I have read some posts about using FLAC to archive CD collections and would like to get some feedback. I am torn between creating a bin and cue file with CDDB info and compressing that down with FLAC as a single file or the second method of ripping all the files out to wav and converting to FLAC and maybe saving the cue file in attempt to use it later. The first method I believe will pretty much insure the ability to restore the CD faithful to the original, but does not lend itself to easy creation of ogg or mp3. Is the future of CD's in jeopardy anyway. Will we still use them in 5 years time or will we be using wireless digital players with hard disks. I just wondered if there were any more thoughts on this and if the second method could actually be used to reproduce the original CD? Hopefully some feedback will help me decide which to go for. What I have read so far has not been conclusive and was a year ago, maybe things have changed now. cheers Dan
I prefer using EAC with this process: EAC secure mode w/ log and non-compliant CUE -> WAV ->per-track FLAC with album ReplayGain enabled, sectors aligned. Ease of play is nice on a per-track basis. -----Original Message----- From: flac-bounces@xiph.org [mailto:flac-bounces@xiph.org] On Behalf Of Dan Phillips Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 6:09 AM To: flac@xiph.org Subject: [Flac] FLAC CD Archive I have read some posts about using FLAC to archive CD collections and would like to get some feedback. I am torn between creating a bin and cue file with CDDB info and compressing that down with FLAC as a single file or the second method of ripping all the files out to wav and converting to FLAC and maybe saving the cue file in attempt to use it later. The first method I believe will pretty much insure the ability to restore the CD faithful to the original, but does not lend itself to easy creation of ogg or mp3. Is the future of CD's in jeopardy anyway. Will we still use them in 5 years time or will we be using wireless digital players with hard disks. I just wondered if there were any more thoughts on this and if the second method could actually be used to reproduce the original CD? Hopefully some feedback will help me decide which to go for. What I have read so far has not been conclusive and was a year ago, maybe things have changed now. cheers Dan _______________________________________________ Flac mailing list Flac@xiph.org http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 7201 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac/attachments/20060926/2c0c167d/smime.bin
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Dan Phillips wrote:> I have read some posts about using FLAC to archive CD collections and > would like to get some feedback. I am torn between creating a bin and > cue file with CDDB info and compressing that down with FLAC as a single > file or the second method of ripping all the files out to wav and > converting to FLAC and maybe saving the cue file in attempt to use it later. > > The first method I believe will pretty much insure the ability to > restore the CD faithful to the original, but does not lend itself to > easy creation of ogg or mp3. Is the future of CD's in jeopardy anyway. > Will we still use them in 5 years time or will we be using wireless > digital players with hard disks. > > I just wondered if there were any more thoughts on this and if the > second method could actually be used to reproduce the original CD? > Hopefully some feedback will help me decide which to go for. What I have > read so far has not been conclusive and was a year ago, maybe things > have changed now.I've been working on this sort of approach using abcde as a front-end, and have run into several issues. What I finally decided on doing is ripping the CD to a single flac file with embedded cue sheet using a variety of tools (more details later). The single flac file is then enough to pretty much reconstruct the audio CD should it ever get lost or destroyed. Note that abcde can support ripping ogg files directly from a single flac file with an embedded cue sheet. I believe several of the popular audio players have added (or are adding) support for single flac files with embedded cue data, so you can seek to the next song, see all song titles, etc. Details on ripping: You have to be careful when ripping and creating the flac/cue file, or you will have problems creating an accurate copy of the CD (ie: getting the same CDDB discid from the flac/cue file that you get from the disc itself). What I've decided to do: - - Use cdparanoia to rip, using [00:00:00.00]- as the range (rips the entire CD, regardless of any pre-gap for track 1). - - Use cdrdao to extract a TOC file (cdrdao looks at the subcode and extracts more detailed index data than can be found simply in the disc's table of contents, which is what most cue generation utilities use). - - Convert the TOC file to a cue file (hacked version of toc2cue) that accounts for any pre-gap issues (track 1 not starting at 00:00:00). I'm working on hacking abcde to automate this process and not require a customized version of toc2cue, but I don't have a complete solution yet (not enough time...let me know if you want to help!). More details about the problems I've run into (and some I've fixed) are available in debian's bug tracking system for the abcde package. ...or, you could just use EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/), which is probably a better solution (in terms of sucking audio data off the CD with minimum hassle), but if I was happy with closed-source solutions, I wouldn't be ripping to ogg and flac files in the first place! EAC does rip cue files with index information that do *NOT* need to be hacked for disks with non-zero start position for track 1, so it can at least be used as a baseline for getting all the required linux pieces to work together happily. - -- Charles Steinkuehler cstein@newtek.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32) iD8DBQFFGThMenk4xp+mH40RApqNAJ9DGejXeVkUFNCA/13Ohw+YLPRlAACgwBBX muuwE5uKjRkjA3ytrw3+avk=8IkI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1> > I've been working on this sort of approach using abcde as a front-end, > and have run into several issues. What I finally decided on doing is > ripping the CD to a single flac file with embedded cue sheet using a > variety of tools (more details later). The single flac file is then > enough to pretty much reconstruct the audio CD should it ever get lost > or destroyed. Note that abcde can support ripping ogg files directly > from a single flac file with an embedded cue sheet. I believe several > of the popular audio players have added (or are adding) support for > single flac files with embedded cue data, so you can seek to the next > song, see all song titles, etc. >I've been looking for frontends to finally get my collection organized and archived. I've been looking at abcde for my primary front-end and have been looking to rip and encode to flac, ogg and mp3. I'd love get access to your changes to abcde. I never even thought about encoding the entire cd as a flac. That eliminates the cuefile problem and makes it easy to reconstruct back to an audio cd. I'd be willing to help hack on abcde since I think it could use some updates anyway and it's been a while since I contributed anything to it. Is anybody familiar with a system that will automatically scan an existing collection for duplicates? Ideally the system I plan on building is that I have my share of existing mp3's and oggs that I've encoded over time. I'd like to encode to flac and then have the system scan for existing mp3s or even oggs that may be of much less quality and then if those are found re-encode from the newly created flac file. If somebody can point me to a framework that works like this already that'll save me some coding. If not...stay tuned ;-) Chris -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFGVPI1ba7yLNz0PERAklSAJ9NymiYTLhWnHsgLYf85QbYGTwoUQCfdeeY /qB5d+FmfUJ6HyrIFay1dVs=P9jE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Tue, 2006-09-26 at 13:09 +0200, Dan Phillips wrote:> I have read some posts about using FLAC to archive CD collections and > would like to get some feedback. I am torn between creating a bin and > cue file with CDDB info and compressing that down with FLAC as a single > file or the second method of ripping all the files out to wav and > converting to FLAC and maybe saving the cue file in attempt to use it later....> I just wondered if there were any more thoughts on this and if the > second method could actually be used to reproduce the original CD?I went with the one song per flac file approach with the ability to reproduce the exact original CD if needed. The Ripping/Encoding process goes like this: cd-discid /dev/hdc > discid.txt cdrdao read-toc --device /dev/hdc toc.txt cdrdao read-cddb toc.txt Now rip and encode to FLAC (each track separate) with metadata. I have a modified abcde that does this. The modification is in my abce.conf I added is: post_read () { # Figure out what OUTPUTFILEDIR should be export `eval $($CDDBTOOL parse "$CDDBDATA")` export ALBUMFILE=$(mungefilename "$DALBUM") splitvarious export ARTISTFILE=$(mungefilename "$TRACKARTIST") export OUTPUTFORMAT='${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${TRACKFILE}' export VAOUTPUTFORMAT='Various-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${ARTISTFILE}-${TRACKFILE}' if [ "$VARIOUSARTISTS" = "y" ]; then export OUTPUTFILE=$(eval echo $VAOUTPUTFORMAT) else export OUTPUTFILE=$(eval echo $OUTPUTFORMAT) fi export OUTPUTFILEDIR=$(dirname "$OUTPUTDIR/$OUTPUTFILE") # Sheesh glad that is done. Now save the discid.txt for comparison later # and the toc.txt mkdir -p "$OUTPUTFILEDIR" cd-discid $CDROM > "$OUTPUTFILEDIR/discid.txt" cdrdao read-toc --with-cddb --cddb-timeout 90 --device $CDROM "$OUTPUTFILEDIR/toc.txt" } And then I inserted a call to my post_read into abcde. Edit the abcde script and right before the line: # We are now finished with the cdrom - it can be safely ejected. ... Add the line: post_read # Execute the user-defined post-read function before ejecting Now to go back to the other direction, create an "original CD" (ie, one with the same CDDB discid), do the following: cd /path/to/album/ shntool join --stdout *.flac > data.wav cdrdao write --device /dev/hdc toc.txt rm data.wav This is the procedure I used on several hundred CDs I own in order to get a FLAC archive of them. I use several Squeezeboxes in my house to listen to them. Dax Kelson Guru Labs