an accurate list of start times. Doing that by hand means scrubbing through the whole recording and noting down timestamps. CueID does it for you.

  1. Scan the mix. Drop in the file, paste a Dropbox or Google Drive link, or pick a podcast episode. CueID identifies each track with Shazam and builds a timestamped tracklist.
  2. Tighten the timestamps. CueID can narrow each start time down to the transition, so the cut points land where a track actually comes in rather than where it was first recognised. That matters a lot more when you’re cutting files than when you’re reading a list.
  3. Fix anything missing. Name any section Shazam couldn’t place, or add a track by hand, so every track gets a proper title.
  4. Export. Choose CUE sheet to keep the mix whole, or split the recording into one file per track.

Every export format is free, so the CUE sheet costs nothing to try on your first scan.

Which should you pick?

Keep the mix whole with a CUE sheet if you mostly listen start to finish and just want to jump around. Split it if you want the tracks to behave like separate songs. And if you’re not sure, export the CUE sheet first. It doesn’t touch the recording, so you can always split later.