Guide to Proper Lossless Rips

I personally prefer to rip the CD as single tracks, if you have a perfect quality rip, I find no need to make a CUE image (it only adds in the gaps and other random pieces of data you won't even hear when you playback the CD, plus with an APE/CUE it dramatically increases seek times).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Kaleb.G

I like being able to keep the data of the gaps just for the sake of "completion", but I don't care to have silence at the end of the actual files. The gaps really don't matter to me at all in terms of listening.

So, assuming I go with this method, the "perfectionist" could still use my FLAC files and CUE files to recreate lossless files with silence appended to them as if they ripped it themselves this way, correct?

The reason I don't use gaps is the fact that most CDs have two types of gaps. Two second gaps (when reading TAO CDs), or no gaps at all (in DAO mode). Since TAO CDs sound just fine being played gaplessly, it really doesn't bother me taking out the gaps. Unlike a CD-ROM rip, ripping only the tracks will not reduce quality, a complete rip would really only interest completests and those who want to perfectly duplicate a CD, nuances and all.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I'm sort of curious, is there any way to use EAC to extract the audio tracks, while letting Alcohol 120% extract the data in a Game CD? More important, whould this still guarentee a perfect rip on both sides?

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Originally Posted by Eleo

I can't say for sure. I know how to deal with ripping audio and data separately, but putting them together for a 1:1 copy? I wouldn't even know how to verify the overall losslessness.

You can try ripping the audio from EAC and just copying the data files manually.

The reason I asked this question is because when I try ripping audio tracks (along with data tracks) from Alcohol 120%, the resulting image has the audio start two seconds into the track. Quite annoying for a "1:1" copy!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Eleo

I'm not sure what you mean; but I believe this is normal. There is a 2-second pregap before the first track of any audio CD (sometimes longer).

Are you playing this CD on a standalone CD player or on your PC?

Here's what I mean: when I mount the file to Daemon tools (and play the game), the file will start two seconds ahead of the begining, so when the file should start playing at 0m0s it starts playing at 0m2s, cutting off the first two seconds of the song, but I do believe this only occurs in CDs that have data tracks and have gaps in them. When I use Daemon tools to mount an Audio CD that EAC ripped, the CD music plays back just fine (but keep in mind EAC doesn't rip the data tracks).

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by sabbey

BTW, was wondering if you guys have a recommended program for burning the FLAC+CUEs? Using Nero currently, but hear it's not the best...

I do believe foobar2000 (version 0.8.3, it links to Nero to burn the CD) can do this, though I've never tried using any burning features of foobar2000.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by sabbey

I own the full version of Nero, just wondering if there's a better program...

Convert the file to a WAV + CUE and use Exact Audio Copy. It supports programs like write offset correction and is one of the few programs that can make a perfect copy of a CD to another CD (with the right CD Burner of course).
EDIT: Damn! Caught me to the chase! But if EAC can't read the flac file, convert the FLAC to wav, then change all references to ".flac" in the CUE file to ".wav". Of course do this with a copy of the CUE sheet, in case you screw things up and make sure the wav file had the same filename as the flac file did.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by www.sega.co.jp

I'm sort of curious, is there any way to use EAC to extract the audio tracks, while letting Alcohol 120% extract the data in a Game CD? More important, whould this still guarentee a perfect rip on both sides?

For those who want to know, I found a program that does exactly what I asked for! It rips the data and audio tracks perfectly (if your CD-ROM drive supports good DAE), it's CDRWin (which you need to buy/crack to get any good use out of it). If your game CD is single session (aka the game data is track one, not the first audio track), this will be the program of choice, it rips the CD to BIN/CUE. It does not rip copy protected CDs well though (though most games with CD tracks are too old to have a good form of copy protection), Discjuggler and Alcohol 120% are much better suited for that purpose.
It's the most 'proper' way to rip Data + Audio CDs.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Eleo

I've heard of that tool; I haven't used it in years. I don't know for sure if ripping audio as data yields a 1:1 copy. Would you mind doing a wav comparison to that audio ripped from the CD with EAC and then the audio ripped from EAC from the burned iso generated by CDRWin?

EAC has a wav comparison tool, if you didn't already know.

I did with two CDs, it yielded perfect copies (albeit I needed to use offset correction on the CD image, but I have to do that on the real CD as well). I assume this only works well on CDs in acceptable condition, I don't know if CDRWin will read damaged CDDA tracks very well.

BTW: CDRWin made a BIN/CUE CD image in the case where I used it. ISO images can only store one track/session of data or audio. But considering BIN/CUE files are greatly superior to ISOs (but not the end all format unfourtunately) and are supported in a vast number of programs such as daemon tools, I don't see any reason to use ISO over a BIN/CUE image; except if you want to convert the audio tracks to mp3 and have an ISO+Mp3.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Eleo

Can your burn BIN/CUEs with EAC? Because I don't know any other software the supports write offset correction.

EAC can only burn Audio CUEs, you'd have to use some other program to burn the whole CD to a CD-R. Of course if you want to useit as an Audio CD, just extract the tracks with EAC (with the image mounted in daemon tools) and you'll get a copy of the audio. Otheriwise, settle for a non-offset corrected CD or just make a backup of the image.
Too bad EAC can't extract/burn data tracks...

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Eleo

Yeah that sucks. On the other hand it is pretty much perfect in every other regard.

In fact if you supplied the offset your CD-ROM uses, other people could make perfect rips, no need to make a crappy ISO and a separate WAV+CUE rip. It certainly makes more sense to me (although you can't use FLAC or MAC on a BIN/CUE, but WinRAR or 7-Zip does the job just fine).
I wish daemon-tools supported compressed CD Images.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Plus, if you want to perfectly preserve a game CD, copying the audio and data sectors seems awfully redundant.
EDIT: Waht I think should be done is have CDRWin, Alcohol 120%, Discjuggler, etc support forced rereads of RAW data and offset correction. This would make it very close to EAC quality copies (plus CD-ROM drives with sub-par DAE would get better copies in these programs, since they do an equivalent to burst mode in EAC).

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Most likely because most CDDA games don't factor the audio into copy protection. In fact most CDs that have CDDA tracks don't have very strong copy protection (most games released in the past six years don't even use CDDA anymore, it takes up too much space). Since data CDs as a primary mode of optical disc distribution is declining due to DVDs, I don't see anyone doing this anytime soon.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by sabbey

Here's a quick question...

I have been using "Installed external ASPI interface" on my rips under the "Use of SCSI interface" option, since I heard it makes for better quality. However, my external DVD burner seems to only show up in EAC with "Native Win32 interface for Win NT/2000/XP" selected. Any idea why, and is there anything I can do to change that? Hell, is there really any difference between the two? If not, I'll make the switch back to the other so all three drives are listed.

Overall, I can't say I care too much, only using it for ripping hybrid SACDs. None of the others in my experience can see such discs when one is in the drive.



BTW, any idea how one can find what the write offset is? That read offset database you linked to is of great help, is there one for the write offset as well?

I find that copying and pasting the WNASPI32.DLL to the EAC directory solves this problem, DAEMON Tools has a tendancy to mess with things. But unless you are having problems with the native CD interface, there's no need to switch, I've never had any problems while not using ASPI.
As for determining write offset, just follow this guide. If you can't enter the combined read/write offset in EAC (because you're using AccurateRip), move the AccurateRip.dll to another folder, enter the combined read/write offset correction and move the dll back.
Further reading on offsets:
http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eacoffsets00.htm#- Very in depth information on offsets
http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eacoffsets02.htm#- How to find the read offset
http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eacoffsets03.htm#- How to find the write offset and combined read/write offset (same as the link listed above).

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Eleo

Sorry for the late response. Actually there's a guide on it here. It takes some time but it's not terribly difficult.

Actually my post addressed the exact same article, but all is good, it just tells sabbey how good a source it is .

FELIPE NO

Provided you haven't done anything to the file since you last successfully played it, the file could be corrupt. It happens for various reasons and most of them would be enough to worry about. Have any other files that depend on redundancy checking (like Zip or RAR files) produced similar errors recently?

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

There has to be, if you get frequent CRC errors and the like, somewhere down the line data corruption is occuring. I'd suggest making some RARs and transferring them to see if a faulty connection (or HDD) is the problem. Trust me, from what I've heard so far, corrupted FLAC files is the least of your worries. Try to figure out if it's the PATA or SATA HDD (or the connection between the two), then you can find out what to do next.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by YoMan

Well i dont know what to make of this. I tried compressing an album that was in wav and cuting/pasting it from HDD to HDD to check if some CRC error poped up. There were no errors.

Then i compressed an album that was in flac, did the same thing, cuting/pasting it from HDD to HDD. The first transfer got me a CRC error right away.

I don't know what to do next, maybe checking the HDD's with some scanning program? What are some good HDD scanning programs?



Please elaborate. Is it that bad?

WAV files have no CRC information whatsoever. Meaning if one or 99% of the file is corrupted, you won't know (unless the header is bad as well).
With RARs and FLAC files you can tell if file corruption has happened (the non-malicious kind at least), but with WAVs and files that have little or no error checking (and critical system files). It seems either the new HDD is bad or the transfer sucks. In either case it's worthy of concern. Try making files (not just transferring them) on the SATA HDD and see what happens when you cut and paste it to a new folder, hopefully it should be fine; if not, your hard drive could be bad.

BTW: WAV files only report a bad CRC when Windows detects an error from the source disk (like from a stratched CD or bad floppy).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by YoMan

Okey, here is what i have done:

1. Compressed a flac album into one .rar file using winrar.

2. Move that file around old folders/new folders/different HDD's (I have 3 in this case) and tried to unpack and test it if its got any CRC errors.

3. The result: nothing, no CRC's errors whatsoever. My guess is that this thing happens randomly because i can't seem to find any pattern here. Sometimes it gets an error, sometimes it don't.

But why are errors such a big problem with flac files opposed to say mp3 files?

And a little humor to close off this post:

As i type this i see that my google ads read:

1. Corrupt File?
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I thought it was kind of funny

being lossless, FLAC files depend on perfect (or very near perfect) file integrity for decoding, mp3 files have very good fault tolerance to corruption (due to their nature to be streamed), they just skip ahead to the next decodable frame.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

What I do to guard my FLAC files against corruption is I use a program called QuickPar to make PAR2 recovery files for the FLACs. Then I burn the FLACs, the recovery files and a QuickPar installer all together to a DVD.

I have QuickPar set up to make its recovery files 20% of the size of the original data. Probably overkill... I think the default is 10%.

Have you tested the robustness of QuickPar? I'd like to see how much you can corrupt a file before it becomes unreadable.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Eleo

I used to make par2 files when I backed up music to guard from inevitable CRC errors. But then I realized I was killing my self trying to make them; very time/space consuming. I just gave up. I probably *should* do it for rarer things but for just downloads in general, it's just too much effort.

Doesn't sound too much of a waste of space to me. 10% backup of 4GB of files is 409.6MB.

How ya doing, buddy?

If you have the right CDs, you can find the read offset by using AccurateRip. If you CD-ROM is in the database, it'll automatically set the offset, if not you'll need three CDs on the offset list (which is over 20,000; compared to the 100ish that EAC uses internally).

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Eleo

Oh, I thought it was a no-go with AccurateRip unless your drive was in the database. Finding 3 CDs can be a bitch, though, as there are different pressings of certain CDs, so even though it says Nirvana - In Utero will work, your copy of it might not work and can't be used for detection.

It's a pain, but borrow someone else's CD collection to do so (like I did). It'd be stupid for those Drives not in the database to have no chance to work with AccurateRip. It's nice that AccurateRip isn't a one trick pony isn't it?

FELIPE NO