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Topic: Do I Need my accurip file when I burn a disk? (Read 9602 times) previous topic - next topic
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Do I Need my accurip file when I burn a disk?

I have a some flac files that don't have a cue sheet.  I'll preface this by saying I'm not even clear on the need for a cue sheet. I wanted to burn a disk using EAC. I installed CueTools 2.1.5 and ran the FLAC files through it. It created a cue sheet and it created an accurip file. Is this file necessary for my disk? I opened it in notepad to look at it. It says things about 'accurately ripped' and 'offsetted' and 'no match(V2 was not tested)' and I dont know what I'm talking about.....

I burn the flac files. This part I get
Do I need the cue sheet? What does it do?
Do I need the accurip file? What does it do?

Thank you

Do I Need my accurip file when I burn a disk?

Reply #1
You'll need to decompress the FLAC files to WAV to burn using EAC.
The CUE sheet provides index and additional information used by the burn software.
The accurip file provides ripping accuracy information obtained from the AccurateRip and CUETools Database. You don't need it for burning.
korth

Do I Need my accurip file when I burn a disk?

Reply #2
(a longer answer, but basically the same as what korth just said):

For burning, you don't need the .accurip file. It is the result of checking to see whether the audio matches other people's rips in the AccurateRip database, maybe also the CUETools database (CTDB).

EAC can use the .cue file when burning; that's what the file is for. Look at it in Notepad if you want. It's just a text file which holds non-audio info like track boundaries, as well as which file(s) contain the audio. It also contains sub-track boundaries (indexes), which include index 00 (the "pre-gap" or "gap") which is the usually-silent part of a track where a real CD player's display advances the track number and starts counting up the time to zero, like -0:03, -0:02, -0:01, 0:00. The main song is always index 01. Higher index numbers are rare. If the cue sheet contains title or performer metadata, this will be burned onto the disc, and maybe read by some CD players.

If you have the tracks in separate files, you can burn without the cue sheet, but you lose the sub-track info. Also it will sound too "bright" if the cue sheet had FLAGS PRE in it but you didn't use the cue sheet when burning.

EAC can only burn from WAV files. If using a cue sheet, the cue sheet must refer to these files by their exact file names. If I were you, I would use CUETools, point it to the existing cue sheet, and do an Encode to make it be a WAV image+cue. Then you'll have one big .wav with all the audio in it, and a .cue with everything else EAC needs. Point EAC to the .cue file for burning.

Do I Need my accurip file when I burn a disk?

Reply #3
Thank you mjb and Korth, it sheds a bit of light. So I should not burn the files as flac files when I make a disk? I know these are the most lostless of all. VLC seems to play them just fine. However if I want to play them in my cd player they need to be wav files? If they remain as flac do I still need a cue sheet? Or should I understand the cue sheet is just that, a menu of the files, when they start/stop and where they are so you always need it?

thanks, 8lackie

Do I Need my accurip file when I burn a disk?

Reply #4
If you are trying to burn an audio CD using EAC then the files need to be WAV. EAC simply cannot decompress FLAC files when burning the way VLC can when playing them. There are other programs that can burn an audio CD directly from FLAC files but not EAC.

It is possible to burn an audio CD without a CUE sheet as mjb2006 and the link I provided explained.
korth

Do I Need my accurip file when I burn a disk?

Reply #5
Got it! Thank you.

 

Do I Need my accurip file when I burn a disk?

Reply #6
Yeah, EAC is a fancy piece of software with a lot of great features and a very nice price, but using FLAC files as input for burning is not one of the developer's priorities.

Just to help you understand a little better, you're not really "burning FLAC files" or "burning WAV files"—or any files, really—to the CD. An audio CD doesn't actually have files and folders, just a very long, tight spiral that reflects laser light in variable amounts. Your burning software is just using the audio files as input to feed to the drive, which knows how to convert that data to the spiral's complex format and write it into the blank CD-R's spiral. The spiral on a full CD contains over 2 GB of data, about 30% of which is the audio; the rest is time code, error correction, etc.

So, the burning software sends the drive commands along the lines of "here's a cue sheet" (same info as in the .cue file, but different format) and "get ready to write the whole disc's-worth of audio data I'm about to send." During the burn, the software reads the audio file(s) and sends just the raw audio data to the drive. It discards anything the drive doesn't need (like tags and headers on WAV files). If the software can read from a compressed format like MP3 or FLAC, it will decode that data into a WAV-like stream of samples (LPCM format, it's called), just like what happens when you play the files normally and your OS sends samples to the soundcard.

So yes, you're "burning WAV files" ... but not really. You're burning an audio CD from WAV files.