Hi,

I usually rip a CD using EAC, setting EAC to convert to FLAC on-the-fly, I always copy as individual tracks.

Can I reverse the process, converting back to WAV and burn a CD that's playable on my CD player?

I know I can decode the FLAC files back to WAV, using Flac Frontend, but are these suitable for burning a conventional CD?

Also for some EAC ripped CDs, I have saved a CUE sheet but sometimes I did not bother. Do I need one to sucessfully reverse the process?

Any advise inc. which software (preferably free) to use would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

Yes.

Not as such. The only benefit that a cuesheet would provide might be to specify where INDEX 0 entries should be recorded, but these have no relevance to actual audio data.

If you are concerned about drive offsets, then decoding to WAVE and using EAC may be best; however, an easy and excellent alternative would be to use Burrrn, which will create an audio CD from FLAC files (using drag and drop).

Synthetic Soul, thanks for the informative answer.

Just so I've got it straight, am I corrent in thinking all I have to do is...

1) Use Flac Frontend to decode all the FLAC files of a particular album to WAV.

2) Add those WAV files to my favourite CD burning application (ImgBurn), and burn.

3) The resulting CD will be playable on any CD player?

4) Will this work on any FLAC files at all?

I'll take a look at Burrrn, thanks for the pointer.

Many thanks.

PS.
BTW the link you gave for Burrrn is dead, correct one is:
http://www.burrrn.net/?page_id=4
Oh, you edited to fix it.

It will only work properly for 16-bit / 44.1kHz FLAC files as that is the same as CD audio.

I used burrrn until the latest version of ImgBurn was released. It too burns FLAC files directly into audio CDs. You need to have the directshow filters installed (which are easy to obtain here.

Trust me, ImgBurn is all you need for your disc burning needs. It is simply the best burning application available today.

Did I mention that it is FREE?

Thanks Guys.

Yes, ImgBurn is great.

I also recommend ImgBurn but DO NOT use Illiminable DirectShow filters. They are defective. Use the DC-Bass Source Filter instead: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/DC-Bas...urce_Filter.htm.

Also see here http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1124230 #217, from the ImgBurn author:

"I've done some more tests and encoded / decoded all the tracks from a CD. The ones decoded using flac.exe came out exactly the same as the original wavs. Unfortunately not one of the madFlac decoded ones did

The all sound fine, they're just not bit for bit perfect copies of the original wav files. For most of them it's just a case of missing digital silence but some have some 0xFF and 0x00 sequences that don't match (I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about here! lol).

For research purposes, I also tried the illiminable filters. Out of the 14 tracks I decoded, only 2 matched the originals.
The DC-Bass Source v1.11 filters are currently the only ones I've found that output perfectly matching data."

CUETools will also convert FLAC CUE + files into WAV CUE + files that way you can use EAC to burn a CD (Or any other program that supportd WAVE cue files)