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Topic: FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC (Read 26523 times) previous topic - next topic
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FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

I ripped a number of CDs to FLAC+CUE and then broke apart the FLAC file into individual tracks, so I could loads them into Ampache and stream them to my phone/tablet/everywhere.

Is there any advantage to keeping the FLAC/CUE files?

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #1 –
If you keep the CUE files, you'd always be able to recombine the individual tracks back into a single disc image later on.  But I don't see any point in keeping the larger FLAC file you split the tracks from.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #2 –
I would just save the cue sheets. You can use them to reconstruct the original disc from the separate FLACs.

If you want to be able to perfectly reconstruct the CD, you also want to save the audio from the track 01 pregap, a.k.a. the hidden track one audio (HTOA) found on some CDs. Usually it is only a half-second of silence, but on rare occasion it contains bonus material.

If you use CUETools to do the splitting, it will save the HTOA in a file for you and will also make a new cue sheet which refers to the separate FLAC for each track.

If you don't save the HTOA, and then you merge the FLACs back into one file, you will be missing that snippet of audio from the beginning, so the track boundaries in your cue sheet will all be off by that same amount. If you use CUETools to do the merge, I believe it can fix this for you (replacing the missing audio with digital silence), but I don't know offhand if it figures out what's missing automatically or if you have to manually give it a pregap length.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #3 –
Why would I want a single disc image?  What advantage does it have?

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #4 –
If you have a single disc image, you have everything in one file - the music, the scans, the cuesheet itself.
Split tracks are more compatible, but your folder structure changes from, say, Artist\album.flac to Artist\Album\track01...flac

Personally, I used to archive to a single disc image before, but it was a pain having to convert for portable use instead of just copying over the tracks to my device.
I now keep .cue + split tracks.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #5 –
Quote from: ChronoSphere on
If you have a single disc image, you have everything in one file - the music, the scans, the cuesheet itself.
Split tracks are more compatible, but your folder structure changes from, say, Artist\album.flac to Artist\Album\track01...flac

Personally, I used to archive to a single disc image before, but it was a pain having to convert for portable use instead of just copying over the tracks to my device.
I now keep .cue + split tracks.


I know cue sheets properly store gapless playback information.  Is there a way to put the info in a cue sheet in the tags of the song?

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #6 –
Gapless playback information is something that only applies to lossy files and has to do with quirks of those formats (MP3, M4A, etc.)—in a nutshell, the format adds some extra sound to each end of the file, and gapless playback info helps players trim that junk. This is not an issue in lossless formats like FLAC.

The "gaps" which may be mentioned in a cue sheet are something else entirely. The original CD has one the whole album's worth of audio in one continuous stream. This is segmented into portions called tracks, and each track is further divided into sub-tracks called indexes. Every track has index 01 for the main song, and some also have index 00 for the "gap" or "pregap" before the main song. This "gap" is usually silence or very quiet hiss, but could be applause, a count-in, interlude, intro, whatever. On rare occasion there are more indexes, like for when a song has several parts.

In a real CD player, when it reaches index 00, the display shows the next track and the time shows as a negative number which counts up to zero, like this: -3:00, -2:00, -1:00, 0:00 ... then the index 01 part starts to play. A very small number of CD decks also allowed you to see what index was currently playing and you could navigate them just like they were tracks.

When you rip a CD, you normally get all the audio, unless you have chosen to remove gaps in one particular ripper's esoteric options that no one should mess with if they don't have a good reason to. If you were to burn the audio back to CD from your file(s), you'd need the cue sheet so that the burner could know which parts of each track belong to which index. Otherwise it makes everything be index 01.

A cue sheet can be stored in a FLAC file, but the cue sheet format only works for a whole disc's worth of audio, so it's only useful in an image rip. There are no apps that make use of gap/index info other than CD burning software.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #7 –
I guess I am confused by gapless playback.

Most CDs have a 2 second "gap" between tracks.  Obviously, live albums, classical music, rock operas, etc have tracks that blend into each other so there is no break between the tracks.  I know that software like iTunes will scan your library and "automagically" figure out which tracks should be played seemlessly together.  I assume that they just are reading off a database somewhere.

I'm wondering if this kind of metadata can be written to the IDS/Vorbis tags so that this kind of playback just happens without the pause between tracks.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #8 –
Quote from: apastuszak on
Obviously, live albums, classical music, rock operas, etc have tracks that blend into each other so there is no break between the tracks.

this means that these albums have no gaps or that they're not silent.

Quote from: apastuszak on
I know that software like iTunes will scan your library and "automagically" figure out which tracks should be played seemlessly together.

"This tag only matters if you have Crossfade Song turned on in iTunes (Preferences > Playback), and it only affects playback from iTunes." (link)

Quote from: apastuszak on
I'm wondering if this kind of metadata can be written to the IDS/Vorbis tags so that this kind of playback just happens without the pause between tracks.

There are no pauses between tracks if an album is "gapless".
re-read the previous post from mjb2006 (from "The original CD has one the whole album's...").

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #9 –
From what I know, EAC and CUETools just append the gaps to the end of a track on default settings. So even if you split them into single tracks, the gaps are still there.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #10 –
Quote from: lvqcl on
Quote from: apastuszak on
Obviously, live albums, classical music, rock operas, etc have tracks that blend into each other so there is no break between the tracks.

this means that these albums have no gaps or that they're not silent.

Quote from: apastuszak on
I know that software like iTunes will scan your library and "automagically" figure out which tracks should be played seemlessly together.

"This tag only matters if you have Crossfade Song turned on in iTunes (Preferences > Playback), and it only affects playback from iTunes." (link)

Quote from: apastuszak on
I'm wondering if this kind of metadata can be written to the IDS/Vorbis tags so that this kind of playback just happens without the pause between tracks.

There are no pauses between tracks if an album is "gapless".
re-read the previous post from mjb2006 (from "The original CD has one the whole album's...").



Ok, I have an album.  The first 2 tracks are meant to be gapless, but all the other tracks should have a 2 second gap.  Is there any way to replicate this behavior without using a cuesheet?

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #11 –
Quote from: apastuszak on
Ok, I have an album.  The first 2 tracks are meant to be gapless, but all the other tracks should have a 2 second gap.  Is there any way to replicate this behavior without using a cuesheet?


yes, just rip to lossless (e.g., FLAC with EAC or dbpoweramp or cuetools) as separate tracks, use default settings, and it will automatically treat the gapless tracks as gapless and the ones with gaps will still have gaps. No need for cuesheet to achieve this outcome.  I think you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. Have you tried to rip the example album and then listened to the resulting rip? If you do, you will see that the gapless behavior of the separate track rips will be correct (without any cuesheet).

EDIT:  all above assuming your PLAYER handles gapless. Not all do (in particular some upnp/dlna setups), but that has nothing to do with the ripping issue.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #12 –
If you doubt the gaps are correctly preserved, just rip to cue+flac, then convert it to cue+split flac and then split flac to single flac again. Then compare the audio checksum of your original cue+flac rip and the flac image. It will be the same.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #13 –
Quote from: garym on
Quote from: apastuszak on
Ok, I have an album.  The first 2 tracks are meant to be gapless, but all the other tracks should have a 2 second gap.  Is there any way to replicate this behavior without using a cuesheet?


yes, just rip to lossless (e.g., FLAC with EAC or dbpoweramp or cuetools) as separate tracks, use default settings, and it will automatically treat the gapless tracks as gapless and the ones with gaps will still have gaps. No need for cuesheet to achieve this outcome.  I think you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. Have you tried to rip the example album and then listened to the resulting rip? If you do, you will see that the gapless behavior of the separate track rips will be correct (without any cuesheet).

EDIT:  all above assuming your PLAYER handles gapless. Not all do (in particular some upnp/dlna setups), but that has nothing to do with the ripping issue.


I'm on Linux, so I don't believe I can use any of the listed tools.  I'll do some experimenting and see what I can find.

FLAC+CUE vs. just FLAC

Reply #14 –
The "2 seconds" is not related to "gapless" playback. Gaplessness means the ability to rip and play back without glitching in the transition from one file to another. That means the format should be able to store and identify what is the precise end and beginning of an audio stream - and that a player should observe this, and implement it (in realtime, not having to wait for the next file to be looked up).

The gap that is usually 2 seconds, that is Track N Index 0, intended to be played once the player reaches the end of track N-1, but skipped if you ask your player to start at track N.
Index 0 was originally not intended to have music. That was what index marks were good for. For continuous music, one thought that the next "part" / "song" / whatever should be the next index. The market did not want that. Hence index 0 was filled with music if that was found suitable.


And for Linux ... try Wine. Or Rubyripper.