westgroveg's EAC+FLAC image guide, See wiki for official EAC guides Options

[VCSkier]

does anyone know of any players for linux that support flac disk images with cuesheets (imbedded or external)?

I want to setup a linux box as my media player, but if I can't find the proper support for cuesheets, then I'm either gonna have to resort to windows, or change my method of music storage

i'd be curious to know this too, if any of you have figured it out...

[artyomk3d]

On flac mailing list there was a guy who wrote a console player for FLACs. Maybe you could try to search that list and contact him.

[dbAmp]

I'm new to encoding with FLAC, so please excuse my ignorance. I have two questions:

1. Is step 3 necessary if I am ripping images to listen in foobar?
2. For the new tip on storing CD text within the image using foobar2000, where is the cuesheet tag?

My assumption is that it is missing either as a result of me not going through step 3, or I am looking in the wrong place.

I assumed it would be under properties (I load the flac file into foobar, select all the tracks, right click --> properties) but I do not see that tag.

[ESP85]

When burning a FLAC image to CD and reripping, should I be getting the same checksums as the original CD?

[mmortal03]

When burning a FLAC image to CD and reripping, should I be getting the same checksums as the original CD?

Only if you are ripping it in EAC with the correct offsets, and burning it with the correct offsets and a cuesheet from EAC.

This post has been edited by mmortal03: Dec 24 2006, 01:31

[greynol]

If gaps are appended to the previous track, cue sheets are not necessary to get the same checksums. Offset correction and overreading/overwriting are all that matter.

[mmortal03]

If gaps are appended to the previous track, cue sheets are not necessary to get the same checksums. Offset correction and overreading/overwriting are all that matter.

There could be issues if he burns it as you say, with a program that adds gaps between the tracks, and then he re-rips it, though.

[ESP85]

Yeah. I don't think my drive does overreading and overwriting since it's an NEC, not a Plextor.

Also, I think I have it set up so the gaps are appended to the ends of the tracks. I use EAC + REACT2 and ACDIR. However ACDIR splits it up is how it goes.

How important are the checksums anyway?

[ESP85]

Oh yeah, is there anyway to setup EAC so it can decode FLAC on-the-fly when burning CD-Rs, instead of decoding FLAC manually?

[greynol]

If gaps are appended to the previous track, cue sheets are not necessary to get the same checksums. Offset correction and overreading/overwriting are all that matter.

There could be issues if he burns it as you say, with a program that adds gaps between the tracks, and then he re-rips it, though.

Which program would that be? CUE sheets are not necessary for gapless audio.

Yeah. I don't think my drive does overreading and overwriting since it's an NEC, not a Plextor.

This is only an issue when the first track begins with and/or the last track ends in non-silent samples.

How important are the checksums anyway?

It's just an easy way to verify the data was correct.

Oh yeah, is there anyway to setup EAC so it can decode FLAC on-the-fly when burning CD-Rs, instead of decoding FLAC manually?

I don't think so, but I could be wrong. A lot of people use Burrrn to do this. If you have a drive with a write samples offset of 0 then you don't need to concern yourself with the fact that Burrrn doesn't have this option. Otherwise you can use a combined read/write offset correction on your rip or use a program like Moitah's WAV Tools prior to burning if you're concerned about this.

[dewey1973]

I like the convenience of this method and have been thinking about switching from track-based to image-based backup. Especially since REACT2 makes it so easy to create the image and lossy files at the same time while saving all the cue sheets and getting album art.

However, I'm not entirely convinced that images are the way to go. You can't use Test & Copy and you can't use AccurateRip. Am I just being anal and paranoid?

This post has been edited by dewey1973: Dec 24 2006, 20:56

[greynol]

Would it be possible to improve the accuracy of some of the information mentioned in this guide?

My particular concerns are the following:

If EAC reports "Caching: Yes" your drive caches audio data, every sector read will be read from cache and is identical, this will increase the probability of errors & cause a speed decrease.

Tip: EAC may misinform about audio caching, as an alternative you can use Feurio's audio caching test found in Feurio.exe\Ctrl+Alt+P\Test device\Cache test.

Tip: Some drives disable audio caching at low speeds; if your drive is set to DMA transfer mode, try changing it to PIO only transfer mode, then re-test for caching and set back to DMA mode.