I'm a noob, and was hoping to get a few pointers before I archive my CDs on my computer. My goal is to create a lossless archive that I could then a) listen to, b) burn CDs (albums and compilations), and c) covert for my portable jukebox using a lossy codec. Here's my plan, with questions about some stuff I don't quite understand yet- I could defiantely use some help with this.

1) I'm going to use EAC to rip my CDs to FLAC files with a tag including Replay-Gain (I don't want to normalize the FLAC files theselves). Is this adequate, or is there something I should change?
--replay-gain -best %s -T title="%t" -T artist="%a" -T date="%Y" -T genre="%m" -T album="%g" -T tracknumber="%n"

2) Does the replay-gain option in encoding with EAC only do the "track" option? If so, how do I add the "album" option? If its using foobar2000 after ripping the FLAC files, would I have to do it one album at a time? Since I would like to archive ~200 CDs, I'm looking to do as few steps as possible.

3) What program would be best to convert the FLAC files to something smaller for my MP3 player using the Replay-Gain information for normalization? I would like all my songs to be at the same level as I know I have a few CDs of the same music type that are "quieter" than others? Which option would I use, "track" or "album"? So I don't have to take up more HD space, is there any way I can do this on the fly to my MP3 Player (Dell Jukebox, which should arrive next week )? Does Replay-Gain work with the WMA codec?

4) What's the best way/program to burn compilation CDs applying the Replay-Gain option?

5) Least important- can Winamp use Replay-Gain? I know I can use Foobar2000, but I'm partial to Winamp.

Thanks for any advice you can provide!

Be aware that adding --replay-gain to the command line will only add the track gain and not the album gain. All files on an album must be scanned at the same time to get the album gain. I am also archiving using flac and use foobar after I rip with EAC to get the album gain.

You can use dbpoweramp to convert from any format to practically every other format (with the right plugins). I am archiving my flac files but transcoding them to aac using the dbpoweramp quicktime plugin for use on my ipod.

I am reasonably certain that winamp uses the track gain from replay gain.

Be sure to look on the coaster factory website to get your read offset set correctly.

1) My command line arguments in EAC: -8 -V --sector-align %s I then later use foobar2000 to tag with the freedb function.

2) foobar will easily replaygain multiple albums at a time, provided the album tags are all set. Check the preferences for more info... basically if a bunch of files have the same album tag they will be treated as an album. All you need to do is highlight a bunch of songs, and then right click>replaygain>Scan selection as multiple albums. NOTE: in the preferences you can set which tag is used to determine what songs are grouped as albums.

3) I use foobar2000 for this, the diskwriter feature is fairly robust.

4) I dont know what you mean really. foobar's CD writer can use replaygain (also have a look at burrrn)

5) no idea.



**I know I seem like a foobar fan-boy or something, but it's for a reason... foobar seems to have the most robust support for the latest lossless codecs. I for one rip to FLAC with EAC, put it (along with EAC LOG and original CUE sheet) in a Matroska container. Then I load the MKA file into foobar and tag, replaygain, etc. foobar treats each track as it would a seperate file (it will transcode them properly, etc). I havent tried any other player with this, but I don't know if they would work (does winamp even have Matroska support?).

All I have been doing is right clicking on the folder containing the flac files, and select enque in foobar2000. The, I select all the tracks in the foobar window, right click and select replaygain/as album. Works just great. After a big encoding job, I qued all my flacs in the foobar windows, and selected replay gain/as multiple albums, and let it replay gain 4830 tracks after I went to bed

Thanks for all the help - looks like I should get to know foobar2000 as it can perform many of the operations I seek to do. I still have to figure out how best to use the ReplayGain options (I think to get the "albulm" option, I need to use foobar2000 after selecting those songs in an albulm). I'm also a little fuzzy on cue sheets, logs, etc- but I think reading more and playing around will go a long way in helping to to learn about all this.

To that I would add

-T Comment="%e" -T Encoder="Exact Audio Copy (Secure Mode) / FLAC 1.10"

Make sure you have "Use CRC Check" checked, and in the Offset tab, check "Write CRC Checksum into ID3 Tag comment field". Enabling this flag makes %e = "CRC: XXXXXXXX", substitute the actual CRC value for the Xs. Neither of these are absolutely mandatory, but I like to use them.

Not really. As long as the "album" tag is set, fb2k will figure out which tracks go together.

I haven't experimented to see for sure, but I suspect that you should have the tracks sorted by album in the playlist and then select the whole shebang (ctrl-a) and pick "Scan selection as multiple albums" off of the context menu. Go to bed.

When fb2k scans it adds all four tags -- track gain, album gain, track peak and album peak.

Then just go into fb2k's preferences and on the Playback tab select either "use track gain" or "use album gain".

-- Rick

I notice that when you feed flac the above quoted tag spec, it doesn't put a zero in front of single-digit track numbers. Is there a way to tell it to use 2-digit track numbers, or am I being anal?

-- Rick

P.S. Speaking of being anal, personally, I proper-cased all the tag-names, i.e. Album instead of album and Date instead of date. However they are spelled/cased on the command line is how flac writes them....
[RF]

Sandor (or anyone else interested in lossless archiving)
Sounds like you might like this as well, if so add your support:
http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=4759
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/showtopic/21158

As for replay gain per track AND album support, add your support to the feature request here:
http://www.digital-inn.de/showthread.php?t=25899


joelmole,
The CRC that is added is the wav correct? Can you get foobar to go back and add this tag. It would be nice if there was a tool that would check the EAC log and the wav and if they match then add the CRC tag. I will start doing this but have just finished about a 4th of my CDS and am not going to re-rip just for that. Hopefully at some point you will be able to compare with the accurate rip DB.

Add a new Masstagger rule that goes like this:
Format "TRACKNUMBER" using "$num(%tracknumber%,2)"

I got it here I don't know from whom exactly I'm sorry (because I made it a script in the Masstagger).

Also something else that is useful, that I made myself:
"Remove underscores from title"
Format "TITLE" using "$replace(%title%,_, )"

I know it isn't alot but it's more than nothing and it's very useful.

Ok, I give up. What does "add a new masstagger rule" mean? :-)

-- Rick

Here is the string I use:



and I get 2 digit song numbers

I'll bet you don't. :-)

Most tag programs *display* the tag as two digits, even if it's a single digit. But fire up fb2k and right click on one of your tracks and select "properties" and tell me what you see.

What does the -6 do? (The -V is verify, right?)

-- Rick

<Groveling Mode>
Somebody please help me with this! I fired up masstagger, and I suspect that this has something to do with "Scripts," but no matter how I tried I couldn't figure out how to make something work.

What are the steps?
</Groveling Mode>

Thanks,

-- Rick

so is everybody in this thread ripping to multiple flac files ?

i'm still reading through the forums trying to figure out which is the best way to archive my cd library. i've chosen the flac format, but i'm not sure about ripping to single or multiple flac file with or without cue sheets. you people discussing replaygain seem to have chosen the multiple files way to go right ?

Personally I do both. I rip to individual gapless flac tracks and then (for archival purposes) I rip an image file with cuesheet.

Eventually I'll get around to flacing the image (wav) file, but for now I have plenty of disk space so I'm just letting them sit.

-- Rick

I rip to individual files. I see no real benefit to image files. They are not nearly as easy to deal with and most programs dont do it gracefully.

I rip to individual files. I wanted to rip to a single file + .cue, but I have some CDs that are scratched or oxidized and some songs are unreadable. Using individual files for each track is more effective for me in this case because it will be easier to find that particular track ripped losslessly on various P2P communities as a replacement. Most people don't rip to single file image + cue, so I'd be hard pressed to find the entire CD available for download in that format. (Yeah, I know technically that's still not legal, but I don't personally feel bad about it because I actually own the CD, I'm not stealing it)



I personally don't know of a way to do this, but I'm not the most knowledgeable person about ripping, so it may be possible.