Hi all,

I plan to rip my entire Audio-CD collection into a lossless library from which I generate the lossy variant of choice. I think many of you have your audio organized that way.
I'm going to write what I would like to have and want to hear your comments/suggestions.

1) As I'm familiar with EAC, I would use it to rip the tracks to FLAC.
Can EAC tag the FLAC files or do I need further processing with MAREO / REACT? It is not necessary to have MP3 or Ogg files generated at that stage.

1b) I'm not very familiar with Replaygain but I think it would happen somewhere at that stage? Which tools to use? Can it already happen while FLAC encoding?

2) I want to have an easily accessible/searchable database where I can easily choose individual tracks or albums and have them encoded to MP3 or Ogg. I want that stage to be easy and "lightweight" which means that I don't mind setting up MP3/Ogg profiles beforehand but in daily use I want to select tracks/albums and click "encode with preset LAME -V3". Something as easy as LamedropXPd would be nice

2b) The database should also incorporate a ReplayGain capable player for FLAC, MP3, AAC and Ogg.
I guess that the answer to that stage might be foobar2k but perhaps there are other suggestions. (I have nothing against fb2k, I'm just using it basically never. I have it installed though ) If fb2k is the answer please mention which plugins would be most useful for my task.

3) The created MP3/Ogg files should carry over the tags from the FLAC files.

4) Newly bought CDs should be able to be easily added to the library.

Additional notes:
- Album art is not necessary to be added but if it is not too much work (not entirely by hand) it is welcome
- Is there some standard or proven scheme how the folder structure is organized best?
- I heared about "The Godfather" program (http://users.forthnet.gr/the/jtclipper/download.html), has anyone more experience with it? It seems that the development is stalled.
- It would also be nice if I could integrate existing MP3 files into that database while I want to ensure that the FLAC files remain physically separate from the MP3 files.


TIA
weaker

No comments yet? Did I express myself not clearly?

If you think that this is the best way to do it, comments like "Yes, that is fine" or "I'm doing it that way" would also be welcome. I want to avoid mistakes and want to do it correctly right from the start.

1. EAC is an excellent ripper!
2. FLAC is a well suppoted on the hardware side. Several music servers, digital audio players. Good compression with decent speed and great decode times. l
3. I have tried AutoFlac and it gives you a lot of choices(rip as image/individual files, cue sheets log file and ReplayGain if you want.
4. I do not alter the FLAC files with any processing for they are for archives of the original CD's. Apply processing such as Replay Gain to your lossy format of choice for digital audio player.
5. Foobar2000 works well as a file format converter and it supports cue sheets if save FLAC as an image and ReplayGain for your lossy conversions.

Software listed is cardware(EAC develpoer wants post card see EAC site) or freewareware!

My workflow:

Rip to Flac: dbpoweramp r13 reference (using freedb.musicbrainz.com for initial metadata)

Mediamonkey: for management/playback/sync/conversions (or can use dbpoweramp for conversions also)

Musicbrainz Picard: for adding album art & last.fm genre's (using picard plugins).

I just do the entire workflow in foobar and use its own secure ripping variant.

While i do not know how reliable its ripper is in general, compared to eac and dbpa, with my drive and cds in good condition, i have never yet noticed a single glitch.... (and i'm picky in that regard) - until that happens, i see no reason why i should make things more complicated for me.

I think you have a misconception about replaygain. Unless you're going out of your way to apply replaygain while encoding, RG is nothing more than information stored as metadata.

OK... I'll jump-in and give you some feedback, but I'm not an expert in any of these areas...

I like EAC because it tells you if it gets and error (and to tries to correct the error). I've never ripped to FLAC (only WAV and MP3). It can write the MP3/ID3 tags, and I assume it can write the FLAC tags too.

AFAIK, EAC cannot calculate Replay Gain or update the RG tags. Even if it's done by the ripping program, it has to be done after the files are ripped, and if you are calculating the "album gain", the whole CD has to be ripped before you can start analyzing/calculating Replay Gain. I use Winamp to take care of the Replay Gain stuff, after ripping.

I don't know about a separate database... Winamp builds a database from the ID3 tags. You can sort/select by any of the fields, and I think you could use it to select and encode groups of files. AFAIK, the database is integrated with Winamp, so I don't think you can extract it or use it with another program. (And, MP3 encoding requires Winamp Pro.)

I've never tried that. I assume this usually works, but there are differences with the tagging standards.

That shouldn't be a problem.

About 99% of my album art was scanned "manually".
I have most of my music in a folder called "Rock & Popular". Each artist gets a sub-folder, and another sub-folder, for each CD/album. The file name is the song title. I also have a folder named "Various Artists". There are sub-folders for each CD, and in this case the file name is "Song - Artist". I've got other specialty-folders for full-length concerts, soundtracks, Christmas music, and a couple of others. I haven't ripped my (few) classical CDs yet, but I will have a separate folder for these, with sub-folders for each composer.
I Don't know anything.

That shouldn't be a problem, but at first glance the FLAC and compressed files are going to look like duplicate entries, with the same artist, title, and album information. If the database shows you the compression format, or the file name (with the extension), you should be OK.

greynol thanks for clarifying. How would it change the the output when encoding. Please give and an example of settings so I never alter my ripped files. 2nd question if you just store the information the metadata do most players and converter have an option to defeat if one does not want to use for playback or conversions.
Thanks

Thanks for your input!
I will look into AutoFLAC, Mediamonkey and Musicbrainz Picard as I haven't heared of them before.

I think that I will do ripping in EAC as I'm quite familiar with it and know how to set up my drives for optimal quality. I'm open to do the rest in foobar (if it is comfortable enough e.g. doesn't require manually scripting or things like that).

@greynol: You would advise to do the ReplayGain calculations while encoding FLAC and have the values stored in the FLAC metadata.
But on transcoding to lossless should I
- just copy over (how?) the ReplayGain info to the lossy file's metadata or
- have the ReplayGain calculations done again after encoding from a not-RG-applied FLAC and stored in the lossy file's metadata
- have the ReplayGain applied on encoding to lossy?
The third one sounds fishy to me and I think that I don't like it :-)

Please tell me what tools you use.

For players, yes. For converters, like I said, you really have to go out of your way to apply RG to the conversion.


Based on this post you wrote, I have some concerns about your knowledge of EAC.

That's one way of doing it, but as was previously mentioned you won't be able to calculate album gain with EAC unless you use REACT or an equivalent tool. I use fb2k myself.

I think you mean from lossless. I wish you could do it this way for the gains and discard the peak information, but I cannot think of any tools that do this because the numbers do change (although the gains change only by just a few hundredths of a dB).
I think this is the most typical method.
This is what I've been doing lately via script, though I raise the volume by 3dB over the 89dB reference because the line out on my 3G iPod is too low. I have not had any issues with the possibility of additional audible clipping.

Alternately you can apply RG to your encoded mp3 or aac files using a tool like mp3gain/aacgain. Foobar2000 has similar capabilities.

1.EAC and AutoFlac or Foobar2000 if you how to use it then I will not make a mistake with settings if choose not to use it with lossless formats for archiving.

2 However I am interested in you strategy with the iPod with ReplayGain. Please explain this strategy using Foobar2000. Is there a Mac transcoder that uses Replaygain? I recall seeing one on the Mac yet.

Thanks greynol you are wealth of knowledge.

Moderation: Trimmed unnecessarily long quotation.

OK, my insights on ReplayGain are growing.

@greynol: Regarding my post with EAC and caching:
If someone's unsure if his/her drive caches, I advise to turn that setting on as it flushes the cache between read attempts. It will however slow down extraction and wouldn't have been necessary if every track is at 100%. But if there are some tracks not at 100% one would have to re-rip with the flushing caching checkbox enabled. In that case it may be faster to rip with flushing cache enabled instead of ripping twice.
Is that wrong? If so, I should probably reread the EAC manual...

With EAC you use flac.exe. Flac will not alter data when encoding. The --replay-gain switch just adds information to the metadata. You have to use an undocumented switch in order to apply replaygain to decoded data using flac.

You have to instruct foobar2000 to apply replaygain when decoding/transcoding. Have a look at the playback preferences or select some files to decode/transcode and you will see what I'm talking about.

As for what I do with my ipod, have a look at mp3gain or right click on some mp3 files from within foobar2000 to see the options about applying gain to them without having to re-encode. My new method uses Lame's --scale command. Search for some topics authored by Jebus if you want to learn more about this method.

I don't know about RG implementations on the Mac.

You should advise them to run EAC's test and be done with it.

Spath wrote a program called CacheExplorer to reliably find out if a drive caches. He said the EAC feature is not accurate. I don't know if that changed in EAC since then. That's why I didn't suggest that. I didn't want to offend anyone. (Your answer sounded as if you feel offended by me?)

Spath did not write EAC and does not have the code for EAC.

Perhaps you can show me just one instance where EAC was wrong about how its cache setting should be used based on cachex results and the computer wasn't busy multitasking at the time of the test. Drives that cache less than 64kB do not need flushing in EAC, BTW.

For those who are still skeptical about EAC's test for caching, refer to the HA wiki:http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...#Drive_Features

Am I offended? I wouldn't say offended, but whenever people spread misinformation about EAC's caching setting I do get annoyed, that's for sure.

Regarding incorporating album gain with EAC rips, I forgot about this script submitted by tycho a while back...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry552153

Obviously I'm not that well informed about EAC as you are. Sorry for being cause of grief. At least I didn't intentionally spread misinformation about EAC's caching :-)

I have a small question to Tip #1: Disabling C2 is only for executing this test I guess?

Thanks for the link to tycho's script! That looks helpful for my task.

It's all good, weaker. You had no idea that you touched a nerve.

Yes and for the error recovery quality setting as well, though there's a pretty Draconian comment about C2 later in that wiki article.

I hope it helps. I'm not sure how much more of your questions I can help you with like libraries and REACT/MAREO, though there are dedicated discussions for REACT and MAREO.

Anyone else?

REACT could help with the replaygain tags, and the cover art, to help ease that process a little.

However, the pick'n'mix requirement for lossy encoding stops REACT from being useful there.

With regard to managing and conversion from the library I can only recommend foobar, although I'm unfamiliar with apps like Media Monkey and ... err... those... other... ones.

With regard to suggested folder structure: everyone has their own view on this - pick something that suits you. Remember to consider multi-disc albums, Various Artist albums, and the old "The Beatles" or "Beatles, The" discussion. There are various threads on this board about these issues, but good luck finding a definitive answer.

Edit: Oh and re: The Godfather: many people here use MP3Tag.

On replaygain: typically, as has been mentioned, RG info is stored as metadata.
However, most hardware does not read or take-into-account this metadata during playback.
One solution to this, at least with mp3, is to alter the files by raising or lowering the actual volume of the music. The volume of mp3 frames can be adjusted in 1.5 dB increments. This is often referred to as "mp3gain" or, in foobar2000 options, "apply RG value to mp3 data".

However, I think your best solution would be to use foobar2000 to scan and write RG info to your FLAC files. Then, when you encode your FLAC files to whatever lossy format, do so using foobar2000 or something else that can take the RG data into account and scale the encoded file accordingly. In foobar2000 you just need to check the box "use replaygain" under Convert options.

I know MP3gain but I read here that in general using RG with a RG capable player is the way of choice.

I'm not sure if I want to have the lossy files scaled to the according RG values. But I can decide that as the case arises. It depends on for whatever need the lossy files are.

Thanks for all your suggestions and hints.