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Poll

Are you ripping to one file per album, or individual files for each track?

One file per album with cue sheet.
[ 84 ] (21.2%)
Individual files for each track with cue sheet.
[ 58 ] (14.6%)
Individual files for each track without cue sheet.
[ 254 ] (64.1%)

Total Members Voted: 473

Topic: Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files? (Read 25971 times) previous topic - next topic
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Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

I'm just about to start ripping my cd collection, and have decided on everything save this last decision. I need arguments for all three options, so I don't make the wrong decision and need to start all over again.

Thanks!

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #1 –
I picked Individual files for each track without cue sheet, because my primary rips are in Musepack format, and they are inherently gapless.
This also facilitates transcoding per file.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #2 –
I picked "Individual files for each track without cue sheet" too. I rip everything to monkey's audio extra high. Why indyvidual files for each track? Because if something will go wrong I loose only one track, not the whole album.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #4 –
"Individual files for each track without cue sheet".

Mostly because of easier transcoding.

I Rip APEs and encode them to MP3 or such if people ask for them, or to portable players. Would be a huge job to first APE>WAV, WAV>Split WAVs, Encode WAVs, TAG Manually (or by some bulky use of tagging though filenames).

Much easier to do it in one step with Foobar2k or Frontah! 

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Spelling

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #5 –
Individual files for each track without cue sheet

I remove tracks I dislike - easy this way,

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #6 –
Individual tracks with no CUE sheet - multiple files.  Individual tracks are easier to create mixes and playlists.  Probably should have done cue sheets...maybe next time.
Was that a 1 or a 0?

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #7 –
What's left to say?
It's just simpler to use individual files.
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #8 –
Individual files for each track without cue sheet. Usually, MPC ... sometimes Vorbis.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #9 –
My option is for 1 file (ape) with cue sheet because it preserves the whole CD exactly like the original. . foobar plays ape's & cues fine.

Quote
Because if something will go wrong I loose only one track, not the whole album
I backup the files so if one is damaged it can be replaced. If ever the orginal CD is damaged i can burn an exact duplicate

Quote
Mostly because of easier transcoding

There are many easy ways to transcode from cue/ape/flac -> mp3

Quote
Individual tracks are easier to create mixes and playlists
True, but I tend to keep the 1 file ape/cue in backup and transcode to mp3 the tracks I like and make playlists from them

Quote
I remove tracks I dislike - easy this way

See comment above - also some tracks that i initially would have deleted I have grown to like.

I made the choice some time ago to go this way and I can't say I've had any regrets and it is nice knowing that I will never have to go back to re-rip a CD. The only pain is sometimes haveing to transcode an ape to get the occasional mp3

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #10 –
Individual tracks with cuesheet here. I was tempted to go 1 big file for the whole cd, but there's really no need. Why the cutsheet? No idea... but its no extra effort making it when im ripping so why not.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #11 –
I rip every CD twice. I rip the whole image as APE with CUE, and make APL's out of those. I then ReplayGain the CUE/APE as an album, and then ReplayGain the APL's as tracks. This gives me full control wether I want to listen to a complete album, or a bunch of single songs. (Does anybody see my point of doing this??)

Then I rip the CD again, ÜberStandard.

Nedless to say, I have HD space and time enough.


Hardware: Plextor PlexWriter Premium, offset corrected
Software: EAC+Lame 3.90.3 APX
Monkey's Audio 3.97 Normal

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #12 –
Quote
Individual tracks with cuesheet here. I was tempted to go 1 big file for the whole cd, but there's really no need. Why the cutsheet? No idea... but its no extra effort making it when im ripping so why not.

I'm doing the same, but my rationale for the cuesheet is that if my original CD gets damaged, I can easily append the tracks to get a single WAV and with the cuesheet, get an exact duplicate, complete with pre-gaps for each track.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #13 –
Depends ...

If it is for playing on my portable player I rip as individual tracks with no cuesheet and encode to mp3 with lame 3.90.3 -aps
... unless it is a continuous live or dj-mix in which case I rip as a single file with cuesheet for playback in foobar or winamp.
If it is for archiving I rip as a single .flac file with cuesheet.

.dd.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #14 –
One question - why is this in the "Lossless Codecs" forum?

If you are ripping to lossless for archive purposes then I'd go for one file with cuesheet, for a perfect backup.
 

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #15 –
I use multiple files with a cuesheet.

In addition the benefits mentioned previously, saving the cuesheet will also help you identify the album later, if/when better tagging standards and databases come along. Five years down the road, if the tagging standards have improved so that each CD track can be tagged with the individual performers (gtr/bass/kbd/etc), you should be able to write a simple script to update the tags on *everything* in your collection.

If you are really into truly *lossless* archiving, you need to store the cuesheet.

Personally, I'd prefer the neatness of a single file, but most players aren't ready for that yet. Also, I'm not sure if there is a good way to tag a single file with individual track names, etc.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #16 –
& offset correction, if you use offset correction & a lossless format like FLAC CRC's will always come back the same no matter how much copy's of a copy of copy you make which is the best proof of a bit exact copy.

For back-ups I would (& do) create an image with EAC because it gives 100% track quality of clean CD's which means the CD extracted flawlessly as far as EAC is concerned, extracting individual tracks the drive has to stop & start for each track which may be the cause of jitters leading to 99% track quality or less in many cases.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #17 –
Individual files for each track without cue sheet.

Mostly because I listen to everything on my iPod randomly.  It can make for some odd segues, as well as dig up some tunes I haven't heard in a while.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #18 –
For lossless (APE) rips, I go with one file per album + cuesheet. I also embed the cuesheet info in the *.ape file, as Foobar can parse it and play the seperate tracks directly.

For lossy (MPC) rips I do multiple files with no cuesheet.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #19 –
A CD has, eg, a piece by Handel and a piece by Mozart. Naturally I may wish to hear the Handel with and amongst my other Handel and likewise for the Mozart. So individual tracks make sense. Not to mention that it helps archiving and sorting by grouping works by composer.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #20 –
Multiple FLAC Files with CueSheet

Adding the extra step for cue sheet is trivial, and all rips are to uberstandard (http://lockmist.com/uber/).  I also store the rip logs in a _metadata directory and have a spreadsheet that has every track failure and checksum failure documented, so if I find a better copy at a later date I can update the problem track.

I use a Rio Karma and actually keep 90% of my portable audio in FLAC format on the device (I love the Karma!!!). And the rest are easily transcoded to ogg as needed. I went with the mutiple FLAC files because the seeking on hardware devices don't quite live up to my expectactions

I have not embedded the cue sheets in any of the single files, but have spent a few brain cycles thinking about it. Redundancy is the only benefit, but I really doubt if I will ever burn a CD from my FLAC files.

Later,
Cal

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #21 –
I'm opting for archiving as the single flac file with embedded cuesheet. Then I split the result into individual tracks for listening/transcoding/etc.

But I'm also under the delusion that my player will advance to the stage where it'll be able to handle the single flac file as easily as it would a collection of seperate tracks, and I can eventually skip the extra work/disc space of the duplicate tracks.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #22 –
An image + something like APL files (like Monkey's Audio has) is ideal for a lossless rip IMO (you combine the best of the two worlds), but

unfortunately most formats (FLAC) don't have a thing like APL files.

I decided I find it more important to be able to select separate songs, than to have a real CD image, so rip separate tracks

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #23 –
I encode to individual tracks with an EAC derived CUE sheet.  I use foobar2000 and use it's CUE sheet support as a sort of playlist function.  This way I can just open the CUE sheet file for a particular album and the whole album is queued in foobar2000.  This is exactly the same thing if I was to encode to a single track, but I like having individual tracks because it's just easier to create mixes and multiple ways of playback if need be.  Also the advantages of using a CUE sheet this way are twofold for me.  In addition to using CUE sheets as sort of a playlist, I have them for backup purposes.  Using EAC, the CUE sheets generated contain the exact track indexes and gaps as per the original CD.  This way if my original CD was destroyed, I could create essentially an exact copy with the original track indexes, thus playback would be exactly as the original CD was.

Are you ripping to 1 file/album or multiple files?

Reply #24 –
individual, becasue I dont care for the gapless stuff some peopple seem to be obsessed with here