Hello,

I've already ripped my entire CD collection (approx. 800 CDs) with EAC and encoded to 192k VBR MP3 with LAME. But, I've decided that I want to start storing things in a lossless format - at least for new CDs, although I'll probably go back and re-rip the others as I have time.

But, the thing I can't decide is whether to rip complete disk images (i.e. one WAV per CD) or use one file per track. Either way my plan was to use monkey's audio to compress them, and then use the lossless files for normal listening - I currently use WinAmp and would like to continue to do so. I'll also make MP3s for my portable player, so easy batch conversion to MP3 (or possibly other formats in the future) is also needed. The overriding concern, though, is that I never want to have to rip again, so I want something that's as "bit perfect" as possible. I know that offset problems will likely lead to missing samples at the beginning or end of the CD, which I'm OK with, but I don't want any problems with missing data, gaps, clicks, etc. between tracks.

So, my first thought was to use disk image + CUE sheet, but after some experimentation I found that to be less than ideal when it came to using the files. image + CUE certainly isn't supported by nearly as many utilities, players, etc., and I found the support that is there to be lacking in various ways. IMO it's just not as convenient as working with a file per track. Still, if this is the only way to have a perfect copy, I might be willing to stick with it.

My second experiment was to use one file per track, I used the monkey's audio DLL from EAC to compress the tracks (so I got APE tags instead of ID3 tags), and then used 'frontah' to convert to MP3 and write ID3v1&v2 tags. I was very happy with the results - the APE files play perfectly in winamp, and frontah worked exactly as I wanted it to, with no loss of tag information. My only concern is, do I really have a "perfect" copy of the CD? If so, then I'll certainly go with this approach.

I was in the middle of trying to determine this last night when I got too tired to continue, but I was not encouraged by my first experiment. I put in a copy of 'Abbey Road' (since some tracks run into each other), and ripped it twice, once using 'copy selected tracks -> uncompressed' and once using 'copy image & create CUE sheet'. I was surprised that the sum of the file sizes from the first pass were less than the image file size. Not much, only 76912 bytes, but I expected the sum to be a little more since there's a WAV header on each of the track files. I do have 'fill up missing offset samples with silence' on, 'read into lead-out' off, and an offset of +594, but from what I understand that should affect both the same way. I do not have 'delete leading and trailing silent blocks' on byt I do have 'synchronize between tracks' on. So, where is the missing data? I'm planning to try to do some comparisons of the data, but any advice would be appreciated.

thanks,

todd.