Hi,

I'm about to start ripping my cd-collection for more easy playback from my computer instead of handling the discs.

I've decided to go for flac. For convenience I would like one flac per album with embedded cue sheets. But what I also would like is a way to store tracknames and performer within that single file, and from what I've understood there is no easy way to do this today. What I do today is embedding the cue sheets to my flacs, and then add tracknames, albumsnames and other non-cue sheet-information to foobar2000's database.

But my guess is that there is something around the corner that will make true one-file-per-album-with-all-information-embedded possible.

But still, I want to start the ripping today, and not wait until we are around that very corner. So: If I start rip my albums today, to single files, is there something I should do/should not do so that I more easily can take the step?

What want to avoid is a situation where I have the re-rip my cd's. With flac + external cue sheets saved, I can always reverse the process and go back to a single wav-file with cue sheets, which is where EAC leaves me today.

If I save the external cue sheets, even after they have been embedded, could I use that information to gather tracknames, albumnames, year and genre from the freedb in the future?

I would appreciate any input on this!

Matroska is probably the answer for single file lossless in the near future.
You might want to check the following threads:
Thread 1
Thread 2

I am interested in this too. I believe single file is most logical and consistent and the access points should be contained in the cue sheet which is somehow embedded in the container. There's also subindex issue. I think Matroska will solve all that soon.

Let us know your experiences on this thread.

It does seem to do what I want. But I was hoping that I didn't need another step in the rip->compress->tag process.

Any possibilities that flac itself will take another step towards singlefiles?

I guess not. Rip & compress could be done with EAC in a single step. Then you could probably do the tagging with foobar2000. I don't know the level of its latest Matroska support but freedb component generally makes tagging very easy.

Or you can attempt to write a software for this purpose and we can all use it

I just realized that there was another dimension to my questions as well:

Yes, Matroska seems to be the answer in the near future. But what I want to know is what I should think about to keep as many options open for the future as possible.

Since Matroska is only a wrapper for flac, which is reversable to plain wav-files, going for Matroska/flac today shouldn't raise any problems in the future. Not when it comes to ripping at least. There won't be any obvious reason to re-rip just to get the music from the cd to the hd.

My main concern is rather the metadata: During the rip in EAC, what should I think about to have a wav-file that can be re-tagged in the future, with data from freedb, without me having to put the cd back in the computer? Could the hash used for freedb lookups be calculated from the cue sheet created at rip-time? Or should I do something else?

As matroska supports file attchements, simply append the complete CUE sheet and you are safe . BTW, mmg.exe the GUi coming with mkvmerge, has a chapter editor that can create a chapter file from the CUE automatically, so all your songs in the track get separated by chapters. But i guess you know this already ...

No, I don't. I haven't had more than a brief look at Matroska's website yet.

What's a chapter?

In Matroska, a stream of data is called a Track. So, you might have an audio, video and subtitle Track in a Matroska file. A Chapter is a way to divide up a Track, or group of Tracks. Basically, all it is is a set of timecodes (one for the beginning and end of the Chapter), a name, and a list of the Track(s) to use it with. This can be a little confusing as a CD track is the equivalent of a Matroska Chapter. Matroska Chapters a much more flexible though allowing overlapping times and a specific selection of Tracks.