Hi there,
I am new to archiving my discs in lossless formats. I am also a linux user. I would like to use EAC to rip my discs and was wondering if using in in a Windows VMware would compromise quality or anything ?
Also are there any guides on how to take an audio CD and end up with either an ape or flac file, and a cue sheet, both for individual tracks and for the whole disc as one file ?
Last questions..
I have a number of CD's saved as one huge single ape or flac file, is there a way to break that into the single tracks ?
is the one big file more acurate than the many smaller flac or ape files ?
Thanks
Christopher.
Full Version: EAC under VMware ?
QUOTE(Christof999 @ Sep 15 2006, 21:18) 
I am new to archiving my discs in lossless formats. I am also a linux user. I would like to use EAC to rip my discs and was wondering if using in in a Windows VMware would compromise quality or anything ?
EAC does a lot of specific things which require access to the read CD drive. It's not going to make full use the error reporting features of the drive and it is unlikely to get things like offsets correct unless it is physically talking to the driver rather than a emulated drive in VMWare.
You can break apart the FLAC files by decompressing them to WAV and then using a free audio editor such as Audacity to save bits of the file into separate files.
One big file and one file per track are just as accurate from a representation of the data point of view. However from a playback point of view the majority of players can't play back a sequence of tracks in a true gapless fashion. This may change now that Apple are touting gapless as a feature in the iTunes 7, suddenly everyone else will have to implement it to be able to claim that they are as good as or better than iTunes+iPod.
Depressing isn't it :/
EAC worked flawlessy in VMWare 5.5 when I used Linux
I'm pretty sure VMWare directly accesses all cd-rom drives, no emulation required
I'm pretty sure VMWare directly accesses all cd-rom drives, no emulation required
QUOTE(chelgrian @ Sep 15 2006, 14:54)
QUOTE(Christof999 @ Sep 15 2006, 21:18)
I am new to archiving my discs in lossless formats. I am also a linux user. I would like to use EAC to rip my discs and was wondering if using in in a Windows VMware would compromise quality or anything ?
EAC does a lot of specific things which require access to the read CD drive. It's not going to make full use the error reporting features of the drive and it is unlikely to get things like offsets correct unless it is physically talking to the driver rather than a emulated drive in VMWare.
You can break apart the FLAC files by decompressing them to WAV and then using a free audio editor such as Audacity to save bits of the file into separate files.
One big file and one file per track are just as accurate from a representation of the data point of view. However from a playback point of view the majority of players can't play back a sequence of tracks in a true gapless fashion. This may change now that Apple are touting gapless as a feature in the iTunes 7, suddenly everyone else will have to implement it to be able to claim that they are as good as or better than iTunes+iPod.
Depressing isn't it :/
Thanks for the reply.
I understood VMware to comunicatge directly with the hardware, but Im not sure.
I also do not understand anything about gapless, could you explain or point me to some reading on it ?
Thanks
Christopher
QUOTE(Christof999 @ Sep 15 2006, 22:10)
QUOTE(chelgrian @ Sep 15 2006, 14:54)
QUOTE(Christof999 @ Sep 15 2006, 21:18)
I am new to archiving my discs in lossless formats. I am also a linux user. I would like to use EAC to rip my discs and was wondering if using in in a Windows VMware would compromise quality or anything ?
EAC does a lot of specific things which require access to the read CD drive. It's not going to make full use the error reporting features of the drive and it is unlikely to get things like offsets correct unless it is physically talking to the driver rather than a emulated drive in VMWare.
You can break apart the FLAC files by decompressing them to WAV and then using a free audio editor such as Audacity to save bits of the file into separate files.
One big file and one file per track are just as accurate from a representation of the data point of view. However from a playback point of view the majority of players can't play back a sequence of tracks in a true gapless fashion. This may change now that Apple are touting gapless as a feature in the iTunes 7, suddenly everyone else will have to implement it to be able to claim that they are as good as or better than iTunes+iPod.
Depressing isn't it :/
Thanks for the reply.
I understood VMware to comunicatge directly with the hardware, but Im not sure.
I also do not understand anything about gapless, could you explain or point me to some reading on it ?
Thanks
Christopher
VMware is an emulation layer and has special drivers for use with the hardware.
something like SUSES Xen talks with the hardware though.
As far as i know, foobar and the standard rip to tracks in eac or better yet, spoons new ripper will preserve the gaps. i have many cd's that have no gap inbetween tracks (just continued music) and there is not even a hicup.
QUOTE(gaillard @ Sep 15 2006, 23:21)
VMware is an emulation layer and has special drivers for use with the hardware.
something like SUSES Xen talks with the hardware though.
I suspect that VMWare special cases the physical CD-ROM drive support using it's own go-between proxy, instead of an emulation layer. Yes, VMWare Workstation does emulate much of the hardware in the guest, but some of their higher-end products do allow direct-to-hardware access from guests for certified device/driver combinations.
I think it's quite possible that EAC-in-VMWare can talk to the optical drives directly.
-brendan
QUOTE(bhoar @ Sep 16 2006, 00:25)
QUOTE(gaillard @ Sep 15 2006, 23:21)
VMware is an emulation layer and has special drivers for use with the hardware.
something like SUSES Xen talks with the hardware though.
I suspect that VMWare special cases the physical CD-ROM drive support using it's own go-between proxy, instead of an emulation layer. Yes, VMWare Workstation does emulate much of the hardware in the guest, but some of their higher-end products do allow direct-to-hardware access from guests for certified device/driver combinations.
I think it's quite possible that EAC-in-VMWare can talk to the optical drives directly.
-brendan
why not just use wine?
QUOTE(rudefyet @ Sep 16 2006, 02:14)
EAC worked flawlessy in VMWare 5.5 when I used Linux
I'm pretty sure VMWare directly accesses all cd-rom drives, no emulation required
VMWare emulates an IDE and SCSI controller and puts emulated disks on those buses. It emulates the devices by talking to block devices (/dev/hdc for the CDROM drive in my case) it does not send ATA commands to the raw device. Firstly there is no mechanism for doing so and secondly it would cause the host's ATA driver to get very very confused.
I'd be amazed if they'd done anything more than this in their higher end products (Virtual Infastructure or what ever they call it this week).
Yes EAC will rip CDs under Windows under VMWare but it will think that it is talking to a generic CDROM drive not your specific drive.
Windows runs under Xen (if it can be made to work) sounds more plausable however that will bring its own problem such as sharing of the display between Windows and Linux.
QUOTE(chelgrian @ Sep 16 2006, 03:51)
VMWare emulates an IDE and SCSI controller and puts emulated disks on those buses. It emulates the devices by talking to block devices (/dev/hdc for the CDROM drive in my case) it does not send ATA commands to the raw device. Firstly there is no mechanism for doing so and secondly it would cause the host's ATA driver to get very very confused.
I'd be amazed if they'd done anything more than this in their higher end products (Virtual Infastructure or what ever they call it this week).
Yes EAC will rip CDs under Windows under VMWare but it will think that it is talking to a generic CDROM drive not your specific drive.
I'd be amazed if they'd done anything more than this in their higher end products (Virtual Infastructure or what ever they call it this week).
Yes EAC will rip CDs under Windows under VMWare but it will think that it is talking to a generic CDROM drive not your specific drive.
Hmm. From a more-than-two-year-old installation of vmware:
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You can set the following options under Connection:
Use physical drive — Select this setting if you want the virtual machine to use a physical drive on the host computer. Use the drop-down list to specify whether you want to use a specific drive or let Workstation auto-detect the drive to use.
Connect exclusively to the virtual machine — This option is only relevant when legacy emulation mode is disabled. Checking this option allows only this virtual machine to use the host's physical device for writing. The host continues to share the device with the virtual machine, and the host applications will only be able to open the device for reading while the virtual machine is running. Other virtual machines cannot use the device.
Legacy emulation— checking this option causes the virtual hardware to work as it did in the prior release of Workstation. By default, Workstation attempts to make available the advanced features of your drive, but in some cases this may cause the drive to not work with your virtual machine. Checking this option reverts Workstation to the prior emulation mode for CD-ROM drives.
My take on this is that it used to simply emulate and map block device calls, but if you you the connect-exclusively feature, you are now proxying CDBs directly, which means that EAC's transactions are seen exactly as written by the drive (and vice-versa).
-brendan
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