Splitting FLAC 192 khz 24 bit by CUE sheet (and foobar question)

2012-08-27 01:51:07

Hi!

Is there ANY program to just split a big FLAC file by CUE sheet into smaller FLACs? Note that my FLACs are 192 khz, 24 bits and no program seems able to handle that. Let me expand...

I use EAC for my CDs and, aside the pain of unicode with non-latin characters sheets and working only with wav, it works just fine. But it doesn't work with 192 khz files. I looked into CUE Tools, but the same. I finally found foobar can split files. The bad thing is it seems to re-encode (or trascode) everything it converts. When I input the big FLAC file to split it asks me the FLAC encoder. Is it actually re-encoding the FLAC? Or it just needs the encoder (FLAC.exe) to split? I know, ultimately it's all the same as FLAC is lossless. It doesn't matter, except the processing power/time to re-encode maybe? Just splitting (like I did with EAC) seems more "efficient".

But what about gaps? It doesn't have any option to append gaps or leave them out like EAC has. I want the normal "with gaps" option from EAC. Is that the default for foobar? Or what does it do with gaps?


Thanks.

Splitting FLAC 192 khz 24 bit by CUE sheet (and foobar question)

Reply #1 – 2012-08-27 06:54:05

Time-accurate splitting of most formats without de/reencoding is not possible due to the way they store their frames. There has been quite a lot of discussion in the past of some bad implementations of this behaviour, if you want more information. But suffice it to say that anyone not wanting botched files will have to have them decoded and reencoded, regardless of whether or not the performing application hides this intermediate stage. Thus, EAC would have decoded, too.

foobar2000 appends INDEX 00 regions (“gaps”) to the end of the previous track, which is usually what people mean by “normal”, yes.

Splitting FLAC 192 khz 24 bit by CUE sheet (and foobar question)

Reply #2 – 2012-08-27 07:43:52

Excellent, thanks. I'll be using foobar for all splitting from here on, now that I see the re-encoding is necessary and foobar handles gaps the "normal" way. EAC has too many issues with cue sheets for me (could be non-standard ones), even when I strip them of every non-Latin character and save it as ANSI. Foobar seems to work with whatever cue file I throw at it, weird characters and UTF-8 included.

Splitting FLAC 192 khz 24 bit by CUE sheet (and foobar question)

Reply #3 – 2012-12-13 00:17:53

I found XLD on OSX to split any FLAC archive into individual tracks at its original bitrate with little fuss(so long as you have the cue sheet).

However, if you are on a Mac and you want to turn a 24/192 FLAC archive into a redbook CD:

* Duplicate the cue file and put it in a new folder
* Using Saracon or similar software convert the single FLAC file into a 16 bit/44.1 Khz AIFF or WAV (I do this as a precaution)
* Put that AIFF or WAV through Saracon again but transcode it into a 16 bit/44.1 Khz FLAC
* Now you have a 16 bit/44.1 Khz FLAC archive of the original file. Put it into the new folder alongside the duplicated cue
* Open the cue in an audio player like Vox to check that it can read the splits in the FLAC archive
* To split the archive into individual tracks open the cue file in XLD, tag accordingly and transcode to FLAC

Re: Splitting FLAC 192 khz 24 bit by CUE sheet (and foobar question)

Reply #4 – 2019-03-11 05:50:35

Using Medieval Cue Splitter you can do it if you do a little trick.
Convert you flac or ape to .wav then add to your .cue file another .cue file to the beginning, use a single song of 16 bits 44.1Khz, should be a .wav file, example:

FILE "B_1.wav" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "title of song"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
Then copy your .cue file, just change the tracks numbers:
FILE "B_2.wav" WAVE
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "title of song"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "title of song"
    INDEX 01 02:30:42
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "title of song"
    INDEX 01 04:33:24
 
I test it and it works for me, I was able to split a 24 bits 192Khz very long file.