I've been reading a wide variety of posts concerning EAC and gap settings and cue sheet generation and I've gotten a little confused over what people are currently suggesting for the most reliable results. For both backup and playback settings. My goal is to be able to back up my CD's so I can create an exact copy later on if needed.

I'm currently using EAC's test/copy to rip individual tracks to FLAC with the following settings:

1.) Gap: Append gaps to previous track
2.) Cue: Multiple WAV files with gaps... (noncompliant)
3.) Burn: Using fb2k I convert the tracks back to multiple wavs (WAV PCM fixed point) and use the cue file from before and EAC to burn the disc.
4.) Lossy: Using fb2k I convert the individual FLAC files to LAME APS mp3's for use on my iPod.

I just did a quick test to see how the end results compared. I made a wave image+cue file in EAC (ALT+F7) of the original CD and then I burned a CD-R from the single track FLAC files. I then took the resulting CD-R and created a wave image to compare it with the original.

I used EAC's compare WAV option and bit compare in fb2k.

EAC's wave compare reported that the original wave image had 6 less samples than the CD-R

fb2k reported the following:



Obviously there is a difference between the two, but what am I doing wrong here?

Maybe I should start using REACT 2 to create FLAC image files with imbedded cues instead...
JXL

You are burning with no write offset.

Try setting the write offset in EAC (if you have not already) and burning from EAC (if your burner is supported).

Edit: You need to decide whether this is a real issue though. I performed similar tests a while back, and was horrified to find that, depending on the drive you use, a bit-identical copy is not always possible. To keep what was left of my sanity (which has since been eroded by my three kids) I decided that I was doing all that I could do, and to forget about it.

The truth is, I wonder whether I will ever have to create an exact copy; I rarely use CDs now anyway. The lossless files are now used as a source to transcode to the latest lossy codec, and I can't see that changing (until storage is so massive that lossy is not required).

I'm just waiting for the time when I can implant a chip in my anus which provides wi-fi access to every piece of music in the world in 32 bit/96kHz quality.

Why my anus? So I could play "Here comes the sun" with a smile on my face...

I totally understand the feeling. I have a 14 mo. old little girl and I'm finding myself thinking the same thing quite a bit...

And to be honest, I was pretty happy with the result of my little test. The resulting CD-R sounds just like the original to me and plays back with no problem at all. The difference reported in the test was also very minute.


I did take the time to configure my burner's write offset in EAC. I did some searching around on various sites listing drive offsets and features and I also created a write offset test CD in EAC. The end result was a 0 write offset.

I'm currently using a Lite-On LDW-411S (DVD-RW drive) +12 read / 0 write offset

I only use this drive for burning though. I use a JLMS HD-166S (CD/DVD Drive) for disc reading and backing up. It has a +12 read offset. In general it is much faster in EAC than my burner and does a better job at error recovery.

Also, I pretty much assumed that the difference had something to do with variations in the two drives and their configurations.




JXL