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Topic: Converting music collection to WavPack (Read 5568 times) previous topic - next topic
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Converting music collection to WavPack

Hello everyone.
And immediately, my apologies if this was discussed already, I did look through the forum, but I did not find the discussion which is quite my case.

So, I have this collection of music accumulated through years, and it comes in many shapes: FLAC and APE and WV, separate tracks and CD images, with and without CUE files (some disks are just named FLAC tracks for example).
I would really like to convert everything to lossless WavPack with CUE files embedded, so I would have just one file per album, period. But I'm not quite sure how to do this considering the aforementioned variety of sources.

What would be the way to do this most efficiently, and with as little manual input as possible?

It is also vital for me to keep my existing CUE sheets, as some of them been edited (say, multi-part songs of King Crimson and ELP and Yes marked up by sections, while original CD had just one long track, etc.)

I would really prefer a solution with a Foobar (I already tried it but I only got single tracks as a result), or some similar software -- long story short, not too good with command lines, miserable with batch files. If possible, I would also prefer direct conversion, not FLAC -> WAVE -> WV, if that's possible.

But anyway I will be grateful for any advice.
P.S.  I'm PC/Windows guy.

Re: Converting music collection to WavPack

Reply #1 –
Quote from: zavgorodny on
I would really like to convert everything to lossless WavPack with CUE files embedded, so I would have just one file per album, period. But I'm not quite sure how to do this considering the aforementioned variety of sources.
Try CUETools. I assume that "one file per album" does not include any data session (then I know no solution that isn't a .zip or something like that), and that you either have one .cue per per physical disc or one folder per physical disc.

Quote from: zavgorodny on
It is also vital for me to keep my existing CUE sheets, as some of them been edited (say, multi-part songs of King Crimson and ELP and Yes marked up by sections, while original CD had just one long track, etc.)
Hm. "keep" means that you want those embedded?


Try to convert with CUETools and see if you are satisfied. Edit: But beware what CUETools copies over and what it does not. You might have to copy things afterwards.  If "one file per album, period" means you do not want any front.jpeg, back.jpeg or booklet.pdf, then you might not have to worry over losing anything of that kind. What about log files? There are good reasons to keep them ...

Re: Converting music collection to WavPack

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Try CUETools.

Thank you so much! That software seems like exactly what I had in mind, I tried it today and was able to get nice and shiny VW files with CUE embedded, with very reasonable amount of preparation for each album before conversion.

Quote from: Porcus on
I assume that "one file per album" does not include any data session (then I know no solution that isn't a .zip or something like that), and that you either have one .cue per per physical disc or one folder per physical disc.
I assume by "data session" you mean rip logs and such? Yeah, I'm okay with skipping those, not a problem. And I can keep booklert scans etc. separately, when and if needed. Not a problem.

Quote from: Porcus on
Quote from: zavgorodny on
It is also vital for me to keep my existing CUE sheets, as some of them been edited (say, multi-part songs of King Crimson and ELP and Yes marked up by sections, while original CD had just one long track, etc.)
Hm. "keep" means that you want those embedded?
Perhaps I was not clear here. I was saying that I wanted not only to embed CUE file, but to embed very particular ones, which I tweaked to my liking. CUE Tools seem to do just this, so just ignore this remark please.

Quote from: Porcus on
If "one file per album, period" means you do not want any front.jpeg, back.jpeg or booklet.pdf, then you might not have to worry over losing anything of that kind. What about log files? There are good reasons to keep them ...
To be honest, in (not sure how many) years since I've started my lossless collection, I never actually found a use for log files... So I'll be happy to hear why I would need those. No irony here, really, maybe there are reasons and I'm one step away from making something stupid. :-/

* * *

Two more questions, if I may:
1. Is it possible to edit VW files later? Like, fixing typos in track names, if I made some, or change cover art image file? I don't think it is possible with CUE Tools without conversion, is it? Perhaps there is another software I am just as well simply not aware of?

2. Is it possible to join 2 disks into 1 file? Assume I have 2CD album, I have it as 2 images with 2 CUE-files, and it still being one long piece of art, is there a common way to make 1 huge file from it? And what would be the best way to number tracks in this case?

Re: Converting music collection to WavPack

Reply #3 –
Quote from: zavgorodny on
1. Is it possible to edit VW files later? Like, fixing typos in track names, if I made some, or change cover art image file? I don't think it is possible with CUE Tools without conversion, is it? Perhaps there is another software I am just as well simply not aware of?
I believe that Foobar would be the easiest way to do edit the metadata of a WavPack file, and I think (without actually trying it) that it could handle everything you mention. I don't think it will break up your tracks just because you try to edit the metadata. I know you mentioned not being a command-line guy, but this is also easy with the wvtag command-line program (although to edit the cuesheet you would have to extract it, edit it with a text editor, and then embed it again, although even here there would be no re-encoding or anything time-consuming).
Quote
2. Is it possible to join 2 disks into 1 file? Assume I have 2CD album, I have it as 2 images with 2 CUE-files, and it still being one long piece of art, is there a common way to make 1 huge file from it? And what would be the best way to number tracks in this case?
Combining the audio would be easy, again using the WavPack command-line. I know of no program that would create a unified cuesheet though, so that would probably have to be done by hand (tediously). I share your frustration with dual albums though because the split is based on the arbitrary length of CDs which may or may not be at a logical splitting point in the album.

Good luck (and thanks Porcus)!

Re: Converting music collection to WavPack

Reply #4 –
@zavgorodny :

* First: beware of name collisions when you do conversions like this ...

* Now is the time to do AccurateRip/CTDB verification. CUETools will do that for you. Let it write AccurateRip tags and (Advanced options tab, last item) write CDTOC tags. Set all logging to verbose.
CUETools can - to some extent - repair wrong rips too. Convert with verification, review, pick out troublemakers. (How many albums are we talking?)

* Logs: CUETools can use EAC logs to identify a CD. (It can also use cuesheets, but you have at times manipulated those!)
If you make sure CUETools writes those tags I just mentioned, it will not need the log for later. (But logs might be evidence to your insurance company that you actually had these CDs ... if you do not need them in the folder, then zip them up in the end.)

* By "data" I meant data sessions in enhancedCD and Playstation type discs. Like bonus videos (or in old days: screensavers ;-) ) in a data part of a disc. If you do not have that, then there is no way to recreate. And more need for .log or .cue for CUETools to identify the disc for verification/repair.

* As for joining two files: I'd say "don't". Cuesheets were for burning a single CDR, all "tagging" use is retrohacks ... But here is an option: use .zip. Use 7-zip to archive them (then you can set it as uncompressed, there is no use in trying to squeeze more once you have wavpack'd) - and playback using foobar2000 with the archive reader. (However, then retagging might be an issue ... or? I don't remember.)

* For foobar2000 there are also two components for external tags ...

Re: Converting music collection to WavPack

Reply #5 –
Quote from: zavgorodny on
I would really prefer a solution with a Foobar (I already tried it but I only got single tracks as a result)

When you have the Converter Setup box open you want to click on "Destination". Under "Output style and name formatting" select Generate multi-track files.
You could technically convert everything in one go with foobar, but it requires some familiarity with foobar's syntax, the key words and symbols such as the default multi-track grouping pattern "[%album artist% - ]%album%".

Quote from: zavgorodny on
It is also vital for me to keep my existing CUE sheets, as some of them been edited

Although I've not tried it myself, to keep the existing cuesheets all you should have to do is drag the cuesheet into a playlist instead of the tracks. But if you have the cuesheets skipping sections of the album foobar won't read those sections therefore they won't be in the output multi-track.

The only other caution I can think of is make sure you have the files sorted in the order you want them for the multi-track file

Re: Converting music collection to WavPack

Reply #6 –
Thank to you all, kind people. I think I have a much better understanding of what I'm doing now. :)
And CUETools is a wonderful tool I discovered only now!