FLAC choices

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  • cdmackay
    Senior Member
    • Feb 2009
    • 408

    FLAC choices

    hi all,

    I'm about to re-rip my collection to FLAC, and I need to choose between
    a few options.

    I've read around, and can see various points, but am struggling to get a
    good summary of the pros and cons of these points *with respect to SC*.

    In particular:


    - single FLAC per CD, or separate FLACs per track?

    The former seems the slightly better archival solution (perhaps?), but
    does it cause any drawbacks for SC use? Performance, tagging, random
    track access, seeking, inter-track gap, etc?


    - CUE sheets: embedded versus separate, or none?


    I'd very much appreciate people's comments on how to best use FLAC with
    SC, and what the issues are.


    thanks again,

    cheers,
    calum.
  • Pat Farrell
    Senior Member
    • Apr 2005
    • 4294

    #2
    FLAC choices

    Calum Mackay wrote:
    > - single FLAC per CD, or separate FLACs per track?
    > - CUE sheets: embedded versus separate, or none?


    Its a personal choice. I've never used CUE sheet.

    I have one flac file per song. With the files in a directory structure
    that looks like
    /songs/genre/artist/album/trackXX

    Of course, genre is a terrible idea, lots of songs are in two or more
    genres. It really belongs in a relational database, like MySql or SQLlite.
    Pat
    http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

    Comment

    • Calum Mackay
      Senior Member
      • Feb 2009
      • 408

      #3
      FLAC choices

      thanks Pat...

      Comment

      • radish
        Senior Member
        • Apr 2005
        • 5052

        #4
        SC supports both track-per-file and track-per-disc, but given the apparent lack of standards in the world of cue files I see plenty of problems with them. Personally I use track-per-file, it makes sense to me and it always works flawlessly with SC. The only reason I've ever seen for using cue files is if you have CDs with index marks, and I don't.
        http://www.last.fm/user/polymeric

        Comment

        • Calum Mackay
          Senior Member
          • Feb 2009
          • 408

          #5
          FLAC choices

          radish wrote:
          > SC supports both track-per-file and track-per-disc, but given the
          > apparent lack of standards in the world of cue files I see plenty of
          > problems with them. Personally I use track-per-file, it makes sense to
          > me and it always works flawlessly with SC.


          thanks; so gapless playback isn't an issue with file-per-track?

          And presumably keeping a CUE sheet around isn't going to do any harm,
          either?

          I'm just trying to keep my options open. If I wanted to burn an exact
          copy of the original CD, can I still do that with file-per-track, or has
          that lost some info? e.g. lead-in/out, track gaps, etc?

          cheers,
          calum.

          Comment

          • Teus de Jong
            Senior Member
            • Feb 2008
            • 480

            #6
            I always use separate tracks and don't see any need to do it in another way.

            Good rippers like dbPoweramp will add track gaps -- if they are present -- at the end of each track. So gapless playback is not a problem when working with separate files per track (otherwise many of my classical stuff would sound awful with tracks split in the middle of movements :-))

            Cue sheets in the same folder as separate files can give a lot of trouble: when scanning, SqueezeCenter will see two albums: one made up of the individual tracks, the other extracted from the cue sheet. You can avoid this by adding cue sheet extensions -- e.g. m3u -- to the files to ignore in SC. But that means you can't mix separate files and cue sheet based 'whole album' folders.

            Finally, making the same disc from separate files should not be a problem.

            Teus

            Comment

            • Calum Mackay
              Senior Member
              • Feb 2009
              • 408

              #7
              FLAC choices

              thanks Teus, understood.

              Seems like lots of people prefer file-per-track, ok.

              Although I've not yet heard any disadvantage of file-per-disc. Are there
              any, in fact?

              cheers,
              calum.

              Comment

              • Moonbase
                Senior Member
                • Dec 2008
                • 750

                #8
                What I feel disadvantages of "file per disc":
                • Good tagging is quite complicated.
                • You can’t copy single files and take them with you, say to a party, or on a mobile player.
                • Its not (so) easy to generate "mobile single-track MP3s" from whole-disc-FLACs (for the portable player).
                • Many programs don’t support "jumping around" in a big file, and it requires some extra resources. (SC does a great job here!)
                • If the file gets broken, the whole disc is gone, not just one title.


                So I go for single-track FLAC files (gapless if needed, it is supported).

                Plus, I hope for "single-track" cue-sheets being supported (i.e., INDEX > 01). (See bug 11168.)

                Reason: Many tracks hold more than one "part", especially in classical music. On good CDs, these are marked using so-called "indexes" (instead of tracks) which you can jump to. I’d just love to be able doing the same with SBs and the SBC. Probably using the FWD/REW buttons, for simplicity.
                Moonbase: The Problem Solver

                Comment

                • chill
                  Senior Member
                  • Mar 2007
                  • 2233

                  #9
                  Calum

                  I've ripped most of my CDs to file-per-CD, and don't have any problems with it. I must admit that I didn't research it properly beforehand (unlike yourself!), but I felt that a single file with a CUE sheet was the easiest way to reproduce the original CD should I ever need to. I've done that a couple of times and can confirm that it works exactly as I'd hoped. Of course, that's not to say that the file-per-track approach wouldn't work just as well.

                  My other consideration at the time was that ANY other system can be generated from this most basic of schemes - eg, should I want to split the CD files into individual track files, it is a simple task. Again, that's not to say that generating a CD file from track files wouldn't be just as simple, but I've never attempted that.

                  One fairly big advantage of the file-per-CD approach is that ALL my tagging information is in the CUE files, which are plain text and easily edited. If you are editing a large number of large files (even individual track FLACs can get quite big) over a network, then editing tag information embedded in those files can take time, simply because the files have to be rewritten. I use Foobar to edit my CUE files, and it handles them very well - when I open a CUE file it shows all the tracks exactly as if I'd opened a list of individual files. Changing the tag information 'en masse' simply involves writing a short ASCII text file back to disc. OK, so you might not expect to edit your tags very often, but I've just been through the process of tidying all my tags and it was made relatively painless by opening all my CUE files simultaneously in Foobar.

                  In the end, I'm not sure there's much to choose between the two approaches. It seems possible that having SC open a big CD file just to get to an individual track might introduce a delay, but it's not caused me a problem. In all other respects SC handles my big files and CUE sheets flawlessly.

                  Hope this helps.

                  Comment

                  • chill
                    Senior Member
                    • Mar 2007
                    • 2233

                    #10
                    @Moonbase

                    I agree with all your points, except your first and third.

                    Re tagging - I find it much easier in fact, for the reasons I posted above (obviously while you were posting simultaneously!)

                    Re individual MP3s - I simply load the CUE file into the converter, highlight the track I want, and convert it. I've not encountered a converter program that doesn't understand my FLAC+CUE combinations.

                    YMMV

                    Comment

                    • radish
                      Senior Member
                      • Apr 2005
                      • 5052

                      #11
                      Originally posted by cdmackay
                      thanks; so gapless playback isn't an issue with file-per-track?
                      No.

                      And presumably keeping a CUE sheet around isn't going to do any harm,
                      either?
                      If you want them for some reason, I'd keep them from being scanned as Teus said.

                      If I wanted to burn an exact
                      copy of the original CD, can I still do that with file-per-track, or has
                      that lost some info? e.g. lead-in/out, track gaps, etc?
                      It's exact enough for me. Track gaps etc would be the same assuming they were added by the ripper (which they usually are). To be honest I only care that a dupe would sound the same, I don't care if they start on different offsets or something esoteric like that
                      http://www.last.fm/user/polymeric

                      Comment

                      • Moonbase
                        Senior Member
                        • Dec 2008
                        • 750

                        #12
                        @ chill:
                        There are some valid points in what you say about a "central, small, human-readable tagging location".

                        Maybe its largely a matter of personal preferences, after all. And I'm happy that SC supports most of all thinkable alternatives :-)
                        Moonbase: The Problem Solver

                        Comment

                        • Calum Mackay
                          Senior Member
                          • Feb 2009
                          • 408

                          #13
                          FLAC choices

                          thanks very much indeed to Pat, radish, Teus, Moonbase & chill,

                          really helpful comments, I now have a better feel for it.

                          I should just start trying the various options now, and see how I get on
                          with them

                          thanks again, all.

                          cheers,
                          calum.

                          Comment

                          • Pat Farrell
                            Senior Member
                            • Apr 2005
                            • 4294

                            #14
                            FLAC choices

                            Calum Mackay wrote:
                            > Although I've not yet heard any disadvantage of file-per-disc. Are there
                            > any, in fact?


                            Makes it a lot harder to play one song from the disk.


                            --
                            Pat Farrell


                            Pat
                            http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

                            Comment

                            • Calum Mackay
                              Senior Member
                              • Feb 2009
                              • 408

                              #15
                              FLAC choices

                              Pat Farrell wrote:
                              >> Although I've not yet heard any disadvantage of file-per-disc. Are there
                              >> any, in fact?

                              >
                              > Makes it a lot harder to play one song from the disk.


                              how so? slow to load, or hard to navigate? or something else?

                              thanks,
                              calum.

                              Comment

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