Query on lossless binary newsgroups

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Query on lossless binary newsgroups

Postby Mike Hunte » Tue Jan 17, 2006 8:12 pm

I was just curious as to why they're against posting complete disc images with cue sheets. That way, we could get exact clones with gaps and sub-index points perfectly in place.

Seems like it would also help eliminate the problem of dropped parts. Is is that there's some kind of line restriction or single file size rule? That is, they don't want to post one big-ass file for some reason that I'm probably missing.

Just pondering...thoughts?

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Postby Rspaight » Tue Jan 17, 2006 8:23 pm

Beats me. There was a guy on the mp3 groups a couple years back that was posting literally hundreds of DCC and MFSL discs in 256k MP3 as single files with cue sheets. He received endless abuse for this. "Why don't you split up the tracks? Waaaah!"

He reminded them that a simple utility would use the cue sheet to split the file into individual MP3s if that was desired, but people still bitched. He finally gave up.

I think people simply don't understand the concept and freak out.

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Postby Mike Hunte » Tue Jan 17, 2006 8:43 pm

I guess the iPod/Jukebox folks want their tracks already sliced and diced...good to go.

The concept of actually burning an entire CD as-is may soon be a distant memory!

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Postby Xenu » Wed Jan 18, 2006 12:03 am

Ehh. Honestly, I sorta agree with that methodology. I archive the FLAC copies (For computer use) as well as burn the actual CD sometimes. If I'm archiving FLAC copies, there's really no use for one big file.

FWIW, there are apparantly applications out there (though I don't know which in particular) that will use a noncompliant cue sheet to combine multiple WAVs into one large file and output the resultant, compliant cue.

(yes, I'm sure that going the other way is perfectly possible as well. I suppose that the posting of multiple files as a standard eases several issues that could arise regarding CRC checking and whatnot, and also allows people to cherry pick tracks if they so choose)
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Re: Query on lossless binary newsgroups

Postby Matt » Wed Jan 18, 2006 12:40 am

Mike Hunte wrote:I was just curious as to why they're against posting complete disc images with cue sheets. That way, we could get exact clones with gaps and sub-index points perfectly in place.

Seems like it would also help eliminate the problem of dropped parts. Is is that there's some kind of line restriction or single file size rule? That is, they don't want to post one big-ass file for some reason that I'm probably missing.

Just pondering...thoughts?


Dave mentions a non-compliant (track based) cue sheet. If one is included, and the tracks are extracted without further manipulation, you will get the correct gaps and sub-index points.

From: http://lossless.free.fr/

One file per track or the entire CD as one file?

Use the one file per track formula (Test & Copy - keyboard short-cut: F6). It has all the advantages, plus makes it faster for you to compile/upload and for the downloader to decode.

With EAC around nowdays, there is no reason to rip the entire CD as ONE huge WAV file and then RAR it up as well. Doing so is:

A waste of time for the poster

A waste of time for the downloader

A waste of hard disk space for both of the above

A pain for slow-Internet-link users who have to spend 2 days downloading a 300MB bunch of RAR files and decode them, just to get a taste of what the music is about. It effectively means ppl on slow links cannot "try out" posts - they can only download what they are certain they *will* want (and like).

A pain for users of premium servers (i.e. paying ones) who have to chew 300MB of their monthly allowance downloading RAR files, just to get a taste of the music. Again, ppl who pay 10 bucks a month for 8GB of downloads and cannot afford to triple that expense are excluded from the chance of being able to sample some of the music posted.

No need for a drawing if you happen to both be on a slow link AND have to use a pay server.
-Matt

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Postby Mike Hunte » Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:54 am

All good points - particularly the one about sampling tunes. I never even thought of that! I guess for me it's always been a matter of just grabbing what I want in its entirety. Though, *now* I am (for the first time ever) on a Giganews 25 gig/month limit...at least until I get back to my home base.

I think the only problem I still have with this non-compliant track-based cue sheet is that (and correct me if I'm wrong) one *must* use EAC to burn. Correct?

I've had nothing but grief over the years with EAC and various drives in the write mode. I've always preferred to make my *disc* image and feed my cue sheet into another compatible program to burn.

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Postby Matt » Wed Jan 18, 2006 8:57 am

I think the only problem I still have with this non-compliant track-based cue sheet is that (and correct me if I'm wrong) one *must* use EAC to burn. Correct?


I believe so, I have always had to use EAC.
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Postby Rspaight » Wed Jan 18, 2006 8:59 am

There's a program called "Burrrn" out there that will burn a disc from a non-compliant CUE, and works with drives that EAC doesn't (which seems to be most of 'em). Works like a charm for me.

http://www.burrrn.net/?page_id=4

As long as I get a good CUE and can build a disc with correct gap info, I'm happy. With a disc image, you're almost guaranteed that. With individual files, it's a crap shoot -- but it's fine when it works.

As an aside, I find the argument that it's too expensive to pirate disc images rather humorous.

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Postby Matt » Wed Jan 18, 2006 9:09 am

Looking around, this program also may burn non-compliant cue sheets:

http://www.burnatonce.com/
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Postby Crummy Old Label Avatar » Thu Jan 19, 2006 3:19 am

I can give you one good reason: Mac users. CUE sheets are a huge pain in the ass for those of us in MacLand to deal with. There are a few esoteric OS X apps that can make use of them (maybe Toast can now utilize them also, but I'm not certain), but by and large they are strictly a Windows thing. I dread it when I encounter one of these.
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Postby Rspaight » Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:43 am

As far as I can tell, Toast 7 is still CUE-ignorant, except for that CUE/BIN disk image thing that is apparently something totally different.

Now that the Intel Macs are out, I dream of a day when I can run EAC in a full-speed Windows VM under OS X. And the birds will sing and the clouds will part.

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Postby Xenu » Thu Jan 19, 2006 11:59 am

Crummy Old Label Avatar wrote:I can give you one good reason: Mac users. CUE sheets are a huge pain in the ass for those of us in MacLand to deal with. There are a few esoteric OS X apps that can make use of them (maybe Toast can now utilize them also, but I'm not certain), but by and large they are strictly a Windows thing. I dread it when I encounter one of these.


As I'm pretty sure Linux handles .cue sheets fine, this is...well, just Macs being difficult, I guess? .cue sheets have been around *forever*...
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Postby lukpac » Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:15 pm

Xenu wrote:As I'm pretty sure Linux handles .cue sheets fine, this is...well, just Macs being difficult, I guess? .cue sheets have been around *forever*...


Ask Adaptec/Roxio I guess.

Of course, Macs can use Sound Designer II files, which can contain index information without the need for another cue/index file.
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Postby Rspaight » Thu Jan 19, 2006 1:52 pm

Xenu wrote:As I'm pretty sure Linux handles .cue sheets fine, this is...well, just Macs being difficult, I guess? .cue sheets have been around *forever*...


There are command-line utils that can do it in OS X that are ports of Linux tools. But as far as something like Nero or EAC or even Burrrn, nope.

There's a OS X front-end called xAct that will supposedly deal with CUEs, but I haven't tried it.

Then there's this, which will apparently at least let you split up a big WAV:

http://www.yohng.com/cuewavextract.html

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Postby Crummy Old Label Avatar » Fri Jan 20, 2006 7:05 am

It's not so much Macs being difficult, but rather application designers not being particularly bothered. I really don't see the point of .cue sheets anyway. Why have an entire CD in one large file anyway?

One thing that bothers me about SDII files on Mac is that Toast treats the file as one long AIFF, completely ignoring the track markings. Jam DOES understand SDII, however. Fuck you, Roxio! (At least all versions of Toast up to 6 are like this; I haven't seen any reason to upgrade to Toast 7 -- unless someone has a torrent they want to give out....)

I don't believe that xAct deals with .cue sheets. I do use xAct and don't see this feature anywhere.

I prefer Missing Media Burner for ripping. It's a minimal GUI for cdparanoia, etc. The commandline makes it far more flexible than xAct. If you know the *nix commands, there's no need for EAC for Mac (which will never happen anyway, as the EAC designer has some sort of Mac-phobia).
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