Is there any program like foobar for windows that is able to play flac files with an external cuesheet? I had to convert my lossless collection to lossy just so I could listen to it in linux. SO if anyone has any suggestions, that would be huge. Thanks guys!

1 file per album is the most pointless thing IMHO. Nobody could give any practical reason why you and others do it. I asked it several times before on this forum.

So if I were you I would ask myself that question 1st.

Triza

It is the best way of getting gapless playback, and I dont have to separate my music collection into folders; the entire set of 400+ albums is just there in one place for me. And I don't have a week of computer non-usability to convert everything into a different format.

But still, if anyone knows of a way to play external cuesheeted flac files in linux, that would be much appreciated. Thanks.

well, in fact I don't know any linux player capable of this (even modern bmpx does not support it as far as I know), so that's why we are reorganizing things in lamip (LAMIP) for it! (I want to have this feature, too... and bryant (WavPack developper) too... and I don't want to discuss if it does make sense or not)

so with the next 0.0.4 release there will be support for it! cuesheets and also implemented TOCs (I don't know if anybody uses things like that) ...

What format should I convert my flac files to if I want to still be able to burn cds (that will be detected by cddb, etc.) from the losless file then? Now you have me questioning my music collection, since it wont work in linux now. Any suggestions on what and how I should convert my music to. Thanks all!

Ah yes, one of the reasons I can't use Linux as a desktop OS...

@Triza: one file per album is super-duper handy for me who's listenening to whole albums in 99.8% of all cases.

I don't understand you right then... flac is well supported under linux and you should be able to play flac files, exception is that the cuesheet in the tags isn't handled by any (to me) known player yet...

if you want to burn the flac file to CD, I think you have to go the command-line way... extracting the cuesheet, and open it with cdrdao-tools (GUI is Gnome CD Master when I remember correctly)... you won't have to convert flac back to wav... gnome CD master does that for you (I hope I remember that correctly too )




well... I will make a topic then we have full support for it in lamip ... there seem to be more people missing that feature... and not even only me (like I thought before )



exactly my position

I don't have a problem playing the flac files in linux; I just have a problem splitting the flac files into their respective song titles. Which currently is impossible in linux. Which puts me in a hard place. So I just want your guys opinions on if I should convert my entire music collection to some other format to make it OS-independent, but still be able to burn CD's from my lossless files that would be detected by CDDB (which I can do with burrrn and the cuesheets), etc., and if I should convert it, what should I convert it to? Thanks everyone!

You cant burn a (db detectable) CD from a CUE sheet plus individual tracks in Linux?

omg... cuesheet support has been available in rippers/decoders/players/tools for YEARS

xmms-cuefile
lamip
k3b
shntool
cuetools
etc.
etc.

you didn't even do the basic searching if this is a problem...


later

Woah woah, chill; I can burn cd's from my lossless files/codecs just fine right now. Thats not the problem. If I were to change my music all to a different format (thus letting me play it in linux), I need a solution that would still let me create cds from my files. Sorry for the confusion.

well... I am chilling, don't care about this, and xmixahlx isn't aggressive too ... so, just leave your files in flac! you're able to extract the cuesheet with some utility and thus burn it to CD... for playing files with cuesheet support you have to "relax" for a few weeks within the linux environment .... there WILL be a solution to play / convert / burn it ... as I want to have support for it too

so wait for a linux solution... you'll get it with lamip and definitely bmpx I think! you need not convert it to some lossy format...

Is the problem here an assumption that individual tracks + cue cannot produce identical results to an image + cue?

Public apology for being snippy. I got less than 3 hours of sleep last night because of a 4:20 wakeup call. Sorry about that, didnt mean to take it out on you for helping me, xmixahlx. So individual cuesheeted flac files may be the best of both worlds? What is everyone's opinion of going that route instead of albums (I dont normally listen through my music straight through the album...) Thanks all, and didnt mean to be rude!

Eh, read quickly through this, a bit confusing thread, but if the Q. are playing singlefile albums with external cuesheet under Linux, I've simply used the appropriate player plugin plus the mp3cue plugin in XMMS with success both for FLAC and WavPack (the XMMS WavPack plugin can be gotten at wavpack.com download page, the FLAC plugin should be available through distributions package systems).

hum, I thought it was about cuesheets in tags... sorry

I almost always listen to the whole albums, too. What you need to ask for is gapless playback. If you have that, one file per album has no advantage.

Another note: It seems to be nobody understands CUE sheets, or unnecessarily anal retentive. You can make a perfect copy of your music without cue sheets. Just burn the tracks back to back without pause or interruption. CUE sheets only add INDEX00, which is not something anyone generally make any use of.

Triza

Maybe this may help? But I'm still waiting for a new LAMIP release.

I have written a script that rips cds, makes a cuesheet, and encodes to flac as one single file. when i import the cue sheet though it only adds the indexes and not the track names, so during playback i have the tracks are labelled track1, track2, etc... is there a way to embed the cuesheet in the flac file without losing the track names?

The splitting and merging adds an additional potential error source to the creation of a perfect CD copy from archived files. Of course a perfect copy can be made from split files, too, but you have to do it right (respectively you must be sure that your software does it right).



People who do lossless audio compression usually want an exact copy of their CDs. That means that the track indices (index 00, sometimes also index 02, 03, ...) do matter. Yes, it doesn't make much difference from a practical point of view. But then, from a practical point of view a high quality vorbis file doesn't make much difference to a losslessly compressed file.
Again: Most people who encode losslessly do not want any compromises of that kind.

Finally I want to remark that I don't like your tone. There are too many people who like the one-track-per-album version, which could give you a hint that that is not so unnecessary as you claim.



Neil also hacked together a XMMS plugin starting from the existing cdread plugin. You could try to ask him via email if you like a copy.

why do you blame everyone here? they prefer one file per album. me, too. i like to have a single file for an album, not 10 or 20. if you like to have them separately, then its your choice.