Dear Sirs, I went WAV to FLAC for a beloved CD using foobar. I listened back to all the FLAC-ed tracks with Audition. No playback problems. Anything smooth. Then I transferred (copied) the whole FLAC stuff to a mutimedia player, say FANTEC 3DFHDL Media Player. At almost any track start there's a loud scratch, different from track to track. Other FLACs I downloaded from the web where foobar was used, once copied on the Media Player, sound scratchless. I wonder if I'm missing some setting with foobar. Can anyone help, please? Thanks in advance. kind regards.
When you say "scratch", would it be more accurate to say that you hear a "pop" or "click"?
Hi Zapp. Is it fair to say that you have flac files from various origins, all of which play without problems under foobar on you PC, but which have a noticeable click or pop when played on your hardware media player ?
If that's the case then it might be the media player at issue. You can get clicks or pops or other artifacts in any ripped format (wav flac mp3 etc) if there are read errors on the CD. But if these files come from various sources and all only fail on that specific media player, then it looks like the media player itself is the common denominator.
Perhaps that device has a specific issue with flac files. As a test, can you try transcoding one of the offending flacs to mp3 or aac and see if the noise/pops go away (on said media player).
Sounds like gapless (or in this case, lack of gapless) issues to me.
Then I transferred (copied) the whole FLAC stuff to a mutimedia player, say FANTEC 3DFHDL Media Player.
“say”? This could be interpreted to imply that the 3DFHDL was just an example and the problem occurs on multiple players. Or is the 3DFHDL the only one that has exhibited this erroneous behaviour?
Assuming the latter, I moved this to Audio Hardware as it would be a problem with the device, not FLAC as a format.
Have the offending FLAC files been tagged using ID3 tags?
When you say "scratch", would it be more accurate to say that you hear a "pop" or "click"?
It's really a scratch. Neither a pop nor a click. Just a few milliseconds after music has started, get a loud scratch (I fear for my tweeters). I analysed the files with Audition. It sounded OK. And in the frequency domain it looks OK as well ...
Then I transferred (copied) the whole FLAC stuff to a mutimedia player, say FANTEC 3DFHDL Media Player.
“say”? This could be interpreted to imply that the 3DFHDL was just an example and the problem occurs on multiple players. Or is the 3DFHDL the only one that has exhibited this erroneous behaviour?
Assuming the latter, I moved this to Audio Hardware as it would be a problem with the device, not FLAC as a format.
Well, I wrote "say" but this is the very device. Actually I think it's a device problem, not a FLAC one.
But FANTEC service either is not working or they have been disabled or they know about the problem and have no healing issues or ... they simply just don't care dealing with such a miserable issue of mine.
Anyway, it's possible I'm misusing the device (some setting not ticked, erroneous playlisting, whatever) or FLAC converter (my own CD/vynil collection is the source of 90% of my conversion activities) is not properly configured. Or ... I cannot figure out.
Sorry I do not own other FLAC players but PC and FANTEC.
And buying another DAC is pretty, well, annoying.
Have the offending FLAC files been tagged using ID3 tags?
Well ... this is a question I'm not prepared for. Should they be or not?
Sounds like gapless (or in this case, lack of gapless) issues to me.
Please let me understand ... when I rip my CD ... should I set the ripper at zero gap anyway? Despite the CD tracks feature a pre-gap? Or, I shall force a gap between tracks?
Well ... this is a question I'm not prepared for. Should they be or not?
They should not be ID3 tagged.
Hi Zapp. Is it fair to say that you have flac files from various origins, all of which play without problems under foobar on you PC, but which have a noticeable click or pop when played on your hardware media player ?
If that's the case then it might be the media player at issue. You can get clicks or pops or other artifacts in any ripped format (wav flac mp3 etc) if there are read errors on the CD. But if these files come from various sources and all only fail on that specific media player, then it looks like the media player itself is the common denominator.
Perhaps that device has a specific issue with flac files. As a test, can you try transcoding one of the offending flacs to mp3 or aac and see if the noise/pops go away (on said media player).
Hello, uart. I xcoded the offending FLACS to WAV. They played smoothly. Could it be that any time a FLAC file starts the internal software is late in converting to WAV? That files have been stored in non-adiacent sectors and there's an access problem?
Well ... this is a question I'm not prepared for. Should they be or not?
They should not be ID3 tagged.
Gotta check'em this nite. Thanks for the hint.
For reference:
Out of convenience, the reference decoder knows how to skip ID3 tags so that they don't interfere with decoding. But you should not expect any tags beside FLAC tags to be supported in applications; some implementations may not even be able to decode a FLAC file with ID3 tags.
Sounds like gapless (or in this case, lack of gapless) issues to me.
Please let me understand ... when I rip my CD ... should I set the ripper at zero gap anyway? Despite the CD tracks feature a pre-gap? Or, I shall force a gap between tracks?
No, don't do anything special, gap-wise. You certainly don't want to add any, and you probably don't want to remove them, unless you've determined they're completely silent—and even then, most people don't bother, since they're usually so short. The option of removing them is mainly only useful for when you're ripping a CD-R copy of a commercial CD, and the CD-R was burned in TAO mode (having extra 2-second pauses of digital silence between songs, pauses not on the original CD that the CD-R was made from).
If you are using a certain archaic "cue splitter" (instead of e.g. foobar2000 or CUETools) to divide a one-file, whole-disc rip into separate files for each track, then you could have audible problems at track boundaries due to imprecise cutting and discarding of audio that this one piece of...software does. But you would hear the same issue in the WAVs, if that were case.
So I'm betting on ID3 tags being the issue.
Sounds like gapless (or in this case, lack of gapless) issues to me.
Please let me understand ... when I rip my CD ... should I set the ripper at zero gap anyway? Despite the CD tracks feature a pre-gap? Or, I shall force a gap between tracks?
No, don't do anything special, gap-wise. You certainly don't want to add any, and you probably don't want to remove them, unless you've determined they're completely silent—and even then, most people don't bother, since they're usually so short. The option of removing them is mainly only useful for when you're ripping a CD-R copy of a commercial CD, and the CD-R was burned in TAO mode (having extra 2-second pauses of digital silence between songs, pauses not on the original CD that the CD-R was made from).
If you are using a certain archaic "cue splitter" (instead of e.g. foobar2000 or CUETools) to divide a one-file, whole-disc rip into separate files for each track, then you could have audible problems at track boundaries due to imprecise cutting and discarding of audio that this one piece of...software does. But you would hear the same issue in the WAVs, if that were case.
So I'm betting on ID3 tags being the issue.
Thanks for Your comments.
I still do not have a definitive solution, anyway nor a clear and repeatable testing procedure.
It's even testing time that is missing in these very days.
Patience is the strong virtue...
Which compression ratio did you choose? Some players occasionally have problems with flac level 8, but can play lower levels without problems.