TAK (T)om's lossless (A)udio (K)ompressor

Here is an information about this excellent encoder + a mini how to.
It works fine such as Monkey audio, Flac or WavPack...
I adress a big Thank you to the developper Thomas Becker.
All you need is underneath if you want to give a try.



Tak information : Wiki Information

Tak encoder : TAK_1.0.4.zip

Tak decoder plugin for [foobar2000 v0.9.x.x] : foo_input_tak 0.4.2.zip
[Open foo_input_tak.zip, extract firstly foo_input_tak.dll in the "components" folder of foobar2000,
then extract tak_deco_lib.dll in foobar2000.exe directory].

Tak decoder plugin for [Winamp & XMPlay] : Winamp_XMPlay 1.0.8 is included in TAK_1.0.4.zip archive.. [Put in_tak.dll in the same folder as XMPlay.exe (or a subfolder, such as /plugins)].

Tak file type for foobar2000 : tak.ico [Copy tak.ico in "icons" folder].







1- Compress in .tak under EAC

a) Create a Tak folder (tak 1.0.4 in my exemple),

b) Open TAK_1.0.4.zip-->Extract the content of the directory Applications in this folder,

c) EAC → Compression Options... → External Compression :
Point EAC to takc.exe using this Additional command-line Options :
Pass by this section & use wapet.exe just below if you want to tag cue sheet withing lossless file immediately after the rip under EAC, or read this section & use foobar2000 to tag it !





Note: TAK will use the default of -p2 (= Normal) but you can alter this switch for the desired compression mode.
0-5 (fastest to strongest). Append e/m to increase the evaluation level to extra/max.
-p2 or -p4 just happens to be what some others gravitate towards.

d) → Action → Copy Image & Create Cue Sheet → Compressed...


2- Tag Cue Sheet within lossless file

a) Under EAC with Wapet

Download wapet_0.6.zip

Wapet is a tool developped by Synthetic Soul which automatically tags infos within lossless file after EAC Copy ; it adds any APEv2 or APEv1 tags to the file specified by the user. I invite you to read its EAC and TAK guide for further info..

EAC → Compression Options... → External Compression :

1. Browse button and locate wapet.exe (the tak's folder in my exemple),

2. In the Additional command line options box, copy and paste the string below:
Note : This needs to point to where takc.exe is located. If the path contains spaces, you must surround it with double quotes (").,

3. Remove the ticks from Use CRC check, Add ID3 tag & Check for external programs return code as shown :




b) With foobar2000

1. After Copying the CDImage & Creating the Cue Sheet with EAC..

2. Open lossless file under foobar 2000 → Stop Music..

3. Right click audio file.tak Utils → Edit cuesheet → Load → Open Cuesheet file → Save by pressing Ok!


Note : if you have ripped several tracks and want you to create a Cue Sheet :

→ Enqueue alls numbered audio files in foobar2000 as 1..2..3..4..5..

→ "Control+a" (or whatever keyboard shortcut) to select alls files → Right click "Properties" (for adding any useful information),

→ Right click "Utils"→ Save as cuesheet.


3- Compress a .wav on your own :

a) Under foobar2000 with converter

1. Create a Custom Preset in the Commandline Encoder Settings :
→ Preferences → Tools → Converter → Add New → Custom



2. Right click .wav → Convert → Convert to → Choose Tak, 2 → Ok


b) With tak.exe

1. Launch tak.exe,
[A little box will appear, shit ! What's to be done?]



2. Click on Compress, then Add Files [indicate the path ],



3. Compress, Done and Exit ! :



Note : You can choose your encoding strength in Options tab [default= normal or -p2]:

Thanks for your input. If you are interested in writing guides you should PM Jan and ask to get access to the wiki.

A couple of points:

This will fail if your artist or album name contain illegal filename characters. I realised this after a simple test this morning; I should have picked it up earlier. I have posted to the TAK(ing) with EAC thread also.

-p2 and -pN are synonymous. I think your text causes confusion.

On a related note, the fact that TAK can use -pX, where X is 0/T, 1/F, 2/N, 3/H or 4/E, makes writing guides confusing. I tend to use the alphabetical notation, as I think it is easier to see that -pF is Fast, rather than -p1. However, it seems to me that most other users are using 0-4 instead.

Are you sure that this is necessary? I've never heard of this before.

Edit: On re-reading I see that there is no mention of the existing EAC guide. Users can read the wiki guide here. Ideally, users should really be directed to the wiki for all information. Perhaps you could get yourself wiki access and make additions to the existing information. Guides which are controlled by one person, with links to software that may become superceded, is not as ideal as a wiki article that any member can update.

Synthetic Soul,
How To Tak is updated (EAC+TAK, the confusion between -p2 and -pN...).

No, the image above isn't Cin editing,
it's EAC defaults with .wav for some reason.
(A similar pb happens with WavPack or Flac if i'm not mistaken with a different issue*).
If you let .wav with our command string, there will be no compression..

If you erase .wav just before ripping, all will end well..

*With WavPack, there is a compression,
but you've to rename .wav.wv lossless file...
because .cue points .wv not .wav.wv !

Ah, of course, you are right. Following a test of my own I recalled that the latest version of EAC introduced some additional anomolies. I did a search here for ".wav.wav" and found this relevant thread.

FYI: The .wv issue is because EAC has always had problems with file extensions that are not three characters in length - like .wv, .la or .flac. I think these recent changes are a result of Andre trying to fix this issue, but unfortunately failing.

Dear friends,
Any help for using TAK in Audiograbber will be very useful.
Thank you all
--Rigapada

Warning: I don't use Audiograbber, but believe this will work. If it does, please report back here - maybe we can add it to the TAK wiki page.

As per EAC you will need to use wapet if you want to tag your files.

On the "MP3 Settings" dialogue:

1. Check the "Send Wavefile to MP3 CODEC" checkbox
2. Check the "Delete wavefile after MP3 is created" checkbox
3. Uncheck the "Use ID3 Tag" checkbox
4. Check the "External MP3 program name" radio button and browse for "wapet.exe"
5. Check the "Own arguments" checkbox and use:
   
   CODE
   %d -t "Artist=%1" -t "Title=%4" -t "Album=%2" -t "Year=%6" -t "Track=%3" -t "Genre=%7" "C:\Program Files\TAK\takc.exe" -e -pN %s %d
   NB: Change "C:\Program Files\TAK\takc.exe" to the real path to takc.exe on your PC
6. Check the "Own extension" checkbox and use: tak

If you take a look at the EAC and TAK wiki page it may provide a few clues, if you get stuck.

If you don't want tags ( ) Then browse for "takc.exe" instead of "wapet.exe" in step 4, and use the arguments:



Edit: References:
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/mp3settings.html
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/boards/...TML/004219.html

Without wapet, this works well. Downloaded Wapet. Shall try today to rip with tags and shall report.
--Rigapada

Please do.

@ All

NB: I have tested some new changes to wapet.

I was frustated by the fact that the cuesheet embedding was not viable (due to potential differences caused by non-filename-friendly characters). I toyed with a few ideas and then realised that I could just use the same functionality that David added to WavPack: wilcard names.

For those of you who aren't familiar with WavPack, this means that you could use:


... and wapet will look for a cuesheet in three places, in this order:

1. The current working directory
2. The directory in which wapet resides
3. The directory in which the file to be tagged resides

As you can see, number 3 is most useful in this situation. The only caveat is that there can only be one file matching the wildcard in the folder, or it won't work.

I need to contact David to clarify the licensing of the WavPack code I have used, but once we have agreed a resolve I will upload the new version.

http://svn.slomosnail.de/wavpack/trunk/license.txt

The reference implementation of WavPack is under the three-clause BSD license.

Yes, thanks, I have a copy of the license.

It's more to do with copywrite notices in a shared source file, providing a licence with the binary, and the fact that wapet has no license at the moment. I'm generally confused.

I just wanted to make David aware really, and to hear his thoughts. If I understand this post correctly WavPack got it's initial tagging code from wapet, so it all seems a bit karmic.

I got the impression the functionality was cloned from scratch, not copied through source code.

I think cloned functionality (if it's simple enough) can be released under any license by the secondary author, so I think David will be safe if my hunch is correct.

I have just received a response from David, and he confirms your understanding.

NB: I was certainly not meaning to suggest that David had plagiarised wapet's code! wapet has no license, so however much of the code he may have used (even though it turns out it was none) could not be an issue.

David's response is typically helpful and inspiring, and he also points out that the main purpose of freeware is to ensure that developers are not wasting time re-inventing the wheel.

Yeah, I was a little confused when I wrote my posts.. I didn't understand the situation fully.

Code with no license (if you want to be really picky) could be covered by the Berne convention: fully copyrighted.

OK, for those of you interested, you can test wapet 0.6.

Shouldn't this HOWTO be in the HA Wiki?

far from it! wiki guide is more complete.
This accessible step-by-step is intended for novices only..
i'll call it the easiest n quickest way to encode in .tak.
I hope it has been useful to you pepoluan.
See you.

aeroman: Ah, okay. But we can always make a new article, e.g. "Simple TAK How-To"

I wish to make one, but I am not (yet) into TAK-encoding. So I don't dare to do it (yet).

Here was the text of mini How_to_Tak if you need it, pepoluan
Modify it as you want then copy & paste wherever you want.
(you just have to update the links from time to time) :

Okay thanks I'll see what I can do over the weekend.

Just wondered what avantages TAK bears over other lossless audio formats?

Please see the HA wiki comparing lossless formats and the HA Wiki page on TAK

I have no idea why this doesn't work with me. It worked on another windows installation the same way.

TAK 1.02/Wapet 0.6 location: C:\Programme\Audio\tak\

EAC command line:

CODE

C:\Programme\Audio\tak\wapet.exe
%d -f "cuesheet=%a - %g.cue" "C:\Programme\Audio\tak\Takc.exe" -e -pN %s %d

The does box just comes up for a millisecond and disappears.

EDIT: OK, I've seen this is something about cuesheets, the commandline "%d -t "Artist=%a" -t "Title=%t" -t "Album=%g" -t "Year=%y" -t "Track=%n" -t "Genre=%m" "C:\Programme\audio\TAK\takc.exe" -e -pN %s %d" works...

BTW. Please make this thread sticky!

Yes, we should read more carefully EAC and TAK guide by Synthetic Soul
All should work fine now..
Good luck.

Hi everyone. I'm trying to setup TAK with foobar2000's converter using this page in the wiki. I'm confused though whether to follow this commandline "-e -p4 -ihs - %d" or the one in the screenshot.

The screenshot uses a temporary input file that tak shouldn't need anymore as it's capable of pipe-encoding IIRC. I don't know what -ihs does, though, as I never used TAK.

I see. So for versions before 1.0.3, I should follow the screenshot. But for 1.0.3, I should use "-e -p4 -ihs - %d". Is that right?

Also I think it's time to update that screenshot since there's no reason to use earlier versions.

It simply tells TAK to ignore the size field in the wave file header, which isn't being set by foobar (for good reasons).


Exactly!

Done.

I'm having a problem with getting Tak with EAC. I've followed the wiki guide, double checking syntax, substituting my paths, and I just get wav files.

Here's my options:
User defined encoder
extension: .tak
program:

options:

Then nothing else checked except "delete wav after compression"

Both wapet and Tak exist in those locations because I didn't even type in the path, I copied it from windows exporer just to make sure I didn't mis-type.

Months ago I had the previous version of Tak working in EAC but without wapet. But tonight I just tried both 1.0.3 and 1.0.2 with and without wapet and still only get wav files.

Any tips welcome!

I recall having exactly the same issue. Replacing Synthetic Soul's Wapet version by Case's older one seemed to fix it for me. Though I wouldn't want to make any claims here. Just check if you could confirm my impression.

If that is the case I would appreciate you trying my version 0.5 also. Perhaps the changes in 0.6 caused a problem.

Polar: thanks for the confirmation.

SS: wapet 0.5 gives the same result (no encoding). And I did try last night to download the original Case version 0.3 from your page, but the zip archive was empty. Could you double check it, or could somebody provide a link?

Hmm.. yes the 0.3 zip (and source zip) seems to be corrupt.

You can get Case's last version from Rarewares.

It's strange - both with wapet 0.3 and 0.5, after extraction is finished in EAC, a command line window will flash open for a split second and close. It's too quick for me to see what it is or what it says. Perhaps it's Tak opening and closing with an error, but there's nothing in EAC's logfile to tell what happened.

FYI: I have just tested, using Wapet 0.6 and your command line with just the path to TAK amended, and it worked fine for me.


The only thing I can suggest is checking "Check for external programs return code" on the External Compression tab - to see if EAC will pass on the error that Wapet or TAK is returning.

Thanks - there is an error but I'm not sure what it means. I'll post the message in the uploads forum.

Hmmm... don't really know.

I forced mine to error by providing a wrong path to TAK and my Warning dialogue was very similar (just the paths/tag values being different).

Your paths are all very long; I wonder whether they may be the issue. Perhaps you could try ripping to the root of C:\, and moving Takc.exe to C:\ temporarily also (or some other short path).

That's all I can suggest; The tags values look OK, etc.

Edit: Hmm... I just tested using the path "C:\Documents and Settings\Neil\My Documents\Audio\New Folder\New Folder\New Folder\New Folder\New Folder" for Wapet, TAK and the files and it still worked fine. Maybe not then.

Sorry but I don't really have much time to try and reproduce the error; having a 9 months' pregnant wife won't contribute much to that

Links updated for Tak 1.0.4 (encoder + Winamp&XMPlay decoder) and foobar plugin 0.4..

Ps : i haven't got any problem with the lasts versions of EAC 0.99 prebeta4 nor foobar2000 0.9.5.1
using TAK encoder 1.0.4... but it may happen one day !
I've just tested wapet.exe 0.6 with takc.exe under EAC and it works fine !

Thanks both Synthetic Soul and Thomas.

Whow, TAK encoding is so fast in compare to WavPack !!! And the file is smaller.
I am switching to TAK.