[Flac] FLAC CD Archive

[Charles Steinkuehler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Dan Phillips wrote:
> I have read some posts about using FLAC to archive CD collections and
> would like to get some feedback. I am torn between creating a bin and
> cue file with CDDB info and compressing that down with FLAC as a single
> file or the second method of ripping all the files out to wav and
> converting to FLAC and maybe saving the cue file in attempt to use it later.
> 
> The first method I believe will pretty much insure the ability to
> restore the CD faithful to the original, but does not lend itself to
> easy creation of ogg or mp3. Is the future of CD's in jeopardy anyway.
> Will we still use them in 5 years time or will we be using wireless
> digital players with hard disks.
> 
> I just wondered if there were any more thoughts on this and if the
> second method could actually be used to reproduce the original CD?
> Hopefully some feedback will help me decide which to go for. What I have
> read so far has not been conclusive and was a year ago, maybe things
> have changed now.

I've been working on this sort of approach using abcde as a front-end,
and have run into several issues.  What I finally decided on doing is
ripping the CD to a single flac file with embedded cue sheet using a
variety of tools (more details later).  The single flac file is then
enough to pretty much reconstruct the audio CD should it ever get lost
or destroyed.  Note that abcde can support ripping ogg files directly
from a single flac file with an embedded cue sheet.  I believe several
of the popular audio players have added (or are adding) support for
single flac files with embedded cue data, so you can seek to the next
song, see all song titles, etc.

Details on ripping:
You have to be careful when ripping and creating the flac/cue file, or
you will have problems creating an accurate copy of the CD (ie: getting
the same CDDB discid from the flac/cue file that you get from the disc
itself).  What I've decided to do:

- - Use cdparanoia to rip, using [00:00:00.00]- as the range (rips the
entire CD, regardless of any pre-gap for track 1).

- - Use cdrdao to extract a TOC file (cdrdao looks at the subcode and
extracts more detailed index data than can be found simply in the disc's
table of contents, which is what most cue generation utilities use).

- - Convert the TOC file to a cue file (hacked version of toc2cue) that
accounts for any pre-gap issues (track 1 not starting at 00:00:00).

I'm working on hacking abcde to automate this process and not require a
customized version of toc2cue, but I don't have a complete solution yet
(not enough time...let me know if you want to help!).  More details
about the problems I've run into (and some I've fixed) are available in
debian's bug tracking system for the abcde package.

...or, you could just use EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/), which is
probably a better solution (in terms of sucking audio data off the CD
with minimum hassle), but if I was happy with closed-source solutions, I
wouldn't be ripping to ogg and flac files in the first place!  EAC does
rip cue files with index information that do *NOT* need to be hacked for
disks with non-zero start position for track 1, so it can at least be
used as a baseline for getting all the required linux pieces to work
together happily.

- --
Charles Steinkuehler
cstein at newtek.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFFGThMenk4xp+mH40RApqNAJ9DGejXeVkUFNCA/13Ohw+YLPRlAACgwBBX
muuwE5uKjRkjA3ytrw3+avk=
=8IkI
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----