Merging MP3 Files with NAudio in C# and IronPython

If you would like to concatenate MP3 files using NAudio, it is quite simple to do. I recommend getting the very latest source code and building your own copy of NAudio, as this will work best with some of the changes that are in preparation for NAudio 1.4.

Here’s the C# code for a function that takes MP3 filenames, and writes a combined MP3 to the output stream:

public static void Combine(string[] inputFiles, Stream output)
{
    foreach (string file in inputFiles)
    {
        Mp3FileReader reader = new Mp3FileReader(file);
        if ((output.Position == 0) && (reader.Id3v2Tag != null))
        {
            output.Write(reader.Id3v2Tag.RawData, 0, reader.Id3v2Tag.RawData.Length);
        }
        Mp3Frame frame;
        while ((frame = reader.ReadNextFrame()) != null)
        {
            output.Write(frame.RawData, 0, frame.RawData.Length);
        }
    }
}

And here’s an IronPython script (just put NAudio.dll in the same folder as the mp3merge.py script):

import clr
clr.AddReference('NAudio.dll')

import sys
from NAudio.Wave import Mp3FileReader
from System.IO import File

def GetAllFrames(reader):
    while True:
        frame = reader.ReadNextFrame()
        if frame:
            yield frame
        else:
            return

def Merge(files, outputStream):
    for file in files:
        with Mp3FileReader(file) as reader:
            if reader.XingHeader:
                print 'discarding a Xing header'
            if not outputStream.Position and reader.Id3v2Tag:
                outputStream.Write(reader.Id3v2Tag.RawData, 0, reader.Id3v2Tag.RawData.Length)                
            for frame in GetAllFrames(reader):
                outputStream.Write(frame.RawData, 0, frame.RawData.Length);
            
if __name__ == '__main__':
    if len(sys.argv) < 3:
        print "Usage: ipy mp3merge.py output.mp3 File1.mp3 File2.mp3"
    else:
        with File.OpenWrite(sys.argv[1]) as outStream:
            Merge(sys.argv[2:],outStream)

Notes:

I simply copy across the ID3v2 tag from the first MP3 file if present. All other ID3v2 tags are discarded (as are ID3v1 tags). Also, I discard the Xing frame from VBR files. It could easily be re-included if desired, although it’s information will not necessarily be valid about the combined MP3 file. One final thing, I wouldn’t recommend merging MP3 files of different sample rates, or mixing mono with stereo, as it could cause various players issues.