I've been reading for days about making perfect copies of CDs for archival purposes. I was starting to get a headache, but now I think I have a way that works well for me. My goal is to have my CDs encoded into FLACs, as individual songs, but with a cue sheet handy so that I can restore a (hopefully) perfect copy of the CD from the FLACs if needed.

I started by setting up EAC as completely as I could, using the various guides on the net.

Then I inserted my audio CD, detected the gaps (F4), and created a CUE sheet (Multiple WAV Files With Gaps... (Noncompliant)). Next I ripped the CD, converting to FLAC at the same time. So I ended up with a collection of FLAC files (fully tagged, the way I like them) and a CUE sheet.

Next, I edited the CUE sheet so that it referenced .flac files instead of .wav files. I can use this CUE sheet to play the whole album in foobar2000, which is nice. (And since I have the individual FLAC files, I can grab the individual songs I want, too.)

Then I burned a test CD, using Burrrn. I loaded up the modified CUE sheet, and burned the CD. No problems.

Now, is this a perfect copy? I want to believe so, because EAC reports the exact same gaps and "Read CRC" for each individual track as it did for the original CD. It also retrieved the same freedb information.

Can anyone tell me if I've made a perfect copy? Thanks very much for your help!

Did you configure your drive's read/write offset?

In EAC? Yes, as best I could. I used AccurateRip (and their on-line database) to determine the read offset, and then made a test EAC CD to calculate my write offset. Will that have some effect on how Burrrn writes?

Burrrn doesn't currently write with the drive's write offset, so you'd not be getting perfect bit for bit copies. I'd use EAC to write CDs with your CD write offset corrected. Gambit, the author of Burrrn is going to implement write offsets into Burrrn in the future.

That's good news! I look forward to that update. It will allow me to keep my individual flacs and produce good copies if needed. (Plus Burrrn is all too easy to use.) Thanks!

Yeah, it will be good, if Burrrn will support write offsets!

Why should we care about Offsets?

(Not sarcastic, I just cant be bothered to phrase it more friendly-ly)

You should care if you want to make exact back-ups of audio CDs,
or if you are a perfectionist in general. Otherwise, if you do not care
about preserving each and every bit of your digital music and if you
can accept losing fractions of a ms of song intros or endings, you
might as well ignore them.

I do have a offset set,but you`e kinda wright.In a worst case scenaio its around 1/100 split of second

Really, some drives can cut milliseconds off tracks, and others dont?

Surprising

Is there a list of drive offsets somewhere, so I can plumb mine into EAC for the future?

try here http://www.accuraterip.com/driveoffsets.htm

if you integrate accuraterip to EAC the offset correction is automatic, AFAIK.

Dont' trust published offset values (and other EAC options for particular drives) - they may differ if you have different firmware version (happened to me). The best way is to determine the offset yourself. I think it's a big flaw that on most offsets-sites firmware versions are ignored, IMO it's as important as model of the drive.

Yes, but AccurateRip calculates the offset from a key disc.

It doesn't matter, regarding if changing firmware changes the offset (though it is rare I think, but can occur.)

The much simplier is to measure the combined read-write offset, is: Create a test CD with Nero CD-DVD Speed, and run the audio cd test with it. The result offset is the combined read-write offset (or its correction, need to figure out...)

And that's what should be done instead of copy'n'paste from some web-site.

EAC & AccurateRip determine read offset from key discs, not combined read-write offset. Combined read-write offsets itself are rather useless, unless you already know your drive's read or write offset.
Combined ReadWrite Offset = Read Offset + Write Offset
Read Offset = Combined ReadWrite Offset - Write Offset
Write Offset = Combined ReadWrite Offset - Read Offset

Hmmm, interesting. I guess I'm happy enough with my rips without adding another alley of complexity. Thanks