What are my options for joining together multiple audio tracks into a single file (OS X and ?)?

Question

I sometimes get CDs of teachings or seminars where someone has split the audio into a bunch of 5 minute segments and I'd prefer that they were in a single long file and that iTunes just remembered where I was in them for me.

However, I'm not sure the best way to accomplish this.

1. I could use brute force and jump into Audacity and simply cut and paste all the audio files together. This seems stupid but I know it would work.

2. I could use programs like Join Together or Audio Book Builder but both of them seem more complicated than what I want to do. Join Together requires that I import the songs first and Audio Book Builder is for, well, building audio books, which is not really what I want to do. Join Together at least is free but Audio Book Builder is $10 (not that much, but whatever).

3. ?

I'm assuming there's got to be some what to do something along the lines of cat 1.mp3 2.mp3 3.mp3 > long.mp3 but I know there is some metadata in mp3s at least. However, audio on CDs is almost always .aiff and I have no idea if that contains metadata or if it's literally just a stream of bits.

I'd prefer a Mac solution but I figured it'd be good to collect other OS solutions as well.

Answer 1

How about just changing the options on the tracks? Select a track in iTunes, then type command-i (or select "Get Info" from the "File" menu). In the dialog that appears, click the "Options" tab. Then check the checkboxes for "Part of a gapless album" and "Remember playback position." Now you should be able to seamlessly listen to sequential tracks and iTunes should remember your playback position.