I haven't really used EAC to duplicate CDs. I think, if I recall correctly, you can ask EAC to create a CUE Sheet (image?), then then it to write the CUE Sheet to a blank CD, which burns the songs in order with identical between song gaps as the original (presuming you also ripped the songs)...
OK, your file "Keb'Mo' - A better man.flac" is *not* tagged. Fire up foobar2000, shift select all of the Keb'Mo' files from the main window, and then do the following:
1. Right click on the selected items; this brings up a menu.
2. Select "masstagger->edit tags" from menu that appears.
3. Immediately below the "actions to perform" window, hit the "Add" button.
4. This brings up a pop-up window with a drop down menu set to "set value..."--click on the down arrow and select "guess value from filename..." Then hit the "OK" button.
5. On my set up, this brings up another pop-up with a drop down menu, currently set to "%track%-%title%." You can see if there is something close in the drop down you can edit, or just type in, without the quotes: "%artist% - %title%". Then hit "OK."
6. You should be back at the main "masstagger" window--if you now hit the "Run" button, it will create "artist" and "title" tags for the selected songs by decoding your filename naming convention.
A little observation. I think if you look at your EAC settings (EAC->EAC Options...->Filename) you will find that you have the following string in the left text box:
%A - %T
That is what is causing your filenames to be written with the Artist, then a dash, then the title. Look at the string I referenced above--
%A\%C\%N-%T
This means when I rip, I end up with directory structure, since the "\" is for a directory (EAC will create them if they aren't already there). In other words, I have a series of folders (directories), with one folder for each artist. The next entry (%C) is the CD title, so in each artist folder, I have separate folders for each album by that artist. The %N-%T means that, in each album folder, I have a series of files that represent the tracks on that album, in a standard format with track number, then a dash, then the song title.
Soo... When I fire up foobar, I can select a bunch of songs (they *all* follow this format), go to masstagger, and instead of using that %artist%-%title% line, I can enter:
../../%artist%/%album%/%tracknumber%-title%
This allows me to "create" tags from the directory structure, so it fills in the artist, album, tracknumber, and title fields.
Your .m3u file isn't really a song. Files with the .m3u extension are playlists. You must have told EAC (or whatever you ripped with) to create a playlist for the album. The file extension is probably associated with WMP10 in your windows set up, so it shows up with a WMA icon. But, like I said, its not a song file, its a playlist that just lists the songs from that album in playlist order--open it with Word and you will see its just a text file. The real cue here is that the name is the *album* you ripped, not a song on the album...
Good luck, this gets confusing. |
This is a pretty dated post... I've since gone Apple Lossless. My understanding is that you have to be careful with WMA, since it can be configured as lossy or lossless. Incidentally, CDs tend to average about 450-500MB, not the full 720MB capacity (maybe classical CDs run the full capacity). But, even so, I seriously doubt lossless WMA will give you 10:1 compression. Apple Lossless is about 2:1, and even high grade mp3 and AAC only net 10:1. |
Apple Lossless isn't a lossy compression scheme. If you get good rips out of EAC, which should be bit-perfect, you can create m4a files out of iTunes using Apple Lossless (not AAC!) that are reversible into bit-perfect WAV files. Just smaller by a factor of 2. You can even get EAC to call iTunes as an encoder using:
http://www.rarewares.org/files/aac/iTunesEncode46.zip
The kmixer issue is a playback problem, not a ripping issue. EAC should make sure you get perfect copies of your CDs. Using ASIO to bypass kmixer ensures PCs don't muck up the datastream before it hits the USB device.
I used to keep WAV files, but the lack of tags is a serious defect. Since Apple Lossless supported tagging, was smaller, and didn't result in a loss of audio quality, it was a no-brainer for me. |
Hmmm... What do your song files look like? When I rip, I specify for EAC the following format: %A\%C\%N-%T (This examples presumes ripping to wav files)... That gives me a structure where, for example, I have: C:\..\My Music\Cash, Johnny\American Recordings\01-Delia's Gone.wav C:\..\My Music\Cash, Johnny\American Recordings\02-Let The Train Blow The Whistle.wav If you set up EAC with the format %A-%C-%T, you would end up with, instead: C:\..\My Music\Cash, Johnny-American Recordings-Delia's Gone.wav C:\..\My Music\Cash, Johnny-American Recordings-Let The Train Blow The Whistle.wav If I "play" the first set in foobar, it would come up with the song titles (it assumes filename = song title) identified as: 01-Delia's Gone.wav 02-Let The Train Blow The Whistle.wav But, in the second instance, it would come up with: Cash, Johnny-American Recordings-Delia's Gone.wav Cash, Johnny-American Recordings-Let The Train Blow The Whistle.wav In neither case would the "Artist" or "Album" field be filled in, since WAV files don't have tags... Is the second set of files what you are seeing? I.e., no tags but artist/album? I think I mentioned "masstagger" for foobar. If you have your files the way I do, you can select files in the library, and tell masstagger to fill in the Artist and Album fields. In the latter case, you can also tell foobar to retag from the filename itself... If you are interested, masstagger comes with the foobar installation, and I'd direct you to: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12302Don't be intimidated--look for "Guess values from filename" or something like that. Its pretty easy, although I'd do some test files before running 15000 wav files. My alternative is ripping to ALAC and using iTunes. I start EAC and set the options for compression to iTunesEncode: http://www.rarewares.org/files/aac/iTunesEncode46.zipiTunesEncode is set up to create AAC files, but its pretty easy to change from AAC encoding to ALAC encoding--see the sixth message down here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1358221��Because iTunesEncode actually interfaces directly with iTunes, the net result is the ripped files are automatically written into the library and the tags are automatically passed from EAC. So, if you can use CDDB to get the Artist/Album data in EAC, it will show up in iTunes... Hope this helps... |
I'm not too familiar with FLAC, other than its lossless. I thought--without investigation--that there are some issues with the tags being standardized. I've also never used WMP or Meedio. The problems you may be having may be due to the nonstandard tags.
I highly recommend EAC as a ripper. In secure mode, there is nothing I'm aware of that will provide better rips. There are FLAC encoders that can be configured with EAC to generate FLAC rips instead of WAV or MP3. Takes a bit of time to get it set up, but once you do, it will automatically create a nice clean library as well--all my rips are stored automatically in /artist/album/trackno_song.m4a format. If audio is your principal concern, take the time to learn how to set up EAC. It really isn't that hard.
As far as playback, if you are committed to Meedio, your options appear somewhat limited. I just looked at their manual, and they don't claim to support FLAC as a format, just MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, APE, and AIFF files. Of those, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis are lossy compression schemes. AIFF is like WAV in that it doesn't support tags except under some kludgy nonstandard implementation. That leaves you with APE or WMA. APE (Monkey's Audio) is supposed to be good, but I don't think the decoders are broadly available other than on a PC platform. As an archival format, it leaves me nervous. WMA will ultimately succeed just because its MSoft. But, you have to make sure that you specify lossless encoding rather than lossy encoding since it will do both.
I noticed there is a Meedio foobar2000 plugin. If you are committed to Meedio, you might think about that, since foobar is a well respected player. The note on the plug in says something about mp3 playback, but foobar does FLAC natively.
Good luck. |
Sounded like Josep was committed to Meedio for whatever reason, otherwise I probably would recommend foobar, even though I actually find foobar's UI kind of a pain. The only other downside is that using foobar/WAV still leaves you with the problem that WAV doesn't natively support standardized tagging. That said, if you rip with EAC into a defined directory format, masstagger is great at recovering album/artist/track number information from the directory structure itself. |
I'm a little confused, not sure whether you are talking about tagging or libraries...
EAC, as with most other rippers, use internet databases to look up song information--track, titles, genre, track number, album. If you look under "EAC Options" and click on the filename tab, you can specify a format for how EAC saves the ripped file. For example, I use:
%A\%C\%N-%T
This tells EAC to create and artist (%A) directory, unless one exists, a subdirectory for the album title (%C) and song names of the format Track Number (%N)-Track Name (%T).
If the format for the files you use supports tags, EAC will also write that information into tags in the file. What that means is that, no matter where you copy the file or move it, if the file is read by a program that understands the tags, it will know the album/artist/etc. information. If you use WMA, I believe those use standard tags. But, you would need some plug-in for EAC to write WMA Lossless. Its not good enough to, for example, write WAV files and use a standalone WMA conversion program unless that standalone program can recover tag information from the directory path of the file, because there are no tags written into WAV files.
The reason I use Apple Lossless (ALAC) is because it is a lossless format that is compatible with my range of devices, including my squeezeboxes and iPod, and supports tags. So, when EAC writes the files, the information gets embedded in the file itself.
Most media players recognize standard tags. iTunes, for example, will read the tags from a file and make a copy of those tags in something called a library file. The library file is what iTunes uses to quickly index your list of songs by artist, or genre, or title, or whatever. Its also what the program uses to display all of that information. But, if I import a WAV into iTunes, it has no tags, so iTunes can't write the tags to the library file for display. There are ways of shortcutting the retagging of files--in the Mac environment, there are premade AppleScripts that allow you to generate tag information from the directory structure. Alas, AppleScripts don't work in the PC environment. However, you can write/find some Javascripts that will do the same thing.
Foobar works the same way, except that the "library" is called the "database." So, Foobar will read and create database entries for common standardized tags. This, obviously, doesn't work for WAV files. But, foobar comes standard with a plug-in called "masstagger," which is very powerful. You can use masstagger, for example, to recover tag information from the directory structure.
So, its really the library or database in a player that allows you to easily index things and find albums. But, the library/database is computer-specific. So, if I have a common library of WAV songs on a server used by more than one computers running foobar, I have to use masstagger at each computer. If the library of songs is mp3, ALAC, WMA, or someother format that supports file tags in a conventional way, on the other hand, each computer will automatically read and use the tag information associated with the files.
Hope this isn't too incoherent--I'm sitting at home with a vicious head cold, so my explanations may be a bit rambling.
Good luck! |
Hmm... I'm suddenly wondering... Did you fire up Meedio/WMP and then "open" a song in your collection to play or double click on the song file itself and have that launch Meedio or WMP?
For most players, and this applies to both foobar and iTunes as well, you need to use some form of "add to library." For example, in iTunes I can tell it to search for new songs in a specified directory and it will run through that directory--and all subdirectories--looking for songs not already in the library. When it finds such a song, it will read the tag data, and add the song to its own library file. Then, I never need to do that again to access the song--it will automatically show up in the library when I open iTunes the next time...
I have used my ALAC files in a PC environment and in a Mac environment--they are stored on a network server and I've access those files from both a Mac Mini and several Windows XP computers. The question is usually whether the software player you are running is compatible with the format--slimserver (used in conjunction with Squeezebox devices) will understand ALAC files and play them. However, my old Turtle Beach audiotron network players (basically, dedicated player software in a network box) would not play ALAC files. There is a plug in for foobar that will allow foobar to play ALAC files, but I gather it is a bit flakey. |
Hmmm... Gordon is a very smart guy, but I would be very cautious about a 50' run of coax, esp. w/a couple grand price tag. I had a set up where I ran a 30' run of toslink to a DAC and switched from that to a 30' run of USB and a short toslink run, and the difference was night and day. I would note that the max range of a standard USB cable is like 20' or so--you have to use USB repeater cables, which receive/retransmit the USB signals, for longer runs. They are still relatively cheap ($15 for a 16' run), so it might be worth trying. If you do try the coax route, make sure its returnable if there isn't a sonic difference. If you are talking about spending a couple grand, they may be other alternatives as well. This may sound strange, but if you have a Wi-Fi equipped laptop, you might consider getting a small form factor PC and a Wi-Fi access point. I use a Serener L02, from http://www.logicsupply.com, which sits on my stereo rack, and the USB out from the Serener goes into my USB audio device, then to my DAC, with very short runs of USB and coax. The Serener has no monitor, keyboard, or mouse, and just runs iTunes. Its fanless and with a NEC spinpoint drive, dead silent. I control the whole thing with a viewsonic airpanel--a Wi-Fi touchscreen that runs a remote desktop. But, there is no reason you couldn't use your laptop to be the remote desktop. In effect, you would have a virtual desktop for the Serener running on your laptop and be able to control the Serener with it. Seems odd, but it would probably run you only $1K, as opposed to the several $K for a 50' run of decent coax. |
You are getting two .m4a files? EAC generates .wav files which iTunes converts, but seems odd that you end up with two .m4a files. iTunes might be converting and then doing a separate "add to library" for the file--if you have "copy files to iTunes library" checked under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced that might explain it...
Modifying tags in iTunes is relatively easy. Select the song or songs you want to modify with the mouse, and then right click with your mouse and select "Get Info." That shows the tags associated with the library entry, which can be revised.
Eric |
Hmm... Not sure what is happening. In iTunes, you should be able to figure out what type of compression is used for any entry using "Get Info." Select a track, right click, select "Get Info," and see, on the summary page, what it says right under where the album art would be following "Kind." It should say "Apple Lossless audio file" if the directory entry is, in fact, Apple Lossless. If its an AAC file, it will say "AAC audio file" instead.
Since iTunes labels both AAC and ALAC files with the ".m4a" extension, I am guessing that the .ALAC file is being created somehow by EAC. Are you using iTunesEncode? My iTunesEncode settings are found under EAC > Compression Options... > External Compression. I have "use external compression program" checked, parameter passing set to "user defined scheme," use file extension set to ".m4a," program for compression set to "C:\Program Files\EAC\iTunesEncode.exe," and additional command line options set to "-e "Lossless Encoder" -a "%a" -l "%g" -t "%t" -g "%m" -y %y -n %n -i %s -o %d."
What are your settings showing? |
Well that explains some things. One copy--the one that used to be .alac--was being created by EAC and I suspect the other--the .m4a--was being created by iTunes. Is "copy file to iTunes directory checked" in iTunes > Preferences > Advanced?
EAC has its own directory to write too... Check EAC > EAC Options there is a "Directories" tab--the directory shown is where EAC puts things. Not sure what would happen if you made it the same directory as iT... |
