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Topic: Trouble determining true flac album (Read 3464 times) previous topic - next topic
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Trouble determining true flac album

I've got an album that is assured to be a perfect flac album.  Cuetools says it's accurate but several programs I've used are split whether or not it's actually a true flac album.  Below are the programs I've used and their results.

Cuetools: Passed/accurate
Foobar with file integrity verifier: Passed
Aucdtect: Several tracks are detected as mpeg
Audiochecker: Several tracks are detected as mpeg
Audio Identifier: Passed/lossless

Spectral analysis shows the frequency cutoff to be at 20.8 kHz.

I'm at a loss as to if this is truly a flac album. Do I just take that since this album is assured to be a perfect rip that it's true flac?  If anyone give some input I'd be greatly appreciated because I've got several albums that are also like this.

Re: Trouble determining true flac album

Reply #1 –
Sounds like a real FLAC to me.

Sometimes those tools misdetect stuff as being MP3 sourced when it really is lossless.  Those same tools may misdetect a real MP3 as a FLAC if transcoded as such.  Not exactly 100% reliable.  You better off ripping it from CDs you bought or going to stores online that sell actually FLACs if you want 99.9% certainty of the source.

Also foobar2000's verify integrity tool can only check for file corruption for lossless formats that support it and problems that can cause playback issues such as bad frames or an improper lengths for lossy formats or lossless formats that don't support hashes or whatever it is called.  It cannot detect if a FLAC file is transcoded from an MP3, it can only check if the file's audio stream has become corrupt, which is format dependent a bit (wav files being just useless here).  The tool cannot tell if album art or metadata tags are corrupted such as the artist or title tag.  Your issue is not a file corruption problem.

Re: Trouble determining true flac album

Reply #2 –
I'm pretty sure there are online stores which offer this album in a lossless form, so buy just one track from any one of them and compare waveforms. Spending $2-3 to verify your FLAC authenticity is not that great price.

Re: Trouble determining true flac album

Reply #3 –
You say "Cuetools: Passed/accurate". Cuetools uses AccurateRip to identify a rip. Are you saying that you don't trust AccurateRip?
Glass half full!

Re: Trouble determining true flac album

Reply #4 –
^ It actually uses CTDB as its "main" source, AR is used for older releases, because from what I know cuetools only supports ARv1, and most submissions nowadays are in ARv2 format.

The results from CUETools are reliable however (AR or CTDB). If it says the rip matches, then at least x people have gotten exactly the same result by ripping their CD.

Re: Trouble determining true flac album

Reply #5 –
CUETools supports ARv2, just not for cross-pressing verification, though manually configuring an offset isn't that difficult.

I'm a bit troubled with the suggestion that he purchase one track.

...as if he shouldn't purchase the entire album?!?

Re: Trouble determining true flac album

Reply #6 –
Quote from: greynol on
CUETools supports ARv2, just not for cross-pressing verification, though manually configuring an offset isn't that difficult.
So if I have an offset configured, it will work for ARv2, or ARv2 + cross-pressing verification? I wonder why I don't see any AR entries for most of the new CDs.

Quote
I'm a bit troubled with the suggestion that he purchase one track.

...as if he shouldn't purchase the entire album?!?
Depends. Some people only like 1-2 songs from an album, buying the whole thing in that case seems like a waste. On the other hand, music taste changes, and you might end up liking a song you hated before.
 

Re: Trouble determining true flac album

Reply #7 –
Configuration of an offset is cross-pressing verification done manually.

Regarding the other point, if it were just about a single track, this discussion wouldn't have taken place.  AR needs knowledge of the entire disc structure to work.