Hi all,

I'm starting to backup my CD collection to lossless format. I'm a huge fan of PAR2, and I'm always finding extra uses for it. I thought I'd share this one with you in case it's of interest to anyone.

I'm ripping to an uncompressed CD image with EAC. Then I'm using QuickPar to create recovery volumes from the CDImage.wav and Cue. 100K block size, and 1 block for each track, plus a block for the Cue and a block for luck.

Then I split WAV by cue sheet to get the seperate tracks, which I tag and compress to FLAC.

At any time in the future I can decompress the FLAC tracks to WAV and using the PAR2 data recreate my original CDImage for a perfect 1:1 copy.

I get the benefits of both a perfect copy, and the usefulness of single tracks. I love PAR2.

That sounds like a waste of space.

Why create recovery volumes for a big file with a lot of redundancy?

I'd do this for the individual flacs, and only keep the .cue file.

Sorry. I thought I explained myself quite well. I want a perfect 1:1 backup. Including all the pre-gaps. I have never managed to get any burning software to work that will use EAC's non-compliant cue sheets, therefore I need to use a single Cue and WAV of the CDImage for a perfect backup. But I don't want to archive 1 big FLAC file. I want individual FLAC files, each tagged, so that I can easily and conveniently create Vorbis files from them.
At a cost of a tiny amount of PAR2 data (I never said anything about a lot of redundancy) this method allows me that.

pre-gap can't be included in individual files. you must rip the entire album as one file.

I do rip the entire CD as 1 file. That's the whole point. I said that in my original post.

EAC - "Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet"

Then I make a small chunk of PAR2 data of the CDImage. Just a MB or 2.

Then I split the WAV into individual tracks and delete the CDImage WAV.

I now have individual tracks, tagged and compressed with FLAC. But at any time I can recreate a perfect 1:1 CD including pre-gaps.

The PAR2 is just to allow me to join the individual WAV files back together into 1 perfect CDImage WAV.

It works really well.

Huh, where did you get this information from? Of course they can be included as long as you detect gaps correctly with EAC.

BTW, if you want to use a burning software other than EAC for burning your cue sheets, you have to use the option with the "corrected" gaps. This should allow you to burn perfect copies even from multiple files and PAR2 the FLAC files directly.

Burrn can handle those.

Better than your method.

man, all the haters

JJ180, you're solution sounds ingenious if a bit convoluted

Sounds sophisticated at first sight. I'll try it out.

Well, in fact, the gaps are *always* copied. If you don't detect them, they are copied eactly all the same, just they're not marked.

The only way to screw the gaps in EAC is using a wrong detection method (or the right one and then choose to "Leave out gaps", or "Append to next track").

So, the safest way to deal with gaps is not to detect them. If you don't, EAC will automatically read them and store them in the end of the previous track. If you do, make sure that the default option is selected (apend to previous track), or select something else being totally sure of what you're doing.



Enjoy!

It works. No problem to recreate a bit-identical MP3 image file from the splittet (and later rejoinend) tracks with only 900 kb parity data.

I agree that it is ingenious, i find no fault in your logic. That said I don't quite agree with your reasons to process to individual flac tracks if your ultimate goal is to turn them into vorbis tracks. You can easily use the cue sheet to transform a single flac album to get individual vorbis tracks albeit with with limited tag information but usually the tag info included in the cue is sufficent.

Seems like you arrive at the same place by taking a more untravelled path. If it works for you then cheers.

As I said. I've never managed to get any burning application to work that would handle EAC's non-compliant CUE sheets.

I found and tried Burrn. I had high hopes. My fingers were well and truly crossed. Unfortunately it wouldn't play ball. IIRC it uses CDRDAO doesn't it? Well that's never worked with my drive. There's the problem.

But it's not a problem anymore.

Thanks! I was beggining to wonder if I should have kept my mouth shut.

It works for me, and that's the main thing.

@TwoJ

It's just for flexibility really. I'm not just archiving, I'm also hoping to use the music in FLAC form. I plan on buying one of those Rio Karma's when the price comes down a bit (and I've got some money!) later this year. That's one of the reasons to go with FLAC. Definite standalone hardware support.
If I archive as one big single CDImage FLAC file I won't be able to mix and match tracks, and make compilations on the player. Plus, as you said, there aren't as many options for tags that way. And I also may want to convert to MP3, AAC, Vorbis2?, and who knows what other formats in the future. Single tracks seems the most flexible convenient way to go for me.