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Topic: Is EAC default gap handling wrong? (Read 27209 times) previous topic - next topic
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Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Hello.

First of all, I would like to ask you what gap handling do you use using EAC to rip tracks and is there any particular motivation behind it.
Do you detect gaps before ripping, does it play any importance to you?

Well, it does for me and I choose append to next track.

And now let me explain why.

The gaps are placed in the cue sheet as follows:

Code: [Select]
TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Zapomnienie"
    PERFORMER "Moonlight"
    INDEX 00 08:51:22
    INDEX 01 10:24:24

This is extracted from real cue sheet.

As you can see, the INDEX 00 appears after the designation of the specific track, this means, that the pregap is after the start of the track, thus the pregap belong to this track.

Why is it important?
Most CDs have just silence in tge pregaps.
But there are some special CDs that have longer pregaps with music, not counting Live CDs, such as Iron Maiden's Live at Donington, or Deep Purple's Live Encounters (when it comes to live albums the pregaps usually contain spoken introductions to songs, especially Deep Purple, it's logical that such intro should be at the beginning of track, because it's useless at the ending of previous, especially when listening all music files in shuffle mode), there are Studio albums that have music in pregaps, serving as integrated intros to songs.

The examples being Mayhem's Grand Declaration of War, Jennie Tebbler's Till Death Do Us Part and Moonlight's Integrated in the System of Guilt.

Now, the Mayhem's album is especially important, because it has intro to the first track as pregap, so with default option of appending the gap to previous track, this pregap is lost and not extracked, becuase there is no previous track to append it to, one must use the range, or index ripping to extrack this intro and it will be extracked as separate track.

Coming to the other two examples, the Jennie Tebbler's CD has introductions to tracks in pregaps, mastered in a way, that they are not separate intros, but acrually an integral parts of songs with the INDEX 01 cutting them abruptly, so when using default appending of gap to previous track, the intros are at the end of previous track, so while listening yhe track ends, there is a fade out, a moment of silence and intro to the next track that ends suddenly and abruptly in the middle of the note, very peculiar, but appending it to the beginning of the next track, there is a full song with this pregap at the beginning, just like the artist intended it to be listened to, when it was recorded and did not have Indexes before mastering.

To illustrate the issue I will show you the waveforms of the third example CD (I own all those CDs i mentioned as examples as original CD albums).

The image of the CD was placed in Audacity and indexes from cue sheet placed as labels (after conversion), the result is as follows:

Full cue sheet:

Code: [Select]
REM GENRE Metal
    REM DATE 2006
    REM DISCID 6A0E1008
    REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.1"
    PERFORMER "Moonlight"
    TITLE "Integrated in the System of Guilt [Metal Mind - MMP CD 0447]"
    FILE "Moonlight - Integrated in the System of Guilt [Metal Mind - MMP CD 0447].wav" WAVE
      TRACK 01 AUDIO
        TITLE "Plasterek"
        PERFORMER "Moonlight"
        INDEX 00 00:00:00
        INDEX 01 00:02:00
        INDEX 02 03:32:65
      TRACK 02 AUDIO
        TITLE "Zapomnienie"
        PERFORMER "Moonlight"
        INDEX 00 08:51:22
        INDEX 01 10:24:24
      TRACK 03 AUDIO
        TITLE "Chodz za Mna"
        PERFORMER "Moonlight"
        INDEX 00 15:58:60
        INDEX 01 15:58:61
      TRACK 04 AUDIO
        TITLE "Noom"
        PERFORMER "Moonlight"
        INDEX 00 19:37:32
        INDEX 01 19:38:21
      TRACK 05 AUDIO
        TITLE "Na Lepsze"
        PERFORMER "Moonlight"
        INDEX 00 23:45:49
        INDEX 01 23:47:48
        INDEX 02 33:22:02
      TRACK 06 AUDIO
        TITLE "Wedle Woli Twej"
        PERFORMER "Moonlight"
        INDEX 00 35:37:23
        INDEX 01 35:37:26
      TRACK 07 AUDIO
        TITLE "Reset"
        PERFORMER "Moonlight"
        INDEX 00 39:52:43
        INDEX 01 42:06:04
      TRACK 08 AUDIO
        TITLE "Redrum"
        PERFORMER "Moonlight"
        INDEX 00 47:45:09
        INDEX 01 52:52:21
   
   
   
    As you can see most of the pregaps (marked x.0) are short, but there are some (2.0, 7.0, 8.0) that contain large portions of audio that belong to tracks 2, 7 and 8, sometimes even the tiniest pregaps contain audio.
    The structure of some track contain 3 indexes (0, 1 and 2), sometimes 2 is the outro and sometimes the main patr of the song.
   
    Beneath i submit the closeups of the transition bands between indexes to show that pregaps are internal parts of songs:
   
   
   
    As you can see track 1 ends, then from 2.0 the intro starts and at 2.1 transforms into the main part of song 2.
   
   
   
    It's not visible well, but the pregap belong to the track 7 as well, that is better perceivable if listening to the album.
   
   
   
   
    Now the Jennie's CD:
   
    Cue:
   
   
Code: [Select]
REM GENRE Metal
    REM DATE 2008
    REM DISCID 820B280A
    REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.1"
    PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
    TITLE "Untill Death Tear Us Apart [Black Mark Production - BMCD190]"
    FILE "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion - Untill Death Tear Us Apart [Black Mark Production - BMCD190].wav" WAVE
      TRACK 01 AUDIO
        TITLE "Brand New Start"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 01 00:00:00
      TRACK 02 AUDIO
        TITLE "Demons Ode"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 00 04:18:01
        INDEX 01 04:19:73
      TRACK 03 AUDIO
        TITLE "Queen of Ice"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 00 09:19:09
        INDEX 01 09:20:65
      TRACK 04 AUDIO
        TITLE "Life Full of Lies"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 00 14:40:13
        INDEX 01 14:42:08
      TRACK 05 AUDIO
        TITLE "Never Stop Crying"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 00 20:05:71
        INDEX 01 20:13:49
      TRACK 06 AUDIO
        TITLE "Mistake"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 00 24:26:32
        INDEX 01 24:50:03
      TRACK 07 AUDIO
        TITLE "Succubus"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 00 29:48:38
        INDEX 01 29:50:32
      TRACK 08 AUDIO
        TITLE "Enchanted"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 00 34:34:62
        INDEX 01 34:35:57
      TRACK 09 AUDIO
        TITLE "Release Me"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 00 39:00:24
        INDEX 01 39:02:18
      TRACK 10 AUDIO
        TITLE "Between Life an Death"
        PERFORMER "Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion"
        INDEX 01 43:23:56


And the audio:



The major "intro" pregaps are to tracks 5 and 6, so I will focus on them, here are magnifications on them:





As you can explicitely see the pregaps to tracks 5 and 6 are inseparable parts of those respective songs, adding them ro previous tracks would be misplaced and wrong.

All this above have proven that pregaps belong to the tracks that come after them, after all they are PREgaps, not POSTgaps placed in INDEX 00 of the track, not as last INDEX of previous track.

I hope you all agree.

Thus I appeal to mr Andre, the creator of this magnificent software to correct the gap handling, so that the default option is to include them to next track.

I hope this post will straighten your approach to handling gaps during ripping.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #1 –
All CD players must also be wrong as well as all other ripping programs.

Quote from: SF01 on
I hope you all agree.

Not even in the least!

Anyhow, this is hardly revelatory, as it has been analyzed/discussed/debated for well over a decade now.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: SF01 on
I hope this post will straighten your approach to handling gaps during ripping.


It certainly will not, because you have only been fooled by labeling. As has already been pointed out to you, CD players know how to handle this.  (Have you ever tried one?)

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #3 –
The great thing about EAC is that it can be configured to do what he wants without having his personal preference forced down the rest of our throats.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: SF01 on
pregaps belong to the tracks that come after them, after all they are PREgaps, not POSTgaps placed in INDEX 00 of the track, not as last INDEX of previous track.


Correct. This is not controversial. It is defined that way in the Red Book/ECMA standards governing CDDA. It is naturally also a part of the binary cue sheet format in the SCSI standards governing CD-R burning interfaces, and the text cue sheet format is just a convenient way to tell burning software how to generate the binary format.

But pointing this situation out doesn't change the fact that almost no one wants to listen to, rip, or judge the length of tracks on their CDs that way. The index in the CD's TOC only points to index 01 start points, as that's where the main part of each song starts and it's where people expect a real CD player's next/previous track buttons to take them. The default of gaps appended to previous track is exactly what the end user expects, because they want the beginning of the file to be what they think of as the beginning of the track, i.e. what they would get if they skipped to that track in a real CD player.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: mjb2006 on
Quote from: SF01 on
pregaps belong to the tracks that come after them, after all they are PREgaps, not POSTgaps placed in INDEX 00 of the track, not as last INDEX of previous track.


Correct. This is not controversial. It is defined that way in the Red Book/ECMA standards governing CDDA. It is naturally also a part of the binary cue sheet format in the SCSI standards governing CD-R burning interfaces, and the text cue sheet format is just a convenient way to tell burning software how to generate the binary format.

But pointing this situation out doesn't change the fact that almost no one wants to listen to, rip, or judge the length of tracks on their CDs that way. The index in the CD's TOC only points to index 01 start points, as that's where the main part of each song starts and it's where people expect a real CD player's next/previous track buttons to take them. The default of gaps appended to previous track is exactly what the end user expects, because they want the beginning of the file to be what they think of as the beginning of the track, i.e. what they would get if they skipped to that track in a real CD player.


The thing with skipping the tracks in CD player is, that there should be no music in the pregaps, just silence, so the next button would jump directly to the track, but then came the exploitation of pregaps to include hidden audio avaialble only by listening to it without skipping.

Nevertheless, regarding the hidden intros to songs, they should be put at beginings to ensure the track is playes how the artist intended it to be heard, because placing it at the end of prebious track agyer fadeout silence is illogical, isn't it?

As for shoving down throats, I'm not doing this, simply trying to make a relevant discussion.
I myself add the gaps to the next track and in my opinion I bebefit from this by having the hidden intros and live talking between songs at the correct place.
Especially important factor is the pregap to track 1, as there is no previous track to attach it to.
Everybody has his own ripping settings, mine use for example true stereo instead of joint stereo.

That's why websites like [MODERATION: REMOVED]  are useless for me (as they use the improper gap handling and have by default tracks, not images), not to mention illegal filesharing is illegal and wrong, but most of us use them. (I buy a lot of CDs for my defense).

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: SF01 on
Everybody has his own ripping settings, mine use for example true stereo instead of joint stereo.

 
Quote from: SF01 on
That's why websites like [MODERATION: REMOVED] are useless for me (as they use the improper gap handling and have by default tracks, not images), not to mention illegal filesharing is illegal and wrong, but most of us use them. (I buy a lot of CDs for my defense).

Speak for yourself.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: SF01 on
As for shoving down throats, I'm not doing this, simply trying to make a relevant discussion.


You aren't?!? ...
Quote from: SF01 on
Thus I appeal  to mr Andre, the creator of this magnificent software to correct the gap  handling, so that the default option is to include them to next track.

I hope this post will straighten your approach to handling gaps during ripping.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #8 –
I know exactly what the artist intended, at least to the extent the record company allowed them to have a say. They intended for the track boundaries to be where they are. If they wanted you to listen to inter-song chatter, count-in, applause, silence, intro, etc. before an arbitrarily selected song, they either would not have put track divisions in at all, or they would have mastered it with the index 01 points at the beginning of those pre-song intros rather than the end.

As it stands, most of the time, they only expect you to listen to that stuff if you are listening to the album from start to finish, or are at least letting it play through past the end of the previous song.

Much of the music you buy from legitimate stores was ripped from CD, and always with gaps appended to the previous track, because that's what ALL rippers do. If the artist intended otherwise, don't you think they would be selling it with the intros prepended instead?

If EAC's default were to change, EAC would be the only ripper doing it, and everyone would just think it's broken. Though it would resolve a lot of "why doesn't my cue sheet work as a playlist" problems!

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #9 –
Nothing wrong with gap handling in EAC.

Although I come across one CD-ROM PC game that had parts of the next track around a full second in the current track.  That was annoying and explained a lot of things that occurred while playing it music wise.  Nothing to do with EAC and it was crappy disc authoring and pressing job.  No index 0 points for any track except track 2.  I doubt you ever see something like that with any standard music CD with anyone in charge giving a shit about how it played.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: SF01 on
Nevertheless, regarding the hidden intros to songs, they should be put at beginings to ensure the track is playes how the artist intended it to be heard


What part of the word "hidden" suggests that the artist wants you to hear it first? I am fairly sure that Mayhem intended Grand Declaration of War - the title track - to open the album.  If they intended you to first hear the backwards version of the last track, they would not have hidden it in the pregap, would they?

What if I tell you that on the CD, track number 01 index 00 is actually not part of file number 01?

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #11 –
Well, I realize the question is not addressed to me, but because I am a pedant, I would say there are no files on audio CDs. OSes that show audio tracks as files are faking it based on TOC data. The TOC only acknowledges index 01 start points, so the artist's intent is clearly that you will start listening to track 01 at wherever its index 01 section begins. The "TO" in HTOA is just a technicality. They would make it track zero or negative 99 if they could.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #12 –
Regardless, you have to go out of your way to listen to it.

So if EAC got it wrong (the original topic of the discussion posed this as a factual statement, before I took the liberty to turn it into a question), what other software even allows you to extract HTOA, irrespective of the OS?

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: mjb2006 on
Well, I realize the question is not addressed to me, but because I am a pedant, I would say there are no files on audio CDs.

Precisely! Putting a CD on file is not about what is on which file on the CD, because the CD does not have a file layout; everything we do is to put the music somewhere that serves a certain purpose.


Quote from: greynol on
what other software even allows you to extract HTOA, irrespective of the OS?

Use the force: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title...n_of_CD_rippers
The force is very weak in Apple users.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: SF01 on
Nevertheless, regarding the hidden intros to songs, they should be put at beginings to ensure the track is playes how the artist intended it to be heard, because placing it at the end of prebious track agyer fadeout silence is illogical, isn't it?

Obviously intros should be placed at the beginning of songs, while outros should be placed at the end, when ripping a CD to single tracks. The same goes for other non-silent pregap content. Sometimes the beginning of a song seems like a more logical choice, other times it's the end.

However, this isn't what most people (and rippers) do. Generally appending pregaps to the previous track has its own logic as this simply simulates the behavior of a physical CD player, where skipping to a certain track will start playback at index 1, not at index 0. This has become some sort of standard and, AFAIK, is also necessary to be able to compare a rip with Accurate Rip or the CUE Tools database.

These are your rips, so feel free to configure EAC, CUE Ripper or any other ripping tool in any way you want, as long as you are aware of the consequences.

I never understood why CDs are ripped track based. Ripping them index based and let software players support indexes in just the same way as a physical standalone player does, would've made much more sense, IMO.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: shaboo on
However, this isn't what most people do. It isn't what any rippers do by default.
FTFY!

Quote from: shaboo on
Generally Appending pregaps to the previous track has its own logic as this simply simulates the behavior of a physical CD player, where skipping to a certain track will start playback at index 1, not at index 0. This has become some sort of is the defacto standard and, AFAIK, is also , though it need not be necessary to be able to compare a rip with Accurate Rip or the CUE Tools database.
FTFY as well.

Quote from: shaboo on
Ripping them index based and let software players support indexes in just the same way as a physical standalone player does, would've made much more sense, IMO.
Ripping 00 indices to separate files and using metadata to instruct the player to skip them when shuffling handles this particular aspect of CD payback just fine already. Playlists already handle program play. >01 indices are more of a challenge.  Perhaps foobar2000 can be manipulated to do all three, though I don't know as it isn't my primary player.  I know it can handle accessing indices >01 by manipulating cue sheets.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: greynol on
Perhaps foobar2000 can be manipulated to do all three, though I don't know as it isn't my primary player.  I know it can handle accessing indices >01 by manipulating cue sheets.

Can it? I've never found any index handling capabilites in foobar. The most recent thread in the foobar forum, regarding this topic, is from July 2015, but without any useful answers:
https://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...&hl=indexes

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #17 –
The operative is manipulate, as in change indices in a range so that they become individual tracks.  I once made a script that would rearrange 00-01 indices to satisfy a wish similar to what is wanted in this discussion (which I posted here someplace on the forum), so I'm sure a tool can be made to automate the process without much difficulty.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #18 –
I use to split hidden track songs in Main Song, Silence and Hidden Track. In the CUE it results in 1 track consisting of 3 files with 3 indexes.
CUEtools can still verify against the database and EAC can burn it with its write tool.
foobar2000 spits out 'invalid index list'
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: shaboo on
Generally Appending pregaps to the previous track has its own logic as this simply simulates the behavior of a physical CD player, where skipping to a certain track will start playback at index 1, not at index 0. This has become some sort of is the defacto standard and, AFAIK, is also , though it need not be necessary to be able to compare a rip with Accurate Rip or the CUE Tools database.
FTFY as well.
Unfortunately it's not standard enough that foobar would be able to deal with the resulting non-compliant CUE Sheets

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #20 –
Quote from: Wombat on
I use to split hidden track songs in Main Song, Silence and Hidden Track. In the CUE it results in 1 track consisting of 3 files with 3 indexes.
CUEtools can still verify against the database and EAC can burn it with its write tool.

That's interersting. Thanks for this info!
Quote from: Wombat on
foobar2000 spits out 'invalid index list'

Yes, it's shame that foobar2000 still doesn't support the most widely used form of CUE Sheets, just because they are called "non-compliant".

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #22 –
Quote from: greynol on
None of this will be solved by having Andre change the default method of appending gaps to the previous track.

Of course not. It's not the CUE sheet that has to change, but the stubbornness of some foobar developers. I guess there have been several requests for this ...

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #23 –
Quote from: Wombat on
I use to split hidden track songs in Main Song, Silence and Hidden Track. In the CUE it results in 1 track consisting of 3 files with 3 indexes.
CUEtools can still verify against the database and EAC can burn it with its write tool.
foobar2000 spits out 'invalid index list'

This is for hidden tracks which appear at the end of a disc after an annoyingly long pause, I presume.  Those are a PITA.

Is EAC default gap handling wrong?

Reply #24 –
Quote from: shaboo on
Quote from: greynol on
None of this will be solved by having Andre change the default method of appending gaps to the previous track.

Of course not. It's not the CUE sheet that has to change, but the stubbornness of some foobar developers. I guess there have been several requests for this ...

Trying to get our bearings straight. The foobar2000 forum is thataway >>>>>>