ripping as separate tracks vs as an image w/ cue s Options

[binkgle]

So I've recently backed up my entire cd collection (somewhere around 45 cds, not counting burned disks [from friends, burns using nero from dl'ed lossless files]) as flac -8 using eac (newest version) and accuraterip. i used only "copy selected tracks" in eac, not "test and copy."

I've started spending more and more time on hydrogren audio, and thus have developepd doubts about whether i've done this all correctly.

is it better to rip as separate flac tracks or one big track and a cue sheet?

here are the things i need in a rip:

1) absolutely perfect digital backups of all my albums so that i don't have to rip them again and just in case i lose the originals.

2) ability to transcode into separate track mp3s (using lame 3.97b1 and foobar'd diskwriter) for use on ipod, use of others.

3) compatibility with all/as many as possible media player programs, not just foobar, as i'm the only person i know (in person) who actually uses foobar

4) ability to see the separate tracks in foobar's playlists

5) ability to store all info a tag (apev2, id3v2, whatever) could for each tracks (in my case: title, artist, album, composer, date, genre, replaygain, comment, track number)

6) ability to burn the file(s) back to disk as an exact replica of the orginal disk, gaps, samples, and all. i believe this can be done by eac with a wav image and a cue file, what about flac? can i use nero? if so, how can i configure it with my drive's write offset?


i'm assuming that logistically ripping as separate tracks is better for all the transcoding, etc., but wouldn't ripping as an image keep a more exact copy of the album, and make it easier to burn back to cd?

also, on a side note, i've heard a lot about the program burnnn. how does it compare to nero 6 ultra, and what (if anything) can it do better? can it be configured with write offset, if nero can't?

oh, and one more thing. should i use crc check when ripping files? wouldn't this ensure that there were no crc errors, which means that the rip really was perfect? this is for ripping with flac 1.1.2 and (maybe/sometimes) lame 3.97b1 -v2 --vbr-new.

[binkgle]

anyone?

[mhudson7]

I've decided to use single files with cue sheets for my backups. Foobar still lists the tracks when you loaded up the cue sheet, and Burrrn also reads the cue sheets and conveniently re-creates the CD as needed.

[Synthetic Soul]

3) compatibility with all/as many as possible media player programs, not just foobar, as i'm the only person i know (in person) who actually uses foobar

Track files are more compatible.

5) ability to store all info a tag (apev2, id3v2, whatever) could for each tracks (in my case: title, artist, album, composer, date, genre, replaygain, comment, track number)

Track files are much easier to tag. You can store various meta data in a cuesheet, but it's never going to be as easy or compatible.

6) ability to burn the file(s) back to disk as an exact replica of the orginal disk, gaps, samples, and all. i believe this can be done by eac with a wav image and a cue file, what about flac? can i use nero? if so, how can i configure it with my drive's write offset?

EAC will also write APE+CUE - I don't know about other formats. You can't specify an offset with Nero.

i'm assuming that logistically ripping as separate tracks is better for all the transcoding, etc., but wouldn't ripping as an image keep a more exact copy of the album, and make it easier to burn back to cd?

You can still burn a bit-perfect CD using track files with a cuesheet (for pregaps) but IMHO it's a lot easier to do with an image with cuesheet.

also, on a side note, i've heard a lot about the program burnnn. how does it compare to nero 6 ultra, and what (if anything) can it do better? can it be configured with write offset, if nero can't?

Burrrn uses CDRDAO and works well. It has native support for many more formats, is easier to use, and can read embedded cuesheets. It can't currently use offsets, although it is planned. foobar 0.9 can by the way.

oh, and one more thing. should i use crc check when ripping files? wouldn't this ensure that there were no crc errors, which means that the rip really was perfect? this is for ripping with flac 1.1.2 and (maybe/sometimes) lame 3.97b1 -v2 --vbr-new.

I don't, but I guess if you are super-paranoid and have badly scratched CDs then it may give you more peace of mind.

[binkgle]

foobar's cd writer cd use offset? or is it only 0.9, not 0.8.3, which i now use (and will until 0.9 final comes out and i can config it how i like it). i guess i'll go configure that now and use that.

Synthetic Soul, you say that I could burn bit-perfect backups with multiple track images and a cue sheet. How do I get eac to create the cue sheet while ripping multiple tracks? Can I get it to make a cue sheet for a cd I've already ripped, without having to rerip it?

i prefer flac to ape because i can then use replaygain (in foobar).

if i ripped as an image + cue sheet, i would see separate tracks in foobar, as mhudson7 said. could i edit the tags for each track as i wanted, and foobar would remember it even if it were'nt directly in the cue sheet?

can eac rip as an image + cue sheet in flac? or is it only wav (which is inconvenient as I would have to compress everything i ripped after ripping it, which would obviously take a lot longer)?

[Drenholm]

How do I get eac to create the cue sheet while ripping multiple tracks?

EAC has a Create CUE sheet option which can work for per-track rips. However you'd need to make sure you detect gaps on the CD first and the cuesheet needs created separately (there's no automatic way to create a cuesheet for multiple tracks).

Gap detection is necessary if you want the information about track pregaps included in your cuesheet and, thus, any subsequent burns from it. If you don't detect gaps the audio will still be there but the gap 'markers' won't be.

I understand all this stuff about gaps may be confusing you so I can try and explain if you want!

Can I get it to make a cue sheet for a cd I've already ripped, without having to rerip it?

Yes, since the cuesheet creation stage for per-track rips is independent from the ripping.

if i ripped as an image + cue sheet, i would see separate tracks in foobar

If your format was .cue+(WAV/FLAC/WV/etc) or WV+cue (cuesheet embedded in APEv2 tag), you would. You can embed cuesheets with the FLAC encoder but it strips any metadata so you'd be left with "Track01", "Track02", etc as titles. There's a workaround but - shameless plug! - WavPack has better support for cuesheet embedding in my opinion.

Of course you could leave the rip as two files and avoid any potential embedding problems.

could i edit the tags for each track as i wanted, and foobar would remember it even if it were'nt directly in the cue sheet?

I think so. foobar2000 may also be able to amend cuesheets themselves in all or some forms but I can't say for sure.

can eac rip as an image + cue sheet in flac? or is it only wav (which is inconvenient as I would have to compress everything i ripped after ripping it, which would obviously take a lot longer)?

Probably but it may be tricky to set up.

Personally, I just rip CDs to image and cuesheet, edit the cue's COMMENT tag to have the CD catalogue number (the one on the sleeve, not in CD-Text ) then use the WavPack 4.22 encoder to compress the audio to WavPack and embed the cuesheet into a tag. foobar2000 plays this with style!

Sorry if my reply is a bit confusing - it's early. Just ask and I'll help out if I can.

[Kirby54925]

I personally rip to separate tracks because I generally don't care for the CD; I only care for the music on it. I mean, come on, it's not that hard to make separate folders for each album to put the individual tracks in. Also, the tags embedded in the FLAC files help in sorting, so sorting problems are moot. I just don't see why people like to rip to cuesheets when tracks work just as well (if not better because each track is treated as that: a track, instead of an album). Besides, I like shuffling my playlist, so cuesheets would limit me quite a bit (correct me if I'm wrong).

[Drenholm]

I find single-album images handy. That's all!

[Synthetic Soul]

foobar's cd writer cd use offset? or is it only 0.9, not 0.8.3

Yes, just 0.9.

if i ripped as an image + cue sheet, i would see separate tracks in foobar, as mhudson7 said.  could i edit the tags for each track as i wanted, and foobar would remember it even if it were'nt directly in the cue sheet?

Yes, foobar 0.9 creates specific track-related tags in the image file for any additional information that you enter. I'm not a fan of this approach, but then I don't bother too much about additional meta data anyway - I just want album, artist and track names.

can eac rip as an image + cue sheet in flac?  or is it only wav (which is inconvenient as I would have to compress everything i ripped after ripping it, which would obviously take a lot longer)?

EAC always rips to WAVE, but you can specify FLAC as an external encoder and it will immediately encode to FLAC after ripping. Check the wiki.

WavPack has better support for cuesheet embedding in my opinion.

FLAC can embed the cuesheet in the FLAC CUESHEET block (the one that strips meta data), or as a Vorbis comment (which is like WavPack's APEv2 tag) - both of which can be read by foobar. With that in mind I would say FLAC has better support. Edit: Added to the the fact that FLAC can split files into tracks itself, using the data from the FLAC CUESHEET block.

This post has been edited by Synthetic Soul: Oct 14 2005, 10:00

[Drenholm]

I see what you mean but doesn't embedding the cuesheet while retaining metadata require another program?

I meant that WavPack has 'native' encoder support for embedding:

You can embed cuesheets with the FLAC encoder but it strips any metadata so you'd be left with "Track01", "Track02", etc as titles.

[matteo1983]

bit of a noob here, but cant u just create the image in flac directly from eac?? by electing Create image and quesheet > compressed...instead of doing it uncompressed and using flac frontend to convert to flac??

if u hav to use flac frontend to convert the one big wav file to flac, where do u input the flac command line options i.g. -8 -v etc??

Cheers

Matt

[Synthetic Soul]

I see what you mean but doesn't embedding the cuesheet while retaining metadata require another program?

I meant that WavPack has 'native' encoder support for embedding

That is true. The -w "CUESHEET=@<cuesheet>" switch is very useful - and will be moreso in v.4.3...

You can embed cuesheets with the FLAC encoder but it strips any metadata so you'd be left with "Track01", "Track02", etc as titles.

Thats the FLAC CUESHEET block, but a Vorbis comment acts just like WavPack's APEv2 tag. See my edit above for a major benefit to the FLAC CUESHEET block.

bit of a noob here, but cant u just create the image in flac directly from eac?? by electing Create image and quesheet > compressed...instead of doing it uncompressed and using flac frontend to convert to flac??

if u hav to use flac frontend to convert the one big wav file to flac, where do u input the flac command line options i.g. -8 -v etc??

I just answered this above. Wiki page is here.

This post has been edited by Synthetic Soul: Oct 14 2005, 10:12

[Drenholm]

See my edit above for a major benefit to the FLAC CUESHEET block.

Ah! That's not too bad.

[binkgle]

it seems to me that ripping to separate tracks is better for me, but i will now go through my cds to detect gaps and create cue sheets for them. this way i will have the convenience/ease of use of spearate tracks but still be able to burn with eac

[Drenholm]

Cool. Hope it goes well!

[binkgle]

thx for all your help, guys

[Martin H]

EAC has a Create CUE sheet option which can work for per-track rips. However you'd need to make sure you detect gaps on the CD first...

Detecting gaps are not needed... EAC always detects gaps when making cuesheets...

-Martin.

[Drenholm]

For single track cuesheets as well? I was sure you have to detect them to store them in the cuesheet or use noncompliant gap settings.


Edit: correction

This post has been edited by Drenholm: Oct 17 2005, 09:03

[Synthetic Soul]

You only have to detect gaps first to amend your gap settings (e.g.: Append Gaps To Previous Track) - or test for silence.

This post has been edited by Synthetic Soul: Oct 17 2005, 09:45

[Drenholm]

Oh right; thanks. I thought you always needed to if you needed to include them in a per-track cuesheet and/or do anything other than append gaps to the end of tracks.