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Topic: Music Library Management (Read 3977 times) previous topic - next topic
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Music Library Management

Hello all. I have a mix of single .flac + cue files and a number of individual tracks  + .cue .  I am trying to decide which was is the best to use. I use Helium Music Manager and it does not break out the individual song names from the .cue unless I am missing a setting. I've looked at CUETools does it change the quality of the existing files or does it simply join all of the individual files into one .flac ? I think I want everything to be one way or the other and not a mix .. How do you manage your collections ?

Music Library Management

Reply #1 –
Single file with CUE has one advantage, it will always play gapless.
If you use cue-sheets you create a dependency.
The name in the FILE tag must match exactly the name in the file system.
If you rename the audio file, you have to edit the cue-sheet as well.
Likewise if you move the audio file, you have to move the cue-sheet as well.
Sounds trivial but media players might rename and move audio files and ignore the cue-sheet at the same time.

The number of tags is rather limited.
Some  programs use the REM to store additional information not supported by the standard.

My preference is a file per track, I do think this a more flexible solution.
Storing all tags/cover art in the file makes it self documenting.

TheWellTemperedComputer.com

Music Library Management

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Roseval on
Single file with CUE has one advantage, it will always play gapless.


if your player/software doesn't play FLAC gapless, it is seriously broken.

Music Library Management

Reply #3 –
Most media players do, some even play formats gapless that don't support gapless playback (like MP3 or any other format with a fixed frame length).
However DLNA is notorious for not supporting gapless playback
TheWellTemperedComputer.com

Music Library Management

Reply #4 –
Quote from: RichC on
I've looked at CUETools does it change the quality of the existing files or does it simply join all of the individual files into one .flac ?

FLAC is lossless so there is no change in quality by decoding to WAV and re-encoding to FLAC.
korth