I'd like to make loseless copies of my CDs, either in FLAC or TAK formats. But I cannot decide if I should rip the songs as one image file or individual tracks. I want to have all the info stored in my computer so I can burn to another CD if the original gets damaged. After searching the forum and wiki, I've found more info on the pros and cons of each method.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Individual track Pros
- Able to convert individual tracks to lossy formats easily
- If errors are encountered during the rip, it's easy to re-rip an individual track

Individual track Cons
- Does not contain all the info
- May encounter problems on gapless CDs


Image Pros
- Contains all info taken from the CD (like CD-Text, etc)
- Easy to handle, i.e. one file per album.

Image Cons
- If errors are encountered during the rip, I need to re-rip the entire CD!


So which method of ripping do all of you use/recommend? Can foobar play back individual songs in an image by reading the cue sheet?



I've also read that during compression to FLAC, it only compresses the audio data in the wave file? So if I uncompress it and burn to a CD, it won't be exactly the same as the original?

I've also searched in the forums that ripping an HDCD to a wave file will preserve the HDCD information. Will compressing it to FLAC or TAK remove the extra HDCD info?

EAC's non compliant CUE-sheets somehow contain all information to recreate exact CD playback.

Also, in a previous discussion, gapless burning is not a problem with proper authoring tools.

The following thread may be of interest:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=40608

If you are ripping to lossless mainly as a backup to your CDs then I always think that images are the easiest method. You have less options to convert to tracks (e.g.: MP3) but you are certainly not limited (foobar, ACDIR). I consider them easier as you just don't have to worry about HTOA tracks, gaps, etc (INDEX 00 entries, essentially).

Yes, just as if they were individual tracks. Which means that creating track MP3s, etc. is still very easy, if you are happy to use foobar (and why not).

I'm not sure what you mean here. I think this is only a concern if the WAVE has meta data in RIFF chunks, which it will not if you rip from CD (and bear in mind there is now a switch to retain this data). I don't think this is a concern for you, all you need is the audio data.

No idea.

Individual track Pros
- Able to convert individual tracks to lossy formats easily (More options, yes)
- If errors are encountered during the rip, it's easy to re-rip an individual track

Individual track Cons
- Does not contain all the info (?)
- May encounter problems on gapless CDs (You will need to rip HTOA tracks 'specifically', and retain a cuesheet for INDEX 0 timestamps)

Image Pros
- Contains all info taken from the CD (like CD-Text, etc) (I don't think this is true)
- Easy to handle, i.e. one file per album. (Nice and neat, yes)

Image Cons
- If errors are encountered during the rip, I need to re-rip the entire CD! (Or rip the track again and get messy merging WAVE files... I guess you need to consider how many of your CDs are likely to give your trouble)

No problems for gapless cds.



As lossless codecs are lossless they will presreve undecoded HDCD info.

Also CD-Text information should be preserved when ripping to single tracks as it will be written into the ID Tags.

I see, so ripping from a CD will only produce audio data? Then what type of methods would produce the RIFF chunks?



Ah, I read that info from wiki
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...ng-term_archive (under encoding section)
So I suppose the wiki info is wrong?

Yes it is wrong, with non-gapless CDs the gap between the tracks is appended to each track, with gapless there is nothing to add so single files are gapless (if you were to join 2 files together).

Regarding individual tracks vs. single-file image and "all the info", there is only one difference: HTOA (Hidden Track One Audio) which is the gap before the first track and not all drives are capable of extracting this data!

If you prepend gaps (append gaps to next track), HTOA will be included automatically.

If you append gaps (to previous track, the default method of every ripping program), the gap before the first track will not be extracted. I can't speak for other programs, but EAC can extract HTOA as a separate file very easily.

CD-TEXT and everything else besides HTOA is the same regardless of whether you rip to individual tracks or single-file images. One thing worth mentioning about CD-TEXT: you should check to see if your disc really contains CD-TEXT. It is often something that is added which didn't exist on the disc originally.

I removed the offending section.

Do you mean that HTOA will be included automatically for all drives or only those drives that are able to extract the data?


Just another quick question, I've just installed REACT2 and am configuring it. I've been reading the backup data page - http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...ckup_DATA_Track - and it says you need to copy the code into the .cfg files. If I'm going to rip the CD as one whole image, I need to configure the image.cfg file, right? So where exactly do I insert the code in the image.cfg file? The example given is only for the track.cfg file.

That Wiki article is written by me and recently I found a small bug in it (maybe two.. which could mean that I have to change a lot of the code) and I have contacted Jan S. because I think it would be better to remove the whole article because I haven't got the time to debug & fix it right now. I haven't received an answer from Jan S. (mail sent over 2 weeks ago)... so I guess I HAVE TO do it now. Can you wait a couple of days? I'll also try to make it easier to implement (in track- & image.cfg's).

I was planning to start ripping my entire CD collection tomorrow! But it's alright, better to get more accurate rips right? I can deal with the non-enhanced CDs first.

HTOA will only be included if the drive is capable. If the drive isn't capable, what was supposed to be HTOA will instead be silence.

Thanks for all you replies! Just another quick question.

Would the size of one image file be slightly smaller than all the individual tracks combined?


And also, if I rip to an image and play just one track of it in foobar, does foobar need to decode the entire image just to play that one specific song in the image?
If that is the case, I think I might be better ripping to individual tracks, given the only difference is HTOA!

My last question is, for the data track on enhanced CDs, can I just use Windows Explorer and copy and paste the data because I've read that the the error correction for data is reliable. And how do I burn an enhanced CD? Do I do it in 2 sessions? Burn the music first and close the session, then burn the data in another session.

Not significantly.


Foobar will play the single track just fine as if it were an individual file.



I am sure someone else will come to the rescue here

Yes, that is one method.

Yes.

As far as I understand, the only REAL size difference would come if you use embedded cover art.. and I mean BIG cover art images.


Again, as far as I understand, yes. My REACT:Backup DATA Track Wiki article you were going to use, uses XCOPY to copy ALL the files (+hidden and system files w/ attributes from the CD drive including empty subdirs). If your Win Explorer shows all the files (+hidden & system), then I guess you're good to go (I don't know if the file dates and attributes change copying this way). My code just automates this stuff.. AND it also gets the CD label. Plus it detects copy errors and pauses the file encoding process with a warning message.

I have myself used it for many enhanced CD's and it's great. I suggest to put it before ReplayGain calculation because while you wait the RG calc., you can change the CD in the drive safely.

I'm sorry but I need more time to fix it.. I promise that it'll be fixed by the end this week.

In Burst T&C mode, is a matching image CRC just as reliable as all tracks ripped individually having matching CRCs?
I'm asking because there are less permutations for an image CRCs as compared to 15 CRCs from different tracks on the CD, so there's a higher chance getting same CRCs in image?

Bump, as I am curious to hear an answer on this as well. I don't know if it needs to be Burst vs. Secure Test and Copy, though.

But I rely on the matching CRCs for all of my rips, so I would like to know if anyone has insight on this question.

You are less likely to have a CRC collision with a track than you are with an image because the CRC has to cover more data. An expert in this field of study should be able to give you quantitative answer as to how much based on relative file sizes. If you're paranoid, extract twice and do a bit compare or use a stronger hash.

It doesn't; a CRC is a CRC. A single pass in secure mode doesn't rely on a checksum, however.

I won't do this because if you copy and paste the data, you are going to lose the hybrid format of the enhanced CD (HFS filesystem). It's better to rip the data track as an image. See this topic.