Hi everyone,

I have been browsing these forums for a good long while now ... I appreciate all the advice and insight you all offer. About myself: I am not an audiophile, but am in the process of re-ripping my music collection to my computer. Currently I have tracks in a number of different formats and qualities and want to unify and "do it right" (or, as I am reading, right-by-my-ears). I listen to music primarily in the car, on headphones through an iPod, on computer speakers, and soon, through a Squeezebox on my stereo.

I have gone around and around about how I want to digitize my collection (OGG, AAC, FLAC, MP3 and back again) but have come up with this scheme, which I think suits me:

1. Rip CDs to single FLAC files with embedded cuesheet for archiving/backup purposes (my girlfriend and I have misplaced one book of CDs already and I hate to think of doing it again with my other disks). This seems like the best way to preserve the CDs in the event that I lose the physical disk, and also gives me the easiest access to "re-rip" or change my "usable" files (step #2, below -- which I have thought about most).

2. Rip the cuesheet embedded FLAC files into individual MP3 files for listening. Probably -V2 or -V3. As I said: I am not a "power-listener". I originally wanted to go with the OGG format, because I love open source software and am a linux user. However, I also love using my iPod in my car with my Alpine head unit. I set it on shuffle and leave it alone for days on end. It's great to be able to just push the "next" button and get the next track. My girlfriend has the same setup and also loves the iPod. Switching to OGG would be a sacrifice, in that regard. So, despite my sadness, I think I will stick with MP3 because it seems to give me the most flexibility with players in the future (and if step #1, above, works out, it should be easy to re-rip to OGG if things change in the iPod/car realm).

The trouble I am having with this scheme: CD --> FLAC --> MP3 is finding software for Mac/Linux that will read an embedded cue sheets of the FLAC file and do some sort of CDDB lookup on the tracks (Max, for the Mac, can split the tracks from the cuesheet but, as of today, doesn't have a CDDB feature for that so I would have to type every track manually). I don't want to hand type them and I don't really want to rip each CD twice (once as a single file and once into multiple files). Being able to do the FLAC part once and then the rest of the conversion into whatever format I wanted second seems key.

So is what I want to do possible on Mac/Linux ? What software should I use ? Or what approach, for that matter. I want a good, solid, rip to start with into a FLAC file. Then, it seems, would be easy to make an entier MP3 collection (or OGG collection if I changed my mind) afterwards.

I know the drawback is that the FLAC embedded cuesheet doesn't include track data (for good reason, I have read) -- which is a bummer. BUt is there a way around it ?

Any ideas ?

Thanks,
Damon

I just set up such a system: CD to FLAC image with embedded CUE sheet for backup, and OGG Vorbis tracks for everyday listening. This is for Windows, unfortunately. Like you, I love open-source, free software, however Linux is a dragon I haven't the time to tackle, train, or slay.

Some ideas however:

• Is Rockbox possible for your iPod? I have read elsewhere that iPods with Rockbox can have compatibility issues when interfacing to in-car systems, but this could be a solution (I am a Vorbis user and damned the lack of support! ).
• Rubyripper seems like a good choice for you here.
  QUOTE
  ...currently available for Linux... The codecs supported are FLAC, Vorbis, MP3, and Wav... Multiple codecs can be used in one run...

In Windows, I use Exact Audio Copy with REACT, and it will Run EAC Tasks (hence its name) to encode your rip into however many formats you like. It supports embedding CUE sheets and using image files to encode individual tracks. If EAC with REACT works under Wine then there is no problem; my solution should be feasible. On second thought, if anything can work under Wine then your options become damn-near countless.

EDIT:
I do not know the technical terminology behind it but this is not entirely true. Normally, a FLAC file will only store the track points of the CUE sheet when tagging, however if you store the CUE sheet in a tag (metadata block?) then all the track information is saved as well. I know it is possible because my player can read the CUESHEET tag and display the track information. Instead of using the switch (correct term?):

You would use:

Again, I hope this helps.

I have looked into the rockbox ... and almost made the switch ... but, in being realistic with myself, I realized that I appreciated the ease-of-use of the Apline-direct-control feature of the iPod. With rockbox, this won't work. I did toy with the idea ... but I gave up. I like reading the track info on the Alpine head unit too much. As for Rubyripper, let me check that out. I hadn't see that yet.



I guess, then, it is possible? If so, I haven't found an easy GUI to tackle this feat. Max (on Mac) is great and makes a nice FLAC w/Embedded cuesheet file ... but no track data. And I got the impression it wouldn't be implementing that feature either.

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm going to look at Rubyripper.

Damon

XLD, an open source Japanese player/splitter for OS X, will do a look-up on tracks in a FLAC file.

http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html

Yes, if you embed the CUE sheet into the FLAC image as a metadata block, the resulting file will retain all information. Heck, it even works for compilation CDs with various artists.

I know of the following programs that work flawlessly with such files:

• Foobar (for playing files)
• Burrrn for burning such files to CDs

The problem is that both of them are Windows based, and you want a Linux/MAC solution. I guess the main obstacle that prevents all music players from parsing CUE sheets embedded in image files is that the CUE sheet metadata block is not a standard one like Title, Artist, etc. However, I might be completely wrong about this.

I guess you just have to wait a while until mainstream software catches up with Foobar. God knows when that will happen.

You could try to puzzle a script together for this.

in pseudo-script-code



Problematic is the transfer of the tags however, since shntools don't care about the tags at all. It can name the output file according to the cuesheets field, but only the standard ones are supported. It’s unfortunate that you settled on whole album files with cue sheets. This is largely unknown/obscure for Linux tools.

EDIT: Found something else. HA user ak has a python script that extracts the tags from a cue sheet and converts to single files. You need mutagen for this

https://opensvn.csie.org/4nykey/scripts/cueek.py

First you would run the script with "-g" to write a default config file, and then edit that to add lame as an encoder.



Then run

As of r1324 Max can perform MusicBrainz lookups on cue sheets, which should help with your problems.

Thanks everyone for your replies and insight.


Hi Nick: I had tried XLD before I think ... in fact, I think it's still on my computer somewhere ... *searches around a little* ... yes! It is. And it does read the embeded and it does CDDB as well (though with what I test to only 50% success). I'll keep this one in mind.

(I downloaded a newer version than what I had and it got all the track data without a problem -- groovy).


I am starting to get a warm and fuzzy feeling that Max is catching up (see below). Have been testing a release candidate and it is working on the Mac! Very exciting! And very straightforward as well. XLD is doing the FLAC decoding as well. So maybe everything's not lost.


Wow - I think that is a few steps above my head for the time being. I'm going to try and stick it out with the GUIs that are available. Thanks for the effort in putting that post together though. Is nice to know can fall back on it.


I saw that over on the sbooth.org forums. Thanks for following the discussion here and well and a big thanks to the continued development. I am right there with you. I did notice that one CD I tested queried fine for the CD portion, but wouldn't query again for the FLAC file. The other four or five I ran last night worked fine however.

Thanks again everyone.

Damon