This tutorial will take you step-by-step through burning (recording) audio CD’s from .flac files, in Windows..
You have quite a few choices when it comes to creating audio CD’s from flac files. You can pay for a program like Nero, which is a feature-rich CD/DVD burning utility, or you can use CDBurnerXP Pro, which is a freeware CD/DVD burning utility. What’s the catch, you ask? With Nero you can do it all in one step - with CDBurner XP Pro you have to do it in two steps. Either way - it’s all outlined below.
The free route:
Step 1. Download and install Winamp, the Flac with library support plug-in for Winamp, and CDBurnerXP Pro. Each installation is very straight forward (you’ll mostly click Next a bunch of times)
Step 2. Decoding .flac files with Winamp
Step 3. Creating an audio CD with CDBurner XP Pro
The I-paid-for-Nero route:
How to burn flac files straight to audio CDs using Nero
Decoding .flac files with Winamp
- Open Winamp and select Options and then Preferences… (note: if you’re using the “classic version” skin, open the Winamp Preferences by clicking the Control and p keys on your keyboard)
- Select Output from the Plug-ins section of the left window, and then select Nullsoft Disk Writer. Click Configure.
- Click the Directory: button so you can choose a location to save the .wav files
- Navigate to the folder you want to save the .wav files in. I usually save them in the same folder as the .flac files.
- Click OK to return to the Preferences window, and then Close to return to Winamp. Now select File -> Play file… and navigate to the folder with your .flac files. Select all of the .flac files by single-clicking the first file, holding down the Shift key on your keyboard, and then single-clicking the last file. When all of the files are selected, click Open
- Press the Play button. Winamp will now decode the .flac files and turn them into .wav files. It typically takes about 20 seconds to convert a 5 minute song, but this depends on how “fast” your PC is.
Once Winamp is done decoding the files, make sure to set the Plug-ins -> Output back to DirectSound output, or the next time you try to play a file using Winamp, it will decode that file instead.
Check to make sure all of the .wav files were created.
Creating an audio CD with CDBurner XP Pro
Now you’ll use the .wav files you created in the above steps to burn an audio CD.
- Open CDBurner XP Pro and select Click here to… Create a new Audio-CD … from the menu
- Make sure that your CD (or DVD) Recordable drive is selected
- Use the left column to navigate to the folder that contains all of the .wav files
- Select each of the .wav files from the right column (hold down the Control key to select multiple files) and then click Add
- If you’re recording a concert, you’ll probably want to create a ‘gapless’ CD (no pauses between tracks). Click the small arrow next to Burn and choose Burn and let me choose settings. If you do want a two second pause between each track, just click the Burn button
- This step is only required if you want to create a gapless CD. Select Disc At Once and then click Write disc
- That’s it - you’re done. After the CD has burned, give it a listen and if you’re happy, you can delete the .wav files. Happy burning!
How to burn flac files straight to audio CDs using Nero
Depending on your version of Nero, you may already be able to burn .flac files straight to an audio CD. Open Nero and create a New Audio CD. Drag the .flac files directly into Nero the same way you would with .wav or .mp3 files. If Nero doesn’t report any errors, you should be able to click Burn and create the CD.
If Nero does report an error, you need to download and install the Nero Mega Plugin Pack (which is free). After it’s installed, try dragging the flac files directly into Nero again and this time you shouldn’t get any errors.
To create a gapless (no pauses between tracks) CD with Nero, follow these steps:
- After you drag the audio files into Nero, right click on any of them and select Compilation Properties
- Choose the Audio CD tab, and then place a check in the box labeled No pause between tracks. Click OK
- Make sure that the Pause is set to 0:00:00 in the track listing. The very first track must have a 2 second pause, so don’t worry about that one.
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If you are going to go down the free route, get it over and done with with one freeware program:
Burnatonce
Supports FLAC Audio CD burning out of the box. It is all you need.
Alan,
Man you’re going to make me re-write this whole thing
That software looks great - I’ll give it a try in the next few days. Thanks!
Ross
Great tutorial. Thank you.
It might be a lot easyer to use Burrrn, also freeware and it burns flac in a one step program.
Best choice I know.
Or use EAC if there are non compliant wavsheets included with the flac tracks, but than you have to decode flac to wav before burning.
Thank you for the tutorial. It was very easy to understand.
Thanks a million. Easy to understand tutorial.
so flac to cd? does this process create any loss? or is the end product the finalised cd still lossless?
HOW TO BURN FLAC FILES TO DVD?THANK YOU!
does writing of flac to cd cause any downfall in quality?
Great tutorial.
Thanks for sharing.
You will not lose any quality in your FLAC files if you burn to CD, but it won’t play in a cd player unless it has FLAC capabilities
Burning these to DVD is as simple as highlighting them and sending them to the DVD with the right click function. It won’t play in a player that doesn’t support FLAC however.
You will need to follow the steps above if you want to convert the FLAC to play in any player. Hope this helps!
Your information says FLAC files can be burned using Nero. I have Nero 7 and it does not see the FLAC files. I followed the link to the plugin you suggested and did not find it. And Tech Support at Nero says the poduct does not yet support the FLAC format. Before I add yet another audio player/converter… is the above true?
thx man
Very nice instructions.I downloaded the plugin for nero suite and it did work.Burned and it played the audio cd on my home player and car audio player no problem-thank you!
But what about those ape files? I get them as one large file. I can burn them using sonic into audio cds but only as one continuous song. I need the song breaks. how do i do it?
thanks
Install newest APE, download Medieval CUE splitter and split APE. Then burn by using NERO or whatever
thanks for the great tutorial.
Thanks for the tutorial. Good job!
I love CDburnerXP pro and recently came across .Flac files - thanks for the introduction into how to burn this format to CD.
Thanks a million, been having trouble with those pesky Flac files.
Thanks for the tip on the NERO Megapack…I use Nero V6 and did not have many file type options.
Excellent tutorial! Just what I was looking for.
As of Version 4.0 of CDBurnerXP, it supports FLAC files natively and doesn’t require any Winamp or other tools to convert them before burning.
Great Tutorial on converting Flac to Wav using Winamp. Ta!
Great!! This helped me a lot!!!
This tutorial was very good. Although there are other tools which can do the job in just one step, it’s still very useful. This is similar to doing anything on the computer. At first it may take 2 or 3 utilities to get a certain task done, but someone eventually writes a program to do it all for you with one step. Once again, great job!
Cheers for the info on the nero plugin pack
I had never heard of Flac files until today LOL and I’m a network engineer LOL
Thanks for the info man. It was greet help, just what I needed.
thank you! this is exactly what i was looking for you. you, my dear, are awesome.
Of all the time I search the net for help - I found this tutorial first, and it was EXACTLY what I was lookig for.
BTW, you should mention any CD burning program will do, and I used Nero 7.
Right now I’m have an old blast of Pat Benatar’s Greatest Hits because of it.
Thanks again.
Do you need a special CD Player to play .WAV files??
Hi,
I first want to thank you for the info on converting the flac files so I can burn a cd. I have a question though…I have a number of cds I downloaded which contain only one flac file for the whole cd. Is there a way to separate each track? I have a cue and a flac file for each cd album I downloaded. I’d really prefer to have each track listed, instead of one huge 75 minute track haha!
Very helpfull thanks heaps!
Your tutorial was great, but I still don’t understand something and hope you can help. I want to burn two CDs worth of music in lossless format onto one CD. I converted the WAV files to Apple Lossless format, which I thought took up less room than WAV, but when I tried to fit both CDs onto one, the time was exactly the same as WAV format and I was unable to do it. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!
Thanks for all the help! This website was very clear and extremely useful.
Thank you very much.
@Rachel
You answered your own question right in your post.
TIME!! Not size
I love seeing the Gov’t Mule being burned- what an awesome band to be enjoyed in FLAC format.
You rock !
Thanks !
thank you easy to follow
awesome guide man. worked great on vista.
thanks, I was pulling my hair out, this was a huge help
thanks man really appreciate it!;)
Thanks a lot!
Very good trick!
thx
I just burned flac to a cd with nero 9 and i explored the cd and the files show up as 2 KB tracks and im wondering what happened to my flac
Thanks for this help, we now know how to burn .flac to cd. But can you do the reverse. Say I goto Bestbuy and buy the new Slipknot cd, can I upload cd-to-.flac on the pc?
@Brian
Yes, just download DBpoweramp and your good to go.
thanks so much! easy fast and free, what else could one ask for?
Thanks— that was super duper easy.
Thanks so much
Hi, thanks for the tutorial. It was exactly what I was looking for.
thanks a lot, now I’am happy !!!!!
I did not know you could do this. This is really a cool hack. thanks, much.
NICE ! Thank you so much for this help. You are GOD ! I’ve been looking for easy .flac converting for a long time. This stuff is gold !
Thank you very much!
Thanks so much ! It’s very helpfull tutorial! great!
Does Winamp work with Vista?
I installed the Nero Megapack and Nero still can’t read the .flac files………
………..other than that it’s a good tutorial.
I can only assume I’m doing something wrong, however I have no trouble converting .mp3 files to audio CDs with Nero 7 even before I installed the Mega Pack.
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