Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

[mville]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Finally, I have tried hard to get the metadata in the .wav files to show on the car stereo
and have failed. The information shows on the computer but not external to that.
I am wasting time, but I am trying and will try some other things with .wav before
I give up and concede to .flac in some form (compressed or uncompressed, more likely compressed).
< sigh>

Tag support for wav files is notoriously poor, hence one the advantages of ripping to flac.

I was in the car to see if I could hear any differences between .wav and .flac
and noticing how it reads the flash drive (that light flickering). The car stereo seems to
keep the audio in memory for both format when repeating a song the light does not flicker.
But .wav would be more data for it to have to hold in memory than a .flac.
I do notice something different with the time bar for flac... flac seems a bit delayed or
at certain parts of the song where I know something happens or an event in the song
at a certain minute:second position, flac does not seem to be accurate there. Maybe it is buffering
some information ahead of time to do the decoding faster, whereas .wav is in real time.

This will be a consequence of the car stereo hardware resources/firmware and how it handles different audio formats.

[garym]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

... now I am playing with foobar...

yes, dbpa can do the same thing with its convert program. And PerfectTunes can automatically add album art.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Okay,...
I was able to use DBPA on the Mac to convert the existing .WAV files under artist name/album name
to .flac files and even had the tagging information inserted. The problem is I cannot verify the
tagging information is correct until I go to windows. I guess I could run parallels and have Windows running
on the Mac to check.

I could not do the same easily under Windows... maybe, just as with foobar, I have to tag each of the .wav files
first, then convert to flac files and the files/songs will be placed in another area under the appropriate
Album Artist/Album name and number followed by title of song.

I think this is the way to go with this so I do not have to rip all those CDs again.
It has been journey to get to this point but I am glad I did the research.

I may end up purchasing DBPA for the Mac, not Windows as Windows seems to
be served by a myriad of flac conversion tools that I can choose from that are free.

EAC did not work well with just converting the .wav files in batch and it deleted
my "source" .wav files --I forgot to turn off that option to delete the .wav after
it processes it to .flac . But I still have 2 master copies, so no big deal there
replacing the .wav files.

I think DBPA will be handy to keep around but on the Mac .

Thank you for all your support and patience as I acquiesce
that .flac is the way to go if I really want to see the album art
information on the car stereo. And since I am keeping the master hard drive
with all the .wav files backed up and safe, why should I worry about the audio
quality of the compressed the files in .flac any longer just for usage in the car
and especially now I can see how to convert the .wav to .flac without
having to re-rip the CDs again... If the .wav files I ripped back in April
have errors on them , as I discover them (only 3 so far where the CD
was just smudged), then I will deal with them then.
I will also have the benefit of being able to put more songs (albums, artists)
on the drives (flash, SSD, microsd) that I would use for the car maybe even
using only 2 hard drives instead of the 3 drives used now.

I will play with DBPA on Windows to see about adding the tagging
information and have the .flac files stored in the appropriate directory
Artist/Album/xx title.flac
So far it seems to just place the converted files in a top level directory
or sub directory where I want to organize the file but it is not creating
the Artist/Album folders. And I think that was because the .wav files
did not have the tagging information inside them to direct the .flac files
where they should go.

Thanks.

[garym]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

You simply need to set the dynamic naming properly when converting wav to flac and dbpa will create separate artist/album subdirectories. There is lots of info on this in the help screens on various program screens. Just click on the "?" Icons.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Okay, I think I figured it out...

On Windows, I have to add the tag information from the source directory.
I think someone mentioned that before... so to give credit to that person.
Once the tag information is filled out in the .wav files for Album Artist and/or
Artist and Album name, song number position and song title, then I have to
back to rip to .flac and the converted files will be stored under the appropriate
directories based on Artist/Album name/ files .. songs.flac numbered

Then I have to manually add the album art information by right clicking... then ID Tag
editing then searching for the right album art from internet...
I think this will be fine as this will be faster than ripping 1300 CDs again even if doing so
all these other steps could be automated .
I think this will be a small inconvenience... I just have to go through directory by directory.

It's been fun... time to do the work.

[mville]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Thank you for all your support and patience as I acquiesce
that .flac is the way to go if I really want to see the album art
information on the car stereo. And since I am keeping the master hard drive
with all the .wav files backed up and safe, why should I worry about the audio
quality of the compressed the files in .flac any longer just for usage in the car
and especially now I can see how to convert the .wav to .flac without
having to re-rip the CDs again...

There is NO difference in the audio quality of wav files and any corresponding compressed flac files. The compression refers to data compression only and should not be confused with analog audio compression.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Oh, I must not have seen that option for dynamic naming... maybe it was in small print.
Thank you... But I think even if I do this manually, it will be a lot faster from .wav to .flac
than re-ripping CDs where at times the encoding would take an hour for one song it got
hung up on just to make sure it got ripped accurately with CRC checking and error correction
when in reality when I visit those song, I do not hear a problem in the audio either on the
CD or in the .wav files I generated.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Yes, I see the light now.
I have been converted to flac even at compression level 0 or 1...
whichever one generates the larger file and / or higher bit rate
and or requires less CPU processing (encoding, decoding)...
just for my ease of mind.

Thank you so much.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

I guess I did see that dynamic naming area...
On the Mac it was already set, Windows I had to do some tweaking of it.

One has to do some work to get these things right when everything would be
automated and automatically placed in appropriate areas if I would just re-rip the
CDs .

Apparently, I am not going to get the software to research to fill in those blank fields
such as year, composers(s), contributing artists like with duets and guest artists if I just
convert the newly tagged .wav files as that information is not in the file nor in the
directory structure.
I will have to assess if that is important and if it is, I will have to re-rip everything.
If I want to simply get these things converted fast using only the artist\album\track* song.wav,
then I will have to live with that limited information in the resulting tagged .wav to the
compressed .flac files which will be appropriately placed onto the new masterflac hard drive
just as before with the .wav.

I see the downloaded version does insert the album art and once I purchase, that can be done
automatically... maybe I will luck out that the other fields can be inserted such as
genre, year, composer, record label ,etc. even UPC label
wow this is a lot to consider re-ripping the entire collection

Wav was so limiting and I kind of thought ripping to .wav using iTunes, that iTunes would have
added some of this information in the .wav file as the detailed information did appear in
the iTunes application once the CDs were loaded and ripped. What a waste of time.
<sigh>

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

I am also going to have to send an email to Apple's CEO Tim Cook
as to why iTunes does not support flac and also why it seems .aiff files,
which could contain metadata information better than .wav, are not
widely supported on car audio systems such as this Pioneer or the Sony.
Maybe had I ripped all those CDs to .aiff, I would not have to go through
this to get the data and images added to the audio files.

I may just go ahead and re-rip all the CDs and use that burst option
as the software did spend a lot of time doing multiple passes ripping certain
songs on CDs which were fairly clean... one song it spent 4 hours or so if not
more ripping. I had to go to sleep and come back to it the next morning.
I did not hear any noticeable anomalies on that track but some of the music
is loud and as having a vinyl record that has a little scratch on it, if the
music is not soft, you barely notice the scratch.

Well that is it... I have two more days of the trial... then I can purchase for either
platform... coin toss maybe.

[garym]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Don't use burst option. You want the ultra secure option with ACCURAERIP. You want to rip correctly, even if it takes a bit longer. And by the way even some brand new CDs with no apparent flaws can have errors in ripping (not bit perfect). That's one reason Itunes is not a recommended ripper. You want a secure ripper that does an ACCURATERIP match (such as dbpa).

Respectfully, you seem to spend your research time on all the wrong things (e.g. Wav vs flac file size). Instead, you need to read a bit more about secure ripping and ACCURATERIP. Just google it.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Don't use burst option. You want the ultra secure option with ACCURAERIP. You want to rip correctly, even if it takes a bit longer. And by the way even some brand new CDs with no apparent flaws can have errors in ripping (not bit perfect). That's one reason Itunes is not a recommended ripper. You want a secure ripper that does an ACCURATERIP match (such as dbpa).
Respectfully, you seem to spend your research time on all the wrong things (e.g. Wav vs flac file size). Instead, you need to read a bit more about secure ripping and ACCURATERIP. Just google it.

I may be an audiophile of sorts, but I am not that anal(-retentive) about it/perfection to want to wait 4 hours
for a rip of one song. I had to stop it, rip the other songs which went well and go back
to that one song. Again this is in testing all this out because the .wav file created months
ago sounded just fine.
The song was the first track on the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack:
the No.1 pop song (I've Had) The Time Of My Life - Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes I think it went *1 easy listening too.
actually the CD did have a pin hole scratch on it in near the center and probably why
there were issues with it. In the past that track skipped a bit but I "fixed" it with a little
liquid paper on the label side
On CDs the tracks start in the middle of the CD and go outward.
Actually if you hold the CD angled in the light, you can see the track separations on it
(like with vinyl staring outward going inward).
That song , there were over 300 frames or something I saw that had to be
re-ripped.. and why it too so long to complete that one.
One DVD drive reported it need to process 700 frames... but the LG said 300+ so
I went with that drive... but in the end, there was nothing noticeable audibly about the
track even if there was that scratch...
So that was not fair... but other CDs that are lightly scratched, some rip 100% Accurate and
some the software struggles with a bit taking a long time, longer than necessary considering
the song sounds fine when I play it in the optical drive or listen to the already established .wav
files, thus I see no reason really waste time with this when I have 1300* CDs to process.
I want it to go as smoothly as it did when I worked on the iTunes ripping (with error correction)
for about a week.
* well now that is less some 90 CDs I have ripped to .flac in the meanwhile.
I do not think I am too concerned about perfection or accurate rips for CDs that are lightly scratched
or that I have repaired using one of those CD repair kits I got long ago to scrape off parts of the
CD's playable side. I did notice that the software reported some inaccuracies on those... but again
the CD plays just fine in a standard CD player and I verified such with the .wav files.
Believe me, since I have ripped to wav and have moved the audio files to the flash drives,
I have listened to a lot and tested those and I do not hear anything noticeable like skips or
faint buzzing (not sure that is the right term , like a faint scratch as the error correction takes place).
there is one song:(full version 6minutes+ of) The Green-Eyed Lady - Sugarloaf a *3 pop song, that I have on Curb Records,
though slightly scratched and noticeable on one CD drive, I put in another (LG) and the
flaw went away. So I ripped using that DVD/CD drive instead. The .wav sounds fine.
The flac conversion sounded fine as well though it was reported as Insecure?.
Some are reported or red-flagged but reported as Secure with some AR value..

Yes, I may have to do more research on the accuracy of the rips and how to
interpret (worry about or ignore) those AR values , some red some Inaccurate,
Insecure some Secure...
what I had been doing was redoing those that said Insecure and moving past the ones
that said secure. But I don't want to waste time as when I visited those song that
were ripped Insecure, I did not hear any problems... That is where EAC came in handy as
it reported the "exact" location where there could be a problem minute:second so I can skip
to that part to see... and I heard nothing out of the ordinary even with Sony MDR V55 headphones
on

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Don't use burst option. You want the ultra secure option with ACCURAERIP. You want to rip correctly, even if it takes a bit longer. And by the way even some brand new CDs with no apparent flaws can have errors in ripping (not bit perfect). That's one reason Itunes is not a recommended ripper. You want a secure ripper that does an ACCURATERIP match (such as dbpa).

Respectfully, you seem to spend your research time on all the wrong things (e.g. Wav vs flac file size). Instead, you need to read a bit more about secure ripping and ACCURATERIP. Just google it.

Oh, I think I have finally moved past the file size issue.
It was a learning curve... in a short amount of time. I thought larger meant better,
but I can accept that let us say the audio encounters a frequency of 10,000 Hz,
there is no reason why that should be stored in 16 bits when that could be
stored in 14 bits (log 10,000 / log 2 from old computer/math days).
I am not sure if that is the way this works but I can see there could be a waste
of padded zeros in the audio file (2 bits of zeros). Lower frequencies could require
even smaller amount of bits to store that information : 2000 Hz may require only
11 bits with 5 bits of zeroes (wasted padding)... .wav must have a lot of zeroes in it
in high-ordered bits (within 16 bits of information) . wow... that is a lot of wasted bits.
The human range of hearing 20Hz to 20,000 Hz ... 16 bits unsigned 65536-1 max value.

Also a lot of music is repetitive so maybe those parts can be compressed
(4 on the floor so maybe a compression of 25% to 33% at least )...
Some files I see 43%,44% compression so flac is working better than expected.
I am not sure this how flac works but I see and understand the benefit of it.

As long as I keep the .wav files secure, I have nothing to worry about
the compressed .flac files for the car audio (hard drive, flash drive, SD card).

Now I am working on the Flac Audio files master hard drive with a possible
occasional reference to the .wav master if I ever encounter an issue with
a flac conversion of a song... I will just convert the .wav to .flac , add the metadata
and move forward to the next CD.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

I am not sure if my analysis means anything, but I can now
see that .wav is very wasteful in the high ordered bits ...
I should look at a hexadecimal dump of the data in .wav and
would probably see a lot of 00s in it.


if 5 upper bits are wasted 0s and 11 lower bits are useful audio
frequencies could that already be a savings, if the zeroes are stripped
out, of 31% compression right there alone? and think of the
entire song , more savings of bits?

I am not looking at .wav the way I used to now now it could be
a wave of wasted zeroed bits.
Maybe that area of saved (bits) bytes in another location of the
.wav or .flac file (perhaps the at the footer) can be used for more
useful metadata, album art and other pertinent information?


I am all for flac now.

Maybe the .flac back to .wav to get the original back is just
putting back a lot of zeroes in upper bits ?

Nothing From Nothing - Billy Preston a No. 1 pop song 1974
leaves nothing ...

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

2 bytes or 16 bits
0x0000

each hex digit is 4 bits
so maybe a lot of 0x0 in the .wav file if the first 4 bits are just zeroes
I should not have stated 0x00 but that is a possibility too

20Hz = 0x0014 = 0000 0000 0001 0100 so a lot of 0s in the most significant bits up until the 1 (11 bits zeroes)

2,000 Hz = 0x07D0 = 0000 0111 1101 0000 so a savings of 5 bits (upper bits zeroes)

20,000Hz = 0x4E20 = 0100 1110 0010 0000 (1 bit upper zero that can be stripped).
I don't think you touch or remove the lower bits with zeroes, just the place holding upper bits that are zeros
(padding) to fit into the 2 bytes.

it is like saying 00456 in decimal is really 456 the padded zeroes at the beginning are not necessary
and if stripped does not change the value if you got rid of the 0s

I read somewhere that the flac compression may use as few bits necessary to store the audio or frequencies.

I am not sure this is the concept, but maybe this could convince some others that it is possible not
losing data if just stripping off upper bit zeroes as part of the compression.

Then I guess if you have audio that ranges between 40Hz to 8000 Hz (not sure ?) but there could
be a savings (compression) of at least 3 bits (zeroes) off the top throughout the entire (huge) wav file.
(compress out the upper bits of zeroes)
if 8 areas, frames, or whatever, save 24 bits or 3 bytes right there...

I am sure the flac software is more complex than what I am thinking as I am not an audio engineer either.
But I can appreciate this concept of flac and maybe it can be explained some other way to fully convince
that you should not or will not lose data with this type of compression. The audio frequencies are preserved
just the way it is stored is altered, compressed using the amount of bits necessary.
flac is great now...