I've read that plextools is as reliable as EAC and often faster, so I downloaded the PlexTools XL trial.

In the DAE preferences, there is a checkbox for "Check Pause" and sub-settings for "Exclude Pause" and "Use PreGap (not PostGap)".

I didn't get much help from the help file:



To those plextools user out there, which settings do you use? Will this affect the usability of the cuesheet in other apps?

thanks,
Woody

The help is indeed absolute rubbish. I had to test that feature to find out what it does.

If you do not check any of the boxes then you get the full track from index 01 to index 01. That is to say if you concateanate them you get the exact * image of the CD.

If you tick only check pause, then the same happens, but based on the index00 position, the logfile will tell you how log the "gap" is at the end of the file. Frankly this whole index 00 and "gap" thing is a very stupid thing. You should not be concerned with this. You get the same full track.

If you tick both, then this "gap", which is again is just a concept, but it is not really a gap, is taken out and if you concateanate the tracks together, you will not get an exact copy.

*The exact copy is not 100% exact if you have a hidden track before the 1st track, but Pextools cannot deal with that no matter what you do.

My approach is not ticking any of them. IMHO

1) The concept of "gap" is stupid. I give a flying toss about index 00.

2) The hidden track is stupid. If the artist is stupid enough to hide it (i.e. you will not hear it even if you just toss the CD into a player, unless you rewind it), then I will not listen to it.

(Apart from these two silly things I am quite an arse when it comes to ripping and tagging.)

Triza

Very well said Triza, i couldn't agree more... That's why i rip to individual tracks without a Cue Sheet. The gap is perfectly copied anyway, and i will have a perfect copy of the music data, but i will just not get the gaps marked(index 00), which only will make the CD player display negative countdown between tracks, which i couldn't care less about... I know that if you play random tracks then the gap also is played which actually shouldn't happen normally, but since i only listen to full albums in the real order, then i don't care about that(and it should also only be a problem with tracks that have intros to the next track in the gap). And about the hidden tracks i also agree with you(although i still rip them as an individual track)... I also dosen't use offset correction, since i don't compare rips done on different drives, or make several generations of copies of copies, and because of the fact that CD's are made with varying offsets... Anyway, nice to see someone wich feels the same as i about index00's

-Martin.

What are y'all's setups for encoding? Do use one of the formats supported by plextools? Or, do you rip to wav and use an external encoder? If so, which one? How do you tag?

Thanks,
Woody

I make Plextools to dump into FLAC. I use -4 compression option. I could use 5 or higher, but since plextools has the feel as a poorly executed SW implementation I try to make sure that the FLAC encoding never causes a bottleneck. FLAC above 5 has diminishing return anyway and. I am just ubercautious.

Yes I do use Plextools because I want to know if there is an CU error, and EAC will never tell you that. Not for certain. But beyond that Plextools is poor. I do the tagging and all the other post processing with scripts on my Linux station.

Triza

I'm getting OT here but...

Do you know if most sw players are capable of not pulling down the whole image down to play a single track. I was planning on sharing my lossless on network, but it may not be feasible if the players have to download 300 mb to play 1 song...

Woody

Well I save each track as a separate file. I forgot to mention that my other pet hate is saving the album as one image.

3) Saving the image will cause a lot of problems with tagging and playing and so far nobody has given me any real justification why people do that.

I would never save an album as a single image and I suspect a lot who do never really stepped back and asked the question why they do it.

Triza

Simple: if you plan to encode a nonstop mix or a concept album like DSotM to MP3, ripping to an image file (OBF) is the way to go.

OK I see that. It makes sense for portable. On a PC MP3 can be gapless. I hate gaps myself. But again portables are even less capable to handle single file albums. It is unlikely that you will be able to jump to a specific track.

Triza