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Topic: Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions (Read 8001 times) previous topic - next topic
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Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Hello everyone,

I am new here; have been browsing these forums on and off for a few weeks.  Am in the process of setting up a file server on some old hardware and, as I purchased new hard drives, thought: "what a great time to re-evaluate my digital music collection system."  As it is, I have about 20gb (99% from CDs of mine) in iTunes ripped in mp3 or aac at 128kb quality.

I would like to start fresh and re-rip everything, create a newer, better, sexier system.  This seems like the forum for sexy audio: so I thought I would ask here.  My basic operating premise is: 1. open source; 2. higher quality than I can appreciate (128kbs sounds okay to me now but I want to start using my digital media on a "real" sound system -- not just in my car and on my computer); 3. cross-platform, multi-machine, multi-device compatibility; 4. ease of use.

My thought was to carefully rip and tag my CDs and save them on the file server in a /music partition and to remove write access to the files so the various platforms and programs (iTunes, Amorak, SlimServer, etc) can have access to the files and beautiful tags, but won't go screwing it up for everyone else.  My question revolves around how to best do this.  I don't use Windows.  I have played around with abcde on linux (which I like for its simplicity but dislike because it is hard to troubleshoot) and max on the Mac (which I have no opinion on yet).  I am not very familiar, honestly, with either one. 

First Question: ripping entire CDs to Flac with a cuesheet seems like a neat way to go: full quality and ability to re-create the CD in its entirety.  This would seem to be the perfect way to store and retrieve audio if the single .flac file with cuesheet functioned the same way that the CD would during digital playback.  That is, if a music player read the single file as a collection of individual tracks (reading the cuesheet) and allowed you to play tracks individual (as if they were individual files).  This would be genius, I think, but, thus far, doesn't seem to be the case.  Am I wrong?  Wouldn't it be perfect if a single flac cd-image functioned like a CD?  Can it?

Second Question: if the above is not the case, is the next best option ripping each track in its own flac file and only merging/combining those tracks that deserve to be played together (a classical piece, for instance, or both sides to "Thick as a Brick")?

Third Question: I have read the wiki and browsed forums ... but are there any other good resources that a linux/mac user needs in preparing for this arduous (but enjoyable) journey?  While flac seems like a good way to go for the local area network, I also want to duplicate everything in .mp3 format for my portable players and maybe web streaming.

Thanks so much for your time.  Looking forward to your insight.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #1 –
Quote from: thornomad on
First Question: ripping entire CDs to Flac with a cuesheet seems like a neat way to go: full quality and ability to re-create the CD in its entirety. This would seem to be the perfect way to store and retrieve audio if the single .flac file with cuesheet functioned the same way that the CD would during digital playback. That is, if a music player read the single file as a collection of individual tracks (reading the cuesheet) and allowed you to play tracks individual (as if they were individual files). This would be genius, I think, but, thus far, doesn't seem to be the case. Am I wrong? Wouldn't it be perfect if a single flac cd-image functioned like a CD? Can it?
If you used Windows foobar will do just this.

Quote from: thornomad on
Second Question: if the above is not the case, is the next best option ripping each track in its own flac file and only merging/combining those tracks that deserve to be played together (a classical piece, for instance, or both sides to "Thick as a Brick")?
Actually, the next best thing is a codec and player that support gapless playback.  You'll need to search or wait for a *nix user to advise on the player, but I'm sure ths will be possible for you.
I'm on a horse.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #2 –
Quote from: thornomad on
First Question: ripping entire CDs to Flac with a cuesheet seems like a neat way to go: full quality and ability to re-create the CD in its entirety.  This would seem to be the perfect way to store and retrieve audio if the single .flac file with cuesheet functioned the same way that the CD would during digital playback.  That is, if a music player read the single file as a collection of individual tracks (reading the cuesheet) and allowed you to play tracks individual (as if they were individual files).  This would be genius, I think, but, thus far, doesn't seem to be the case.  Am I wrong?  Wouldn't it be perfect if a single flac cd-image functioned like a CD?  Can it?


I haven't done it, but I believe Max will now rip to a single file and generate a cue sheet - at least there are checkboxes for both options under "Ripping" in its Preferences (version 0.7.1).

For FLAC playback on OS X there's Cog, but Cog doesn't yet read cuesheets.

http://cogosx.sourceforge.net/

This, apparently, does:

http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html


Quote
Third Question: I have read the wiki and browsed forums ... but are there any other good resources that a linux/mac user needs in preparing for this arduous (but enjoyable) journey?  While flac seems like a good way to go for the local area network, I also want to duplicate everything in .mp3 format for my portable players and maybe web streaming.


Max can also encode to LAME MP3 and to Core Audio AAC. (It can also encode to multiple formats simultaneously.) Both MP3 and AAC play back fine for me on Linux with Xine through Amarok, although it looks as if the inspector window in Amarok may be mis-reporting bitrates for the latter.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #3 –
The only software combination for Unix I know that has proper gapless playback, is xmms with the xmms-crossfade plugin. All other programs I tried either didn't implement gapless playback properly or had other bugs that I couldn't live with. The mp3cue plugin supports external cue sheets.

That's what I'm using at the moment. Since my player of choice also supports gapless playback, why not use separate tracks instead of single file albums, you'd ask? Because the CD-DA media is not a set of separate tracks, but rather a continuous, atomic stream of music, with time indices. Some albums, such as Stoosh by Skunk Anansie, are perfect examples of that. In such cases, appending gaps to the previous track makes no sense.

Another reason I prefer single file albums, is because I can modify the cue sheets without touching the album file itself. It's useful for albums that feature songs that are "hidden" in a track, such as In Utero by Nirvana. On that album, Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip starts over 20 minutes (!) after the end of the last song. Manually seeking to it every time is annoying. Instead, I make a copy of the cue sheet where I add a track starting at the corresponding time.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #4 –
Quote
First Question: ripping entire CDs to Flac with a cuesheet seems like a neat way to go: full quality and ability to re-create the CD in its entirety. This would seem to be the perfect way to store and retrieve audio if the single .flac file with cuesheet functioned the same way that the CD would during digital playback. That is, if a music player read the single file as a collection of individual tracks (reading the cuesheet) and allowed you to play tracks individual (as if they were individual files). This would be genius, I think, but, thus far, doesn't seem to be the case. Am I wrong? Wouldn't it be perfect if a single flac cd-image functioned like a CD? Can it?

Amarok can do what you want. But using separate files for each track really isn't a problem. You could create cue-sheets for your CDs, decompress the individual FLAC-files, and concatenate them together (using sox for example). Then you would have a CD-image you could write.

Quote
Second Question: if the above is not the case, is the next best option ripping each track in its own flac file and only merging/combining those tracks that deserve to be played together (a classical piece, for instance, or both sides to "Thick as a Brick")?

FLAC is gapless, Amarok and MPD will play it gapless.

Quote
Third Question: I have read the wiki and browsed forums ... but are there any other good resources that a linux/mac user needs in preparing for this arduous (but enjoyable) journey? While flac seems like a good way to go for the local area network, I also want to duplicate everything in .mp3 format for my portable players and maybe web streaming.

abcde can encode both FLAC- and MP3-files at the same time. Or you could create your lossless files first, and later use a tool such as transKode to transcode it to MP3.

Quote
The only software combination for Unix I know that has proper gapless playback, is xmms with the xmms-crossfade plugin. All other programs I tried either didn't implement gapless playback properly or had other bugs that I couldn't live with. The mp3cue plugin supports external cue sheets.

I wouldn't call that proper at all...since it really isn't true gapless playback. However, Amarok does gapless playback of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. It has been claimed that it plays LAME-encoded MP3s gapless as well, but that has never worked for me (However, MPD plays LAME-encoded MP3s gapless. I haven't seen any other player available for GNU/Linux do that).

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Garathor on
I wouldn't call that proper at all...since it really isn't true gapless playback. However, Amarok does gapless playback of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis.

Don't let the name of the plugin fool you, it does implement actual gapless playback. I'm not talking of crossfading at all (although the plugin can do that too, obviously). Likewise, mp3cue doesn't support just MP3; it doesn't handle decoding at all, it only handles cuesheets, and thus supports any codec supported by xmms.

As for Amarok, like I implied in my other post, its gapless playback implementation is buggy.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #6 –
Hello everyone and good morning!  Well, it is nice to hear that the FLAC with cue-sheet combination can function like a regular CD -- even if its playback is limited. Appreciate all those posts.  Thank you.

Does anyone know if slimserver plays flac files with cuesheets correctly?

After reading all your posts I noticed some mention external and some embedded cuesheets ... do you have a recommendations for which is safer to use ?  I know that "ripping once for the future" is a good approach, recommendations?

I am hoping the Amorak port to GTK will come soon, then I can use it on both my linux and mac machines.  If it is buggy, hopefully it will get better.

So it seems like I could go either way, in the end, as long I am: 1) using FLAC, and 2) using cue sheets.  That is, I could rip one file with one cuesheet; or I could rip individual tracks, also with one cuesheet to put them back together again (a la humpty dumpty)?

Thanks again everyone.  And thanks for all the links.  I have them bookmarked.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #7 –
Quote from: skamp on
Don't let the name of the plugin fool you, it does implement actual gapless playback. I'm not talking of crossfading at all (although the plugin can do that too, obviously). Likewise, mp3cue doesn't support just MP3; it doesn't handle decoding at all, it only handles cuesheets, and thus supports any codec supported by xmms.

Are you certain? From what I have read earlier, and according to this thread, the plugin does gapkilling. Which isn't true gapless. I just tried it and it seemed to work ok, though.

Quote from: skamp on
As for Amarok, like I implied in my other post, its gapless playback implementation is buggy.

Gapless playback of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis has always worked flawlessly for me. MP3 on the other hand, doesn't work  as it should.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #8 –
Quote from: thornomad on
After reading all your posts I noticed some mention external and some embedded cuesheets ... do you have a recommendations for which is safer to use ?

You need external cue sheets in order to embed them in FLAC files anyways. Note that FLAC doesn't include CD-TEXT metadata (such as the PERFORMER and TITLE fields, among others), and there's no standard or proper way of including it with the VORBIS_COMMENT block type (which I find to be terribly lacking). In any case, keep the external cue sheet. And embedding it in a single flac album doesn't hurt.

Quote from: thornomad on
So it seems like I could go either way, in the end, as long I am: 1) using FLAC, and 2) using cue sheets.  That is, I could rip one file with one cuesheet; or I could rip individual tracks, also with one cuesheet to put them back together again (a la humpty dumpty)?

I find it to be much easier to rip as a single file and THEN, if wanted, split the flac file with the cue sheet. Also note that with separate tracks, you need EAC's "non compliant" cue sheet format, which isn't supported everywhere.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #9 –
Quote from: thornomad on
I am hoping the Amorak port to GTK will come soon, then I can use it on both my linux and mac machines.  If it is buggy, hopefully it will get better.


I don't mind it in a KDE desktop, but it's not what I'd use on my Mac if there were anything native on offer, but if it appeals to you I'm not sure it isn't usable right now - and without X11. At least, there is a disk image out:

http://ranger.users.finkproject.org/kde/index.php/Home

http://dot.kde.org/1168899755/

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Garathor on
Are you certain? From what I have read earlier, and according to this thread, the plugin does gapkilling. Which isn't true gapless. I just tried it and it seemed to work ok, though.

Read the rest of that thread.

Quote from: Garathor on
Gapless playback of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis has always worked flawlessly for me.

Really? It doesn't cut off 1 or 2 seconds of the end of the playlist?

Quote from: Garathor on
MP3 on the other hand, doesn't work  as it should.

Nor does CD-DA.

I've been looking for alternatives for years, I always go back to xmms and xmms-crossfade. It's the only solution I found that just works.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #11 –
Quote from: skamp on
Gapless playback of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis has always worked flawlessly for me. MP3 on the other hand, doesn't work  as it should.

Lucky you. I have an old machine and Amarok is not gapless, neither is Kaffeine (so I think xine is not gapless, no matter what they say.) They do not play even audio CDs gapless !!!
You get real gapless playback with Aqualung, but this uses GTK, and of course with the commandline tool ogg123 which plays Vorbis and Flac. Unfortunately all other programs (Mplayer, XMMS, Audacious etc.) do not have gapless playback. Shame ...

K3b can rip entire CDs into one file, and if I'm not mistaken, version 1.0 can make a cuesheet as well.
For additional tagging either EasyTag (GNOME) or Kid3 (KDE) can be used.

Quote from: skamp on
Note that FLAC doesn't include CD-TEXT metadata (such as the PERFORMER and TITLE fields, among others), and there's no standard or proper way of including it with the VORBIS_COMMENT block type (which I find to be terribly lacking).

Depends on what program you use for ripping. I use K3b, and you can specify which metadata you want to embed into the FLAC file (TITLE is one of them.) If you use the flac commandline tool you can specify the various tags you want to create, and you can always add and modify FLAC tags either with the program metaflac, or with a tagging program.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #12 –
Quote from: imre_herceg on
I use K3b, and you can specify which metadata you want to embed into the FLAC file (TITLE is one of them.) If you use the flac commandline tool you can specify the various tags you want to create, and you can always add and modify FLAC tags either with the program metaflac, or with a tagging program.

I was talking about metadata for *tracks*. You can embed the textual cue sheet as a single VORBIS_COMMENT field (CUESHEET=...), but it's not only suboptimal and hackish as hell, it's not even supported by any unix player that I know of. Besides, doing that would defeat the point of FLAC's CUESHEET block type.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #13 –
Quote from: skamp on
Quote from: Garathor on
Are you certain? From what I have read earlier, and according to this thread, the plugin does gapkilling. Which isn't true gapless. I just tried it and it seemed to work ok, though.

Read the rest of that thread.

Yes, trippy claims LAME-encoded MP3s are played back gapless even if you disable the gapkiller feature. I just tried it, and it was not gapless.

Quote from: skamp on
Quote from: Garathor on
Gapless playback of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis has always worked flawlessly for me.

Really? It doesn't cut off 1 or 2 seconds of the end of the playlist?

It might, I have never noticed. But track transitions have always been smooth.

Quote from: skamp on
Quote from: Garathor on
MP3 on the other hand, doesn't work  as it should.

Nor does CD-DA.

I guess you're right, I've never tried. But how many actually plays audio-CDs on their computer?

Quote from: skamp on
I've been looking for alternatives for years, I always go back to xmms and xmms-crossfade. It's the only solution I found that just works.

I actually think MPD works very well now. But I have been fed up with Amarok for a long time. I wanted to use foobar2000, but I didn't want to run Windows on my main-desktop. So, a while ago I just bought an old computer for the sole purpose of running foobar2000.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #14 –
Quote from: Nick E on
I don't mind it in a KDE desktop, but it's not what I'd use on my Mac if there were anything native on offer,
but if it appeals to you I'm not sure it isn't usable right now - and without X11.


Yea, I had seen you can port Amorak over to the Mac; haven't tried it yet.  I downloaded cog last night but haven't played with it; of course, if what the other posts says is true, it won't play back flac files with cue sheets anyway.

All right: I am going to read more and play around with the Flac file with cuesheet option.  Ripping to ogg and mp3 from them is much more self-explanatory.  At least: from where I sit now.

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #15 –
Quote from: thornomad on
I downloaded cog last night but haven't played with it; of course, if what the other posts says is true, it won't play back flac files with cue sheets anyway.


The last I saw on that was this thread (Cog's developer has some boards at sbooth.org, Stephen Booth being the developer of Max):

http://sbooth.org/forums/viewtopic.php?=&p=2069

It sounds like cuesheet-reading is coming, but not yet.

Stephen Booth himself also has an OS X audio player in the works. It's called Play. This seems to be less a lightweight player like Cog and more a jukebox-type app with plenty of features planned. It will do gapless FLAC and Ogg Vorbis now, but, again, I don't think it has cuesheet-reading as yet:

http://sbooth.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=455
 

Flac w/Embedded Cue Sheets (& Other) Questions

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Nick E on
The last I saw on that was this thread (Cog's developer has some boards at sbooth.org, Stephen Booth being the developer of Max):

http://sbooth.org/forums/viewtopic.php?=&p=2069

It sounds like cuesheet-reading is coming, but not yet.

Stephen Booth himself also has an OS X audio player in the works. It's called Play. This seems to be less a lightweight player like Cog and more a jukebox-type app with plenty of features planned. It will do gapless FLAC and Ogg Vorbis now, but, again, I don't think it has cuesheet-reading as yet:

http://sbooth.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=455


Yea ... interesting!  I was looking at both Play and Cog (I think I downloaded them both); however, wasn't sure about the differences and found it interesting that the same "people" were working on two different projects.  Will have to wait and see what comes of it.  I will play with them some more at home.  Would be nice to have a single package (Max & Play, for example) that worked well together.