Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip (Read 3907 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Hi guys.
Hope this is the right section. If not, I apologise.
Always been reading here but I can't seem to find an answer in old threads.

I have several gapless rips of my CD's that were made in a single Flac file with their cue sheet. The app I use on my phone to play them is Neutron Player and it doesn't separate tracks to play even though the cue file is copied in the same folder.
That's why I want to convert them to split tracks.

I've already done some test but I'd like to be sure I'm doing it right before throwing the big Flac files. What I want is preserving the gapless rip in case I were to burn them back. Then I need the proper cue sheet.

This is what I did:
On Exact Audio Copy: Tools - Split Wav By Cue Sheet - With Gaps - Open the Wav-converted Flac, Open the cue sheet.
With the wave split files, I get the corrispondent cue sheet too.

On Foobar, I test the split tracks album for integrity and AccurateRip and it says fine.

Is the album then exactly the same as the big Flac one?

Thank you!

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #1 –
I hadn't even realised that EAC had that ability - although it looks like it's limited to WAV which would be more work for me. I've just tested it on splitting by indices (which I wrote a script to do) and it seems to work well so yes that should suffice.

I've always used CUETools for this, which accepts most formats and gives you AccurareRip and CTDB verification too, so if you don't use it already it's a really valuable tool (also has the ability to repair rips).

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #2 –
CUETools is the obvious choice here. A lot of discussion surrounding it happens here, in another subforum
http://cue.tools/wiki/Main_Page
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=CUETools
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/board,74.0.html

The Hydrogenaud.io wiki says for example:
Quote
Use cases
    Convert a single file album image with CUE sheet to a file-per-track album image
    Convert a file-per-track album image with CUE sheet to a single file album image
    Convert a file-per-track album image without a CUE sheet to a single file album image with simple CUE sheet
    Convert an album image from one lossless codec to another, preserving CUE sheet structure
[...]
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #3 –
Quote from: SimBun on
I hadn't even realised that EAC had that ability - although it looks like it's limited to WAV which would be more work for me. I've just tested it on splitting by indices (which I wrote a script to do) and it seems to work well so yes that should suffice.

I've always used CUETools for this, which accepts most formats and gives you AccurareRip and CTDB verification too, so if you don't use it already it's a really valuable tool (also has the ability to repair rips).

Hi SimBun. Thank you for your opinion and testing it. Yes, having to convert to wave is definitely tricky. I'll test CueTools.
What I don't understand, just for the sake of doing everything right, is the difference in the type of splitting: with gaps, no gaps, gaps corrected, by individual indeces. I ripped to gapless files and now I had to add gaps to make the conversion being approved by AccuratRip. Sorry for my incompetence but I must miss something.


Quote from: ktf on
CUETools is the obvious choice here. A lot of discussion surrounding it happens here, in another subforum
http://cue.tools/wiki/Main_Page
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=CUETools
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/board,74.0.html

The Hydrogenaud.io wiki says for example:
Quote
Use cases
    Convert a single file album image with CUE sheet to a file-per-track album image
    Convert a file-per-track album image with CUE sheet to a single file album image
    Convert a file-per-track album image without a CUE sheet to a single file album image with simple CUE sheet
    Convert an album image from one lossless codec to another, preserving CUE sheet structure
[...]

Hi ktf. Thank you. I will definitely give it a try. Converting to wav is really time consuming. Not to mention having to retag every file!

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #4 –
For tagging, be a bit careful about CUETools: it might retag from MusicBrainz if you aren't too careful about settings, and in particular, it might replace your album art.
I am not knocking it, CUETools is an essential piece of software and auto-tagging is a good feature when you need it - but it might not always be what you want.

Also, a couple of things to notice:
* The HTOA files that might sometimes be like, less than a second. Typically with silence or just tape hiss or dither, nothing you care about.
I have a pretty good idea which HTOAs contain bonus tracks and the like, but to be sure that I don't delete anything I actually want, I would keep the files, batch renaming them after the job is done, adding a file extension .htoa in the end, and excluding .htoa from my media player's library.
* Also, if you have carelessly decoded HDCD to 20/24-bit files, CUETools will give up.

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Porcus on
For tagging, be a bit careful about CUETools: it might retag from MusicBrainz if you aren't too careful about settings, and in particular, it might replace your album art.
I am not knocking it, CUETools is an essential piece of software and auto-tagging is a good feature when you need it - but it might not always be what you want.

Also, a couple of things to notice:
* The HTOA files that might sometimes be like, less than a second. Typically with silence or just tape hiss or dither, nothing you care about.
I have a pretty good idea which HTOAs contain bonus tracks and the like, but to be sure that I don't delete anything I actually want, I would keep the files, batch renaming them after the job is done, adding a file extension .htoa in the end, and excluding .htoa from my media player's library.
* Also, if you have carelessly decoded HDCD to 20/24-bit files, CUETools will give up.

Good to know Porcus. CueTools seem definitely more complicated than I thought. This means I really need to dig in the wiki because I don't only want the split flacs. I want the album to be ready to be reburnt too!

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #6 –
Another recommendation for cuetools - It does take some figuring out but I use it to split any single track rips I happen to, erm, locate.

It will spit out the separate tracks with a new .cue file properly representing the split files, and a copy of the original .log in the directory where the new/split copy is saved to.

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #7 –
Quote from: Eazz on
I want the album to be ready to be reburnt too!
I think it suffices then to keep the HTOA and keep the .cue files that CUETools produces. CUETools can merge them back if that is necessary.

And ... who burns CDs nowadays? ;-)
(Yeah sure some for in-car use, but then those CD's are pretty much disposable?)

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Eazz on
Quote from: SimBun on
I hadn't even realised that EAC had that ability - although it looks like it's limited to WAV which would be more work for me. I've just tested it on splitting by indices (which I wrote a script to do) and it seems to work well so yes that should suffice.

I've always used CUETools for this, which accepts most formats and gives you AccurareRip and CTDB verification too, so if you don't use it already it's a really valuable tool (also has the ability to repair rips).

Hi SimBun. Thank you for your opinion and testing it. Yes, having to convert to wave is definitely tricky. I'll test CueTools.
What I don't understand, just for the sake of doing everything right, is the difference in the type of splitting: with gaps, no gaps, gaps corrected, by individual indeces. I ripped to gapless files and now I had to add gaps to make the conversion being approved by AccuratRip. Sorry for my incompetence but I must miss something.

An audio cd is actually composed of a single audio stream that's segmented into tracks by its table of contents that identifies where each tracks starts.

The gaps between tracks are silence in the audio stream but they can also be flagged in the cd subcode, which can be read by CD drives. If you look at the bottom of the Action menu in EAC you'll see that you can choose what to do with this silence (if you were to rip them to individual files), but the default is to append it to the previous track; this means that when you start playing a wav/flac the music will start straight away, and the gap that's been appended to the music will separate it from the music in any subsequent files you play. If a CD has the gaps flagged in the subcode you should notice 'INDEX 00' flags in the CUE sheet that typically last a couple of seconds, with 'INDEX 01' denoting the start of the song.

Each track can also be further subdivided, although equipment able to make use of these never really became popular so these have largely faded out. They were mostly used in classical music to divide a track, or work into its component movements, but were also used on popular music around the late 80's. Using Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother as an example, these additional subdivisions would appear as additional INDEXes in the CUE sheet as:
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
    INDEX 02 05:19:27
    INDEX 03 10:08:47
    INDEX 04 15:23:32
    INDEX 05 17:44:32
    INDEX 06 19:45:62

This particular track didn't have any silence flagged in the subcode (INDEX 00 doesn't exist), but there are multiple index markers.

When you ripped to a single file the silence/gaps are part of the audio, and if they were flagged in the subcode then they'll also be part of the CUE sheet. When splitting a single file into multiple, because you have the original layout of the CD in the CUE sheet, you can again decide what to do with the gaps. If you specify "no gaps" then you'll actually remove audio from the resulting flac/wav files and they'll play with a reduced silence between tracks (possibly none depending on how abruptly the songs start/finish), so you don't want to do that. The standard is to have the gaps appended, and these will then verify with AccurateRip without having to rely on the CUE sheet (unless there's more than 2 seconds of silence before the start of the first track which would appear as a PREGAP in the CUE sheet).
If you have a CD that makes use of multiple index markers then splitting the WAV by 'individual indeces' will result in those track sections being split out into individual files themselves. In the Pink Floyd example above you'll have 6 files generated from track 1. I have done this on many occasions so that when playing the files I get the correct title show up e.g

Rather than have:
File      Title
01.flac      Atom Heart Mother: a) Father’s Shout b) Breast Milky c) Mother Fore d) Funky Dung e) Mind Your Throats Please f) Remergence

I have:
File      Title
01.01.flac   Father’s Shout
01.02.flac   Breast Milky
01.03.flac   Mother Fore
01.04.flac   Funky Dung
01.05.flac   Mind Your Throats Please
01.06.flac   Remergence

Then I tag them with GROUPING=Atom Heart Mother

In summary, choose to append gaps :-)
 

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #9 –
Quote from: MrRom92 on
Another recommendation for cuetools - It does take some figuring out but I use it to split any single track rips I happen to, erm, locate.

It will spit out the separate tracks with a new .cue file properly representing the split files, and a copy of the original .log in the directory where the new/split copy is saved to.

Hi MrRom. Thank you. I tested it and have seen how effective it is! Just want to understand it better

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Porcus on
I think it suffices then to keep the HTOA and keep the .cue files that CUETools produces. CUETools can merge them back if that is necessary.

That's great

Quote
And ... who burns CDs nowadays? ;-)

Lol. Really, Flac copies are a great resorce in case the original CD gets faulty. Don't you think?

Re: Moving from unique Flac file to multiple ones preserving gapless rip

Reply #11 –
Wow SimBun! This is a awesome explanation and I really appreciate that. I guess I won't be the only beginner who will take advantage of it, when someone will stumble here while googling. I now really understand the difference of gaps management in the unique and the split cue sheet

Quote from: SimBun on
An audio cd is actually composed of a single audio stream that's segmented into tracks by its table of contents that identifies where each tracks starts.

The gaps between tracks are silence in the audio stream but they can also be flagged in the cd subcode, which can be read by CD drives. If you look at the bottom of the Action menu in EAC you'll see that you can choose what to do with this silence (if you were to rip them to individual files), but the default is to append it to the previous track; this means that when you start playing a wav/flac the music will start straight away, and the gap that's been appended to the music will separate it from the music in any subsequent files you play. If a CD has the gaps flagged in the subcode you should notice 'INDEX 00' flags in the CUE sheet that typically last a couple of seconds, with 'INDEX 01' denoting the start of the song.

Yeah, I always appended gaps to previous track, as explained in a good tutorial I had found

Quote
Each track can also be further subdivided, although equipment able to make use of these never really became popular so these have largely faded out. They were mostly used in classical music to divide a track, or work into its component movements, but were also used on popular music around the late 80's. Using Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother as an example, these additional subdivisions would appear as additional INDEXes in the CUE sheet as:
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
    INDEX 02 05:19:27
    INDEX 03 10:08:47
    INDEX 04 15:23:32
    INDEX 05 17:44:32
    INDEX 06 19:45:62

This particular track didn't have any silence flagged in the subcode (INDEX 00 doesn't exist), but there are multiple index markers.

When you ripped to a single file the silence/gaps are part of the audio, and if they were flagged in the subcode then they'll also be part of the CUE sheet. When splitting a single file into multiple, because you have the original layout of the CD in the CUE sheet, you can again decide what to do with the gaps. If you specify "no gaps" then you'll actually remove audio from the resulting flac/wav files and they'll play with a reduced silence between tracks (possibly none depending on how abruptly the songs start/finish), so you don't want to do that. The standard is to have the gaps appended, and these will then verify with AccurateRip without having to rely on the CUE sheet (unless there's more than 2 seconds of silence before the start of the first track which would appear as a PREGAP in the CUE sheet).
If you have a CD that makes use of multiple index markers then splitting the WAV by 'individual indeces' will result in those track sections being split out into individual files themselves. In the Pink Floyd example above you'll have 6 files generated from track 1. I have done this on many occasions so that when playing the files I get the correct title show up e.g

Rather than have:
File      Title
01.flac      Atom Heart Mother: a) Father’s Shout b) Breast Milky c) Mother Fore d) Funky Dung e) Mind Your Throats Please f) Remergence

I have:
File      Title
01.01.flac   Father’s Shout
01.02.flac   Breast Milky
01.03.flac   Mother Fore
01.04.flac   Funky Dung
01.05.flac   Mind Your Throats Please
01.06.flac   Remergence

Then I tag them with GROUPING=Atom Heart Mother

In summary, choose to append gaps :-)

Thank you again! :-)