[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
i hadn't responded yet because i wanted to listen for a week or so to test it out. no, i don't hear any glitches or problems at all using the method i described. playback is now 100% flawless using apple lossless. i don't know what the problem you're having could be coming from. are you wireless or wired? i have a wired sb1. i do think i will be getting sb3 shortly, so it will be interesting to see if there are any problems again. as of right now though, i don't hear any glitching after a week of critical listening on my setup... -- indianajones ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Indianajones, I just tried the remedy on my system and I hear very faint noise with the playback when I do what you said to do... It's sort of like high frequency static noise. If you don't hear it from your speakers, maybe you can hear with it with nice headphones. Can you see if you hear anything like that. It goes away as soon as I switch to Apple AAC to AIFF. Hiroyuki, Hiroyuki On Oct 19, 2005, at 9:32 PM, indianajones wrote: Hiroyuki Wrote: Munge, Currently there is a bug with the SB2 using the Apple lossless. It cuts off the beginning of each songs slightly. Sometimes you will notice that by listening to the beginning of the songs but that's rare. The most problematic thing with that is when you are listening to a continuous live recording CDs or any continuous recordings, you will notice the gap between songs. It gives you slight clicking sound between the songs. I have a lot of Apple lossless files myself and I'm hoping that the issue will be solved soon. Best, Hiroyuki On Sep 19, 2005, at 8:58 AM, Munge wrote: well, you are in luck my friend, as i have FINALLY figured out the solution to our problem. after about 6 months of effort and going back and forth with tech support, i now have flawless apple lossless playback. the key is to first go into the server options under file type. there you will see the three apple lossless checkboxes, one for AIFF, one for FLAC and one for MP3. the first two must be unchecked leaving just the apple-MP3 option checked. next go to player settings and go to audio. the last option, bitrate limit, should be set to no limit so the apple lossless files will be streamed as uncompressed pcm. this has resulted in not having that pause in the beginning of each song that has caused me to nearly go crazy over the past 6 months. let me know if it works for you, it sure did for me!!! -- indianajones ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Hiroyuki Wrote: Munge, Currently there is a bug with the SB2 using the Apple lossless. It cuts off the beginning of each songs slightly. Sometimes you will notice that by listening to the beginning of the songs but that's rare. The most problematic thing with that is when you are listening to a continuous live recording CDs or any continuous recordings, you will notice the gap between songs. It gives you slight clicking sound between the songs. I have a lot of Apple lossless files myself and I'm hoping that the issue will be solved soon. Best, Hiroyuki On Sep 19, 2005, at 8:58 AM, Munge wrote: well, you are in luck my friend, as i have FINALLY figured out the solution to our problem. after about 6 months of effort and going back and forth with tech support, i now have flawless apple lossless playback. the key is to first go into the server options under file type. there you will see the three apple lossless checkboxes, one for AIFF, one for FLAC and one for MP3. the first two must be unchecked leaving just the apple-MP3 option checked. next go to player settings and go to audio. the last option, bitrate limit, should be set to no limit so the apple lossless files will be streamed as uncompressed pcm. this has resulted in not having that pause in the beginning of each song that has caused me to nearly go crazy over the past 6 months. let me know if it works for you, it sure did for me!!! -- indianajones ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
My plan is to use iTunes -- WAV. iTunes gets all tag info but nothing goes into the WAV files. However, the folder structure will contain this (except for year?), and then I can use a custom tag specifier like G\A\L\T in the Flac Frontend. As for the Linux CD with Thinkpad 240: There is no cd drive on the 240, so I would have to take out the disk. My first attempt will be to run Slimserver under W2K on the Thinkpad. /Munge -- Munge ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Munge Wrote: (except for year?) Yes, and genre, as I indicated above. From what I understand, musicbrainz can identify the metadata from their database with nothing but a sort of sound finger print taken from the file. -- abdomen ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Another nice ripper is Easy CDDA from poikosoft.com It supports many formats incl. FLAC It also has a conversion capability to convert your archive from FLAC (or any other other supported format) into whatever is supported. You can also directly burn CD's from FLAC (or any of the suppored formats). regards Rene -- Rene ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
+1 for Easy CDDA. It rips, tags and transcodes and has a nice, easy to use UI. -- Fifer ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
If you are interested in using EAC which is generally considered to be the best ripper out there (but also one of the more complicated to get setup). Check out this guide on how to get it all setup: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=30959 If you are not worried about the odd pop or click, or if you feel that the guide is too technical, I'd suggest checking out one of the other rippers suggested previously in this topic. ss. -- street_samurai ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
I've ripped over 400 albums with Easy CDDA and have yet to hear a pop, click or any other unwanted artefact. -- Fifer ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
I plan to use an old Thinkpad 240 (300 MHz, 128 MB RAM, W2K) for the server. If this is a slimserver dedicated PC, then I would definitely recommend SlimCD instead of W2K. Works much better with low specs. W2K is a dogwith 128 MB of RAM. . http://www.herger.net/slim/detail.p...kategorie=slim . Hope this helps. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
After a period of research and experimentation, I settled on EAC (for ripping and tagging, including retrieving tag data from freedb) and Mp3tag (for massaging/correcting tags and, occasionally, file names). Notwithstanding the time spent learning some of the ins and outs of EAC and configuring it (roughly like in the hydrogenaudio forum link a couple of posts above in this thread), the combination of these two pieces of software has been meeting my needs well. I'd categorize EAC as technically impressive, and Mp3tag as simply a pleasure from the first moment. -- abdomen ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
RE: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
After a period of research and experimentation, I settled on EAC (for ripping and tagging, including retrieving tag data from freedb) and Mp3tag (for massaging/correcting tags and, occasionally, file names). Notwithstanding the time spent learning some of the ins and outs of EAC and configuring it (roughly like in the hydrogenaudio forum link a couple of posts above in this thread), the combination of these two pieces of software has been meeting my needs well. I'd categorize EAC as technically impressive, and Mp3tag as simply a pleasure from the first moment. I'm just going to have to second this as, after lots of trying various stuff, this is what I settled on and once set up it's just a breeze. Although I'm not sure I like agreeing with a bloke called arse. Simon Turner Barcombe UK ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Thanks for all good advice! I tried EAC with the seetings from http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=30959 The CD went back and forth for ages and then it said that there was an error. No file created. Look here, I've got a hifi CD player with which I am happy. It doesn't retry 28 times and then delivers the sound, it gives me great sound at once. What is so different with the PC CD drive? I never get any read errors when I read a software CD. What's so special with ripping audio CDs? I'm beginning to think that all this is mumbo jumbo. Please explain why I need this EAC tool. Otherwise I will go for iTunes -- WAV -- Flac Frontend -- Flac. At least it works and is easy to use. Munge -- Munge ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Munge, I use Mac and naturally I use the iTunes. I've never used EAC. But my understanding is that the EAC (Exact Audio Copy!) can do better job of copying problematic CDs. If I had a choice I'd go with EAC for that reason. But, having said that I don't really notice anything wrong with iTunes ripped music... (there was one time when I tried to ripped a CD that had a crack and it just didn't do it right) Also, I know that there are plenty of serious audiophiles out there using iTunes. Do you see any physical damage on the particular CD you are trying to rip? How does it do with the iTunes? I'd like to hear firsthand accounts of using both iTunes/EAC. Anybody? Best, Hiroyuki On Sep 21, 2005, at 3:37 PM, Munge wrote: Thanks for all good advice! I tried EAC with the seetings from http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=30959 The CD went back and forth for ages and then it said that there was an error. No file created. Look here, I've got a hifi CD player with which I am happy. It doesn't retry 28 times and then delivers the sound, it gives me great sound at once. What is so different with the PC CD drive? I never get any read errors when I read a software CD. What's so special with ripping audio CDs? I'm beginning to think that all this is mumbo jumbo. Please explain why I need this EAC tool. Otherwise I will go for iTunes -- WAV -- Flac Frontend -- Flac. At least it works and is easy to use. Munge -- Munge ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 12:37 -0700, Munge wrote: I've got a hifi CD player with which I am happy. It doesn't retry 28 times and then delivers the sound, it gives me great sound at once. What is so different with the PC CD drive? Red Book audio (normal audio CD specs) is quite different than CD-ROM (computer data) specs. Nearly nothing in common. The RedBook spec specifically says what a player is supposed to do when it gets an error that it can't recover. This is after a lot of clever encoding and error correction is done. The players basically improvise when they can't recover. Which is what normal CD reading programs do on computers as well. Now, in reality, the hifi CD player market is tiny or smaller, and the computer CD/DVD market is everything. So nearly all transports used, even in mega dollar audiophile CD players are computer drives. Try a different PC. Or a different drive. Or both. Or try a different OS in your computer. EAC is advertised as being very anal about getting exactly what is on you CD. You don't have to use it, there are other tools, just not so anal. There are switches to tell EAC to lighten up if you want. To really, really know that you have the correct bits, you would have to have at least three separate CDs, and separate computer/CD combos, then extract it three times and use a computer voting scheme to tell which is right. Sometimes three is not enough, so you can use five sets, etc. The Nasa Space Shuttles use redundant computers this way. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
You can also use a distributed version of this approach: www.accuraterip.com maintains a database of checksums generated from rips of CDs that you can compare your rips against. You get a confidence number that indicates how many submitted rips agree with yours. Any match gives a pretty good indication that your rip is accurate. EAC and dbPowerAmp are currently the only supported rippers. I tend to use dbPowerAmp for most of my rips because it's much faster than EAC on my system. If I don't get an accuraterip match I'll re-rip and see if I get the same checksum for another rip. If so, I assume it's a good rip. If I don't get a match after one or two retries then I fire up EAC and let it do its best to get a good rip off the CD. To really, really know that you have the correct bits, you would have to have at least three separate CDs, and separate computer/CD combos, then extract it three times and use a computer voting scheme to tell which is right. Sometimes three is not enough, so you can use five sets, etc. The Nasa Space Shuttles use redundant computers this way. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Munge Wrote: Otherwise I will go for iTunes -- WAV -- Flac Frontend -- Flac. At least it works and is easy to use. This sounds reasonable to me, but I don't think your FLAC files will contain any metadata after this procedure. Slimserver may still correctly infer artist, album, track number, and track name from the file and folder names, but I believe you will find year and genre are missing when you use your SB2. However, I have seen positive comments recently on these forums about software at http://musicbrainz.org/ that I believe could look at your FLAC files and add metadata to them from a central database. It's a safe bet more suggestions are forthcoming from others... I hope you find a solution that suits you without too much more confusion-- I was there myself about 6 weeks ago. -- abdomen ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Josef Shvejk wrote: I plan to use an old Thinkpad 240 (300 MHz, 128 MB RAM, W2K) for the server. If this is a slimserver dedicated PC, then I would definitely recommend SlimCD instead of W2K. Works much better with low specs. W2K is a dog with 128 MB of RAM. . http://www.herger.net/slim/detail.p...kategorie=slim http://www.herger.net/slim/detail.p...kategorie=slim . Hope this helps. agreed, but SlimCD on that machine may still be challenging (the old IBM laptops needed some black magic boot strings passed because of their non-standard CD interfaces). -- Jack at Monkeynoodle dot Org : It's a Scientific Venture! I spent all me tin with the ladies drinking gin, so across the Western ocean I must wander. -- All for Me Grog, trad. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Munge Wrote: The CD went back and forth for ages and then it said that there was an error. No file created. One last thing: Is it possible a WAV file was created but no FLAC? If so, I posted what may be the solution a while back (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=48738#post48738):abdomen Wrote: I was experiencing the same problem, until I changed a single checkbox in EAC's options. I believe it was Skip track extraction on read or sync errors. -- abdomen ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
I suggest if you want a detailed ins-and-outs look at why EAC is the best ripper around then you go look on Hydrogenaudio forums. There is -very- detailed discussion about what it does and does not do and why it is/is not better than other rippers. I completely agree that there is mumbo jumbo and I did not say that you won't get perfect rips with other programs. I'm just saying that if you want to be -sure- that you got a perfect rip, then EAC is as good as there is. EAC isn't for everyone. As I mentioned, its reasonably complex to setup properly. As someoelse mentioned, once its all setup and your profiles are saved... its a breeze. Munge, try another CD to see if it works. If EACs error checking bothers you use another ripper. Any time you use a program that rips to WAV without then passing its metadata data to FLAC is going to lose all of your metadata information (which you definitely want). The WAV file format does not contain metadata. I'm not sure how iTunes works with FlacFrontEnd but I'd bet that the tags will be lost. ss. -- street_samurai ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
agreed, but SlimCD on that machine may still be challenging (the old IBMlaptops needed some black magic boot strings passed because of their non-standard CD interfaces). SlimCD boots fine on Thinkpad T22. I do not know about any older models. Alternatively, you could pull out the hard drive from the laptop and hook it up to a desktop machine. Boot the desktop from SlimCd and run install to HD. It requires a bit of work, but then the laptop CD drive is not needed anymore. Cheers, ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 16:55 -0400, Bill Cutts wrote: You can also use a distributed version of this approach: www.accuraterip.com maintains a database of checksums generated from rips of CDs that you can compare your rips against. You get a confidence number that indicates how many submitted rips agree with yours. Any match gives a pretty good indication that your rip is accurate. This is a cool idea. Much easier than mine of getting three computers. EAC and dbPowerAmp are currently the only supported rippers. But they only seem to support those rippers on Windows, which goes against my open source religion. So I've asked their support forum about how to get other rippers on the list. It looks like doing validation of the checksums is possible, but they are, justifiably, paranoid about bad implementations polluting their data. This would be fine with me, as all I really care about is that other people get the same results as I do. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Josef Shvejk wrote: agreed, but SlimCD on that machine may still be challenging (the old IBM laptops needed some black magic boot strings passed because of their non-standard CD interfaces). SlimCD boots fine on Thinkpad T22. I do not know about any older models. Alternatively, you could pull out the hard drive from the laptop and hook it up to a desktop machine. Boot the desktop from SlimCd and run install to HD. It requires a bit of work, but then the laptop CD drive is not needed anymore. Cheers, I think the T line is after they switched to a normal ATAPI drive... any way, your hard drive trick is the way that I've successfully installed to laptops of the 240's vintage. A 40-44 pin adapter will be required, coupla bucks at the nearest RadioShack/Fry's equivalent. -- Jack at Monkeynoodle dot Org : It's a Scientific Venture! I spent all me tin with the ladies drinking gin, so across the Western ocean I must wander. -- All for Me Grog, trad. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
1. Are you using the Mac platform exclusively? 2. Do you have a lot of Apple lossless already? 3. Do you want to keep your Apple lossless? 1. No. PC only. 2. No 3. N/A It's just that I find iTunes easy to use, and I haven't seen anything else. -- Munge ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Thanks for the information. Let's forget about Apple lossless. My number one option is to use FLAC, but I don't know how I would do that. There must be a number of FLAC wrappers (?). I'm not planning to write my own application just to encode some FLAC files. /Munge -- Munge ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Try dbpowerAMP if all you want to do is rip your music into flac format. www.dbpoweramp.com TagRename will help with the Tags www.softpointer.com/tr.htm D. -- deksawyer ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
Munge wrote: 1. Are you using the Mac platform exclusively? 2. Do you have a lot of Apple lossless already? 3. Do you want to keep your Apple lossless? 1. No. PC only. 2. No 3. N/A It's just that I find iTunes easy to use, and I haven't seen anything else. Ok, that makes your choice easy. Use EAC and set it up to convert to flac directly. R. -- http://robinbowes.com If a man speaks in a forest, and his wife's not there, is he still wrong? ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: How to use FLAC?
--- Munge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks for the information. Let's forget about Apple lossless. My number one option is to use FLAC, but I don't know how I would do that. There must be a number of FLAC wrappers (?). I'm not planning to write my own application just to encode some FLAC files. there are a lot of options listed on the FLAC site: http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#software Josh __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
