6 ms·

My personal CD ripping script is configured to leave all pregaps after track one at the end of the preceding track when splitting them out as individual files.

My personal CD ripping script is configured to leave all pregaps after track one at the end of the preceding track when splitting them out as individual files. It gets ripped in one DAO pass for guaranteed preservation of all samples when using gapless playback on live recordings. Track navigation then works just like a real CD without having to listen to an incongruous section of audio meant to link the previous track on sequential play or, even worse, missing it altogether. I have a classical CD from the 80's with index marks for different movements within within the individual compositions represented by a handful of tracks. My understanding is that DG was the only publisher routinely using them. That required some manual intervention to convert the indices to separate tracks. Sony was pretty good about providing index nav. on their full size stereo players. At least until their perpetually cruddy remotes eventually failed.

ssl-3 2y ago
That's probably the best way to do it, given common toolsets and players. I also rip pregaps as lead-outs (rather than the lead-ins that the structure may appear to suggest). It's things like this that make me wish that we'd landed on on a good, popular way to store albums (with metadata!) instead of individual tracks -- or to at least reassemble individual tracks' files properly into whole albums without glitches and weirdness. (FLAC/cue can do some of this, but hardware player support is nearly nonexistant.) I've been told that this is a stupid thing to want, and I want it anyway. I'm old enough to remember listening to albums the whole way through by default since anything else would take extra steps, and perhaps fortunate-enough to have generally preferred listening to albums where that is a thing that is also worth doing intentionally. (And yet, I am young enough to still be bitter about Lars killing Napster. My dissatisfaction is multifaceted.)
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  In addition to lossy compressed track files I also generate a FLAC with embedded cue as a master copy of the original. It's useful for recreating the whole recording for mass editing. I have a few discs mastered with preemphasis that needed correction. I too hope there will be a day when all FLAC players support track navigation. The reality is the music album has had its day in the sun and will largely be a forgotten curiosity like the typewriter or rotary phone.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    You're not wrong. New music isn't frequently recorded with the intent for it to be heard in an album-oriented way. But the albums I like to listen to as albums will remain cohesive albums for an eternity. Lots of stuff from Roger Waters is cohesive in that way, which is perhaps something a person might expect me to say. But also lots of stuff from Maynard James Keenan, Trent Reznor, and even Marilyn Manson is also this way, which is perhaps less expected. (And sure, I can rip an album as an album and convert that to a singular MP3 that I can play as an album almost anywhere, and it needs to be a single file since MP3s can't be perfectly concatenated. But then, I can't easily skip around on that singular album when it behooves me to do so. I could do both things when it was still in CD format.)
    - caf 2y ago
      Billy Eilish's latest is intended to be listened as a complete album (but of course the fact that this is known as an exception proves the general rule...)
      - ssl-3 2y ago
        That.... that makes sense. Her recordings are excellent. They generally sound simply fantastic. When turned up on the big stereo, they tickle every auditory input I have -- including the usually-strictly-tactile ones. I've heard that her brother, who is probably (and perhaps obviously) her biggest fan, generally has a huge part in producing and mixing her music. It is apparent that they work well together. Anyhow, thanks. That album is on the list for the next time the neighbors have left for the weekend.
      - IndySun 2y ago
        Billy Eilish is not exceptional in this regard. 100s of 1000s of albums are. There's absolutely no need to single out an artist.
        IndySun 2y ago
        ?
- qingcharles 2y ago
  I'd love a new solution that wasn't "break the CD data into pieces." I've never looked inside a CUE file, but it's just text and I don't think it supports meta data, right? We need like a new CUE file to go with the FLAC, right? p.s. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40923646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40923646
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Ideally, I think I'd want a singular container (of whatever sort) that has the album's audio, the music-related timing metadata (as applicable), and whatever other metadata may be appropriate (lyrics? liner note graphics? music videos? sure!). The audio should be able to be FLAC. But it should also be able to be anything else, like Vorbis or MP3 or AAC or IDK. It needs to be able to be played continuously without aberration (which can't actually be done with a group of MP3 streams). The audio needs to be able to be seekable, like a CD is also seekable. By track. By index. (With pregaps, where appropriate -- because CDs also have pregaps.) Other potential metadata must be able to include whatever subcodes are involved in things like CD+G[0] and HDCD and CD Text, since all of those are supersets of the regular datastream and playback is compatible with any CD player. And it needs to be a singular container file because...well, that's just easier to keep track of as the years go by and data migrates. Only then, will we have the beginning of a valid archive format for audio CDs as they actually still exist on [some] store shelves today. (Some stuff can be optional, just as lots of things are optional inside of an MKV container for a film.) [0]: Almost nobody ever used this outside of the 1990s karaoke world, but Information Society's self-titled album includes an illustrated sequence, with lyrics, that is completely implemented in CD+G and that runs for the entire length of the album. And I should be able to render that locally here in 2024 from a container on my pocket supercomputer instead of watching a bad rip from a Sega Genesis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b89sSa8QlLg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b89sSa8QlLg
    - piperswe 2y ago
      You mentioned MKV - Matroska (MKA for audio, MKV for video) could honestly work quite well for this situation with just a little extra standardization. Audio codecs: use a single stream of whatever codec you'd like. FLAC/Vorbis/MP3/AAC/Opus/etc. can all go into Matroska. Seekable: Use chapters for tracks, and nested chapters for indices. Matroska documentation even gives an example of using ChapterPhysicalEquiv 20 for CD tracks and ChapterPhysicalEquiv 10 for CD indices. Other metadata can be muxed into the stream as well. Lyrics can be included as text in metadata (lyric tag) or as a subtitle stream. Liner note graphics (and basically anything else) can be included as embedded files. Music videos can be video streams in the Matroska file.
- mikepurvis 2y ago
  This is an issue for movie discs too. Some mkv rips will preserve chapter data (though player support is spotty), but in the end it's still a big linear file— menus, intros, trailers, optional features, etc are all gone once it's ripped unless you rip that stuff to separate video files. Which I get on the one hand, but it's a bummer that in all these cases (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) the metadata for the larger structure of the production got inextricably tied to the specific physical media implementing it, such that the only real way to preserve that data was to rip a full disc copy.
op00to 2y ago
> At least until their perpetually cruddy remotes eventually failed. For me, Sony remotes were made of the same stuff as early Nokia phones - indestructible! Surprised to hear someone thought they were cruddy.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  They were physically robust but the carbon button contacts always became dodgy for me. I tried to avoid Sony products for this reason because I encountered it so often in other people's gear. I have a remote from the late 00's that saw virtually zero use and it conked out with age alone.
  - alliao 2y ago
    Japanese called it Sony Timer...some call it urban legend but this seems like yet another independently verified data point
  - layer8 2y ago
    There is/was carbon spray that you could use to refresh the contacts.
albrewer 2y ago
I had a set of cds that went with an intro to music theory textbook around ~2009. It did also made heavy use of indices in tracks to do exactly the same thing. My car stereo listed each index as a track. I wish I could remember the name of the textbook because I really liked a lot of the baroque music on the CDs and can't remember who they were by or the titles of the songs...
- benjaminpv 2y ago
  Do you remember if the textbook was orange (possibly with a two-tone cover design)? I had a really good textbook in college that had a... 4? CD set (with the big jewel case) that had a bunch of tracks and like you I really enjoyed it.
  - albrewer 2y ago
    It was a reddish (could be orange, could have been maroon) color lightly mottled in black with a picture of a violin (or cello, idk) set in the lower 2/3 of the cover. I'm somewhat certain it had 6 cds because it filled my disc changer in my stereo, although that detail is fuzzy too.

ssl-3 2y ago

That's probably the best way to do it, given common toolsets and players. I also rip pregaps as lead-outs (rather than the lead-ins that the structure may appear to suggest). It's things like this that make me wish that we'd landed on on a good, popular way to store albums (with metadata!) instead of individual tracks -- or to at least reassemble individual tracks' files properly into whole albums without glitches and weirdness. (FLAC/cue can do some of this, but hardware player support is nearly nonexistant.) I've been told that this is a stupid thing to want, and I want it anyway. I'm old enough to remember listening to albums the whole way through by default since anything else would take extra steps, and perhaps fortunate-enough to have generally preferred listening to albums where that is a thing that is also worth doing intentionally. (And yet, I am young enough to still be bitter about Lars killing Napster. My dissatisfaction is multifaceted.)

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
In addition to lossy compressed track files I also generate a FLAC with embedded cue as a master copy of the original. It's useful for recreating the whole recording for mass editing. I have a few discs mastered with preemphasis that needed correction. I too hope there will be a day when all FLAC players support track navigation. The reality is the music album has had its day in the sun and will largely be a forgotten curiosity like the typewriter or rotary phone.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  You're not wrong. New music isn't frequently recorded with the intent for it to be heard in an album-oriented way. But the albums I like to listen to as albums will remain cohesive albums for an eternity. Lots of stuff from Roger Waters is cohesive in that way, which is perhaps something a person might expect me to say. But also lots of stuff from Maynard James Keenan, Trent Reznor, and even Marilyn Manson is also this way, which is perhaps less expected. (And sure, I can rip an album as an album and convert that to a singular MP3 that I can play as an album almost anywhere, and it needs to be a single file since MP3s can't be perfectly concatenated. But then, I can't easily skip around on that singular album when it behooves me to do so. I could do both things when it was still in CD format.)
  - caf 2y ago
    Billy Eilish's latest is intended to be listened as a complete album (but of course the fact that this is known as an exception proves the general rule...)
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      That.... that makes sense. Her recordings are excellent. They generally sound simply fantastic. When turned up on the big stereo, they tickle every auditory input I have -- including the usually-strictly-tactile ones. I've heard that her brother, who is probably (and perhaps obviously) her biggest fan, generally has a huge part in producing and mixing her music. It is apparent that they work well together. Anyhow, thanks. That album is on the list for the next time the neighbors have left for the weekend.
    - IndySun 2y ago
      Billy Eilish is not exceptional in this regard. 100s of 1000s of albums are. There's absolutely no need to single out an artist.
      - IndySun 2y ago
        ?
qingcharles 2y ago
I'd love a new solution that wasn't "break the CD data into pieces." I've never looked inside a CUE file, but it's just text and I don't think it supports meta data, right? We need like a new CUE file to go with the FLAC, right? p.s. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40923646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40923646
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Ideally, I think I'd want a singular container (of whatever sort) that has the album's audio, the music-related timing metadata (as applicable), and whatever other metadata may be appropriate (lyrics? liner note graphics? music videos? sure!). The audio should be able to be FLAC. But it should also be able to be anything else, like Vorbis or MP3 or AAC or IDK. It needs to be able to be played continuously without aberration (which can't actually be done with a group of MP3 streams). The audio needs to be able to be seekable, like a CD is also seekable. By track. By index. (With pregaps, where appropriate -- because CDs also have pregaps.) Other potential metadata must be able to include whatever subcodes are involved in things like CD+G[0] and HDCD and CD Text, since all of those are supersets of the regular datastream and playback is compatible with any CD player. And it needs to be a singular container file because...well, that's just easier to keep track of as the years go by and data migrates. Only then, will we have the beginning of a valid archive format for audio CDs as they actually still exist on [some] store shelves today. (Some stuff can be optional, just as lots of things are optional inside of an MKV container for a film.) [0]: Almost nobody ever used this outside of the 1990s karaoke world, but Information Society's self-titled album includes an illustrated sequence, with lyrics, that is completely implemented in CD+G and that runs for the entire length of the album. And I should be able to render that locally here in 2024 from a container on my pocket supercomputer instead of watching a bad rip from a Sega Genesis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b89sSa8QlLg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b89sSa8QlLg
  - piperswe 2y ago
    You mentioned MKV - Matroska (MKA for audio, MKV for video) could honestly work quite well for this situation with just a little extra standardization. Audio codecs: use a single stream of whatever codec you'd like. FLAC/Vorbis/MP3/AAC/Opus/etc. can all go into Matroska. Seekable: Use chapters for tracks, and nested chapters for indices. Matroska documentation even gives an example of using ChapterPhysicalEquiv 20 for CD tracks and ChapterPhysicalEquiv 10 for CD indices. Other metadata can be muxed into the stream as well. Lyrics can be included as text in metadata (lyric tag) or as a subtitle stream. Liner note graphics (and basically anything else) can be included as embedded files. Music videos can be video streams in the Matroska file.
mikepurvis 2y ago
This is an issue for movie discs too. Some mkv rips will preserve chapter data (though player support is spotty), but in the end it's still a big linear file— menus, intros, trailers, optional features, etc are all gone once it's ripped unless you rip that stuff to separate video files. Which I get on the one hand, but it's a bummer that in all these cases (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) the metadata for the larger structure of the production got inextricably tied to the specific physical media implementing it, such that the only real way to preserve that data was to rip a full disc copy.

op00to 2y ago

> At least until their perpetually cruddy remotes eventually failed. For me, Sony remotes were made of the same stuff as early Nokia phones - indestructible! Surprised to hear someone thought they were cruddy.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
They were physically robust but the carbon button contacts always became dodgy for me. I tried to avoid Sony products for this reason because I encountered it so often in other people's gear. I have a remote from the late 00's that saw virtually zero use and it conked out with age alone.
- alliao 2y ago
  Japanese called it Sony Timer...some call it urban legend but this seems like yet another independently verified data point
- layer8 2y ago
  There is/was carbon spray that you could use to refresh the contacts.

albrewer 2y ago

I had a set of cds that went with an intro to music theory textbook around ~2009. It did also made heavy use of indices in tracks to do exactly the same thing. My car stereo listed each index as a track. I wish I could remember the name of the textbook because I really liked a lot of the baroque music on the CDs and can't remember who they were by or the titles of the songs...

benjaminpv 2y ago
Do you remember if the textbook was orange (possibly with a two-tone cover design)? I had a really good textbook in college that had a... 4? CD set (with the big jewel case) that had a bunch of tracks and like you I really enjoyed it.
- albrewer 2y ago
  It was a reddish (could be orange, could have been maroon) color lightly mottled in black with a picture of a violin (or cello, idk) set in the lower 2/3 of the cover. I'm somewhat certain it had 6 cds because it filled my disc changer in my stereo, although that detail is fuzzy too.