Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

RobF · 2008-01-18 05:37:25

I want to back up my audio CD collection in flac format. How do I do this if I want to preserve the option to restore the original CD's (in case they get lost) in such a way that any CD's burned from the flac archives can be played in any ordinary CD player just like the original CD's?

I managed to rip a sample CD to flac using K3b, with an m3u playlist file included. This rip to HDD plays fine in XMMS.

But when I used K3b to "create a new audio project", dragged and dropped the m3u playlist into the new project window, and then burned it to CD, I ran into some problems.

The newly burned CD played fine in Amarok and XMMS on my laptop. It also played fine in an mp3 capable SONY psyc Walkman (which unfortunately doesn't have good sound quality), but it didn't play properly in a model 1995 Panasonic portable CD player (my favorite) nor in a Phillips shelf-unit CD changer. The former couldn't read track 1 but could play track 2 and all subsequent tracks. The latter could play track 1, but skipped and dropped on most other tracks. It also made a strange continuous whining noise that came from the player housing rather than through the speakers.

My favorite CD player, the old Panasonic that can't play track 1, may have stumbled over the presence on the CD of six folders that K3b created that precede track 1, i.e. the folders CDA, FLAC, Full CD, Information, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis. I'm not sure what they are for.

Is there something I'm doing wrong with K3b? Or is there some other way how I can accomplish what I set out to do, i.e. to backup my CD's in a space-saving lossless way on my HDD, while retaining the ability to fully reconstitute them if needed, in such a way that the reburned CD's would play on every garden-variety CD player, just like the original CD's?

dw · 2008-01-18 08:54:17

hi!

stupid thought but is it helpful for you to generate an exact copy of your dvd by using something like dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/some/path/to/audio.iso ?

bionnaki · 2008-01-18 09:44:26

umm

first of all, dont rip cds with k3b - that's the root of your problem. there are better options out there. the best of linux is EAC + wine and the 2nd best is RubyRipper.

if you bothering to rip to flac, you might as well do securerips with logs. only eac + wine or rubyripper can do this on linux.

give me a day and I'll write a wiki on rubyripper.

xd-0 · 2008-01-18 13:08:32

Use asunder to rip to flac.

bionnaki · 2008-01-18 17:01:15

asunder isnt secure like rubyripper. if you going to rip cds, might as well do it right.

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php … Rubyripper

zenlord · 2008-01-19 11:03:17

And on top of that: are you sure your cd-players support playing CDR(W)'s? Some, especially older models, only read pressed audio cd's. You also might wanna try to write the cd at a lower speed to help your player recognize the disc.

I can vouch for EAC to rip audiocd's securely. I have used it for years now in windows, but since I changed over sides, I found rubyripper to do a very decent job under linux.

Zl.

RobF · 2008-01-19 17:22:20

I tried RubyRipper and Asunder. Both ripped at an incredibly slow speed at their default settings, i.e. 20-30 min for 60-70 min audio CD's. It's just not feasible backing up a large collection of CD's that way. K3b did it in 4-5 min and so did KAudioCreator.

Sets of flac tracks ripped with any of these programs and burned to CD-R with K3b still give me the same problems which are:

1. The 1995 Panasonic player often has problems starting up a track, in particular track 1, which it will play only after seeking for 30-60 seconds (I was wrong in saying that it doesn't play track 1 at all). The same sometimes happens with other tracks, in particular the low ones, i.e. #2 and #3. This player has no problem playing any track on pressed original audio CD's or on direct K3b or NeroLinux CD-R copies of these.

2. The mp3-capable SONY Walkman plays all tracks on reconstituted CD's instantly but it doesn't have good audio quality - possibly due to an impedance mismatch to my stereo system.

3. The Phillips CD changer also plays all tracks instantly but frequently produces extraneous noise (a kind of singing or whistling) in the player unit and concurrent distortion in the speakers.

Clearly, there is something about the reconstituted CD's that's different from the originals.

My question is: Is there a way to reconstitute the original CD's after conversion to flac that would result in CD-R copies that would play just like the originals, in any CD player? So far, I've ripped the originals to separate flac tracks (with or without m3u playlists) so that I also have the option to play individual tracks (as flac) off the hard drive on which I'm storing the collection.

Would I have better luck ripping an entire CD to a single flac track? And is it necessary to create cuesheets, logs etc. to get copies that are identical to the originals? How do I do that, and with which program?

Also, should I be using a burning program different from K3b? Is there something wrong in my K3b config?

If what I want to do is difficult to do in Linux, can it be done in Windows and how?

@zenlord: All three CD players support playing CD-R copies made directly from original audio CD's. Re burning speed: My SONY DVD+-RW DW-Q58A CD/DVD burner is rated for 40x write speed for CD-R burning, yet Linux recognizes only 24x as the maximum speed. Hence when I'm burning a CD (using the "auto" speed setting), the speed ranges from 10x at the beginning to 24x at the end. If I go much lower, it would take me forever to restore my CD collection from the flac archives, if the need arises.

In any case, I think that the problem lies not with a bad burn but with the conversion from original CD to flac and back from flac to copy CD and with problems in the intervening steps of bookkeeping and laying out of tracks.

theringmaster · 2008-01-20 17:58:05

I use sound juicer to rip my cd's to flac. Any comments about it?

bionnaki · 2008-01-20 21:03:01

RobF wrote:

I tried RubyRipper and Asunder. Both ripped at an incredibly slow speed at their default settings, i.e. 20-30 min for 60-70 min audio CD's. It's just not feasible backing up a large collection of CD's that way. K3b did it in 4-5 min and so did KAudioCreator.

you probably did not set up rubyripper correctly. also rubyripper does error correction (and general secure ripping) so, yeah, it's going to take more than some bs ripper that does not. but asunder does not.

however, if the cd is in non-scratched condition, it shouldnt take more than 10 mins.

im still working on the guide for rubyripper.

bionnaki · 2008-01-20 21:04:18

theringmaster wrote:

I use sound juicer to rip my cd's to flac. Any comments about it?

soundjuicer sucks. use rubyripper - if you're going to bother ripping cds, might as do get the best rip you can get. and if you're going to do flac, you should do it correctly (and have logs as well).

Last edited by bionnaki (2008-01-20 21:05:29)

wuischke · 2008-01-20 21:57:05

What about cdparanoia? That's what I usually use.

I just read a bit about rubyripper and it seems like overkill to me, but I'm using vorbis and not flac, so I lose quality anyway.

RobF · 2008-01-21 05:55:16

I've experimented a bit more with various strategies and programs for ripping my audio CD's to flac and then restoring the CD's by burning them from the flac backups.

I tried K3b, KAudioCreator, abcde, Grip, Asunder and RubyRipper for ripping to flac. I believe all of these programs are frontends for cdparanoia. Asunder and RubyRipper were very slow, giving at least 2 tries for every track. K3b and KAudioCreator were fast, 4-5 min for a 60-70 min CD. I agree with wuischke that secure rippers such as RubyRipper or EAC in Wine may be overkill in many cases. My CD's are pristine and the few rips I did with RubyRipper from several CD's found zero problems or errors to correct - a lot of time needlessly wasted.

I did more than a dozen rips with KAudioCreator and K3b and listened to the flac tracks. They played flawlessly in any of my half dozen audio players. I also burned some 15 CD's from a number of flac archives, using K3b. There was no difference that I could discern between CD's burned from flacs ripped with KAudioCreator or K3b and from flacs ripped with RubyRipper.

My favorite Panasonic portable CD player was straining to read track 1 of all of the reburned CD's. I sometimes had to wait 20-60 seconds before it would start playing that track. I borrowed another portable CD player (a 5-year old $20 cheapo unit) and this player could play all tracks of all CD's burned from flac archives, as did my mp3-enabled Sony Walkman. Perhaps the 1995 Panasonic unit is simply showing signs of its age.

I also compared ripping CD's to a single large flac file with separate cue sheet to ripping them to separate flac tracks, with or without an m3u playlist. I did that with K3b which has an option for ripping to a single flac file plus .cue file, and then burning the CD's with K3b. The restored CD's played the same, regardless of whether they were restored from a single large intermediate flac file with cue sheet or from a set of separate flac tracks. E.g. the Panasonic player also had trouble reading track 1 of a CD that had been burned from a single flac file with cue sheet.

After all this fiddling around, my sense is that for my purposes (efficient and reasonably reliable backup of a collection of hundreds of audio CD's in mint condition) the following approach is perfectly adequate and works well: rip the CD to separate flac tracks, using either K3b or KAudioCreator and restore the CD, if needed, by burning it with K3b. K3b seems to be quite flexible and did the best job in keeping all the info on title, artist etc. intact in these multiple transformations. I also prefer archiving the CD's with tracks separated rather than in a single large archive. That makes it much easier to listen to any of the flac tracks with XMMS, Amarok, xine, caffeine etc.

I'd appreciate any further comments, in case I missed some subtleties that may throw a big monkey wrench in my optimistic outlook on doing all of this simply and easily with K3b.

Last edited by RobF (2008-01-21 06:02:57)

nicnikf · 2008-01-21 14:14:28

after ripping, badly, in my life a lot of Audio CDs (in windows, MacOsx and linux) i would suggest the approach with wine+EAC as the best in terms of quality. I don't have any opinion about rubyripper which i installed and i am now testing.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-18 05:37:25

Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#2 2008-01-18 08:54:17

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#3 2008-01-18 09:44:26

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#4 2008-01-18 13:08:32

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#5 2008-01-18 17:01:15

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#6 2008-01-19 11:03:17

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#7 2008-01-19 17:22:20

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#8 2008-01-20 17:58:05

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#9 2008-01-20 21:03:01

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#10 2008-01-20 21:04:18

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#11 2008-01-20 21:57:05

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#12 2008-01-21 05:55:16

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

#13 2008-01-21 14:14:28

Re: Backup audio CD collection to flac, then how do I reburn the CD's?

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