XXHighEnd

I use both PlextoolsXL and EAC to rip my cds to single wav/cue file combos.  It's a one button push to start a wav/cue rip on EAC and a chk mark in a box to do so on Plextools, so I'm pretty sure there are others out there like me.  Your player will play this single huge wav file of the cd I'm sure, but I won't be able to select individual songs.  Every player I've ran into plays wav/cue files and I thought it was a tidy storage idea.

I am really only interested in the best sounding player I can find.  I'd like album art but have resisted not wanting to mess with the sound quality I've achieved with Foobar 8.3 ... and not wanting to a/b to see if I've lost anything by adding album art and other frills... but, I don't care, like to have it, but ... sound quality is paramount.

It is not difficult at all to implement this. However ...


Could you please eleborate why you think this is so ? I'm sure not saying it isn't, since I don't have the real experience. I must say though, that to me it looks like there's a lot of hurdles FOR ME to overcome, would I offer *you* the flexibility inheritantly available otherwise. Thus :

Presenting the individual tracks from a cue sheet (or file) in the Playlist area is the easiest thing to do (for me). From there selecting what to play ... also easy. Store a selection in a saved Playlist ... (due to loading it back to play) a bit more work, but still easy. But this would be your problem :

The Library button, as well as Explorer as your main source for finding albums and following from that the tracks therein ... I can't imaging how that would workout satisfactory (I mean, opposed to when you'd have stored the tracks individually as, say, normal). Coverart shouldn't be a problem btw (just store it next to the album with the album name, or when each album would be in its own folder (would it in your case ?) like usual (folder.jpg).

All in all my question is : would you really like it the best ? if so, why please ?

It might be a better idea to write this conversion program that back converts everything to "normal", which would be the most easy of all. I say this, because a brief Google tells me that possibly those programs don't exist (??). I did't spend long on this though. Anyway the back conversion would be 100% "bit save" because it's just "computer data" in there (I've seen doubts on that on the Net).
Note that I base this on what EAC makes of it (mainly the cue file), and I didn't look at others.

Peter

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=140.msg719;topicseen#msg719
[Moving to here to continue about cue/wav files]

Copy/Pasted PeterSt from above link
".....So on to the hot item : the cue files;
In another thread I already promised you it wouldn't be a problem. And it is not. Including track names, as long as you can see them in the withgoing cue file that EAC creates (it's just plain text). You will be able to select and play the individual tracks, and have the cover art visible (assuming you or have it somewhere, or have it stored in the cue data)."

Great News!  Looking forward to being able to use Cue files, so I can select individual songs and see titles from the single wav files of the whole CDs I rip.  I haven't started collecting Album Cover Art, and I didn't know if that info can be stored in cue files?? I started collecting Album pictures today of some of my favs and when I rip new music I'll get the pictures from now on.  If I can add this album cover picture info to Cue files then perhaps I won't have to rearrange my folder directories? (I think I read something here at these forums about folder directories not being buried under the artist name like I do to be able to display Album cover jpegs...I don't know...)

"The only problem for now is the priorities I must deal with."

What!!!??!!! I haven't become your number one priority??  :)

"According to the latter : I just finished the base for decent gapless playback (which doesn't bother you currently) (btw, Engine#3 only), which most probably will be uploaded this weekend. "

Hmm, seems like a good argument for a single WAV/CUE file of the CD again; all gap info being stored in the cue file ... yes?

"Right after that I'll implement FLAC as a first supported lossless codec, but I really can't tell currently how long that will take. I mean, it will be "forbidden" that the process of decoding influences the sound (which it ussually just does, no matter those who say this is not so -> just listen better ) and I really don't know how difficult that is going to be."

Exactly the reason why I didn't go FLAC or anything else "lossless".  Hard Drive space is cheap and is only getting cheaper.  Of all the audio toys I've bought into, this "computer as transport" is now not only the best sounding, but the least expensive of all of my gear.  Anyway, Flac does have to go through a decoding process that even though it makes it lossless does take system resources and could influence SQ ... ok I'm guessing cause I've just never seen a reason to go FLAC.  I do know that using system resource under foobar made a difference in SQ on my system... that was when i only had 512k mem so... idk, but why take a chance.  My main concern again is that with each new version of XXHE you don't compromise the SQ to appease the masses.  I'd make em stay with wav files; I'm that mean hehe.  People should stick with wav files... oh ya and cue hehe.  (I noticed when playing single song wav files that my hd is accessed for each song while the music is playing :/ heh; with a single wav file of the album it's done once at the beginning.... sound quality (SQ) issue? idk.  Sound Quality first always.

"If no other things come up in the mean time, I'd say that the support for cue files is next.
(in fact there are many other things already, but these have a lower priority).
Btw, the extraction of the individual tracks from the large WAV will not "be able" to influence SQ.

Peter"

I hope you try the single wav/cue file yourself against multi wav track... see what you think.  When I suggested in my post above that it was "a tidy storage idea" I meant that in a CDs artist-album folder there would only be 2 files, a single wav and a cue (ok 3 files with album art), but with multi song wavs of the album you have several song wav files to keep track of... you may accidentally move a song wav and not notice because there are many other wavs in that folder? (With my laptop, when you move the cursor with the touch pad sometimes I've dragged and dropped files to ??? accidentally because it's sensitive).  Any way, the last few CDs I've ripped I switched over to EAC making a CUE file separately, and then ripping multi-track WAVs, (just because I was still using winxp and was hooked on your XXHE player, and wasn't sure if you were going to implement CUE file support.  Thanks for letting me know you're going to work on it).

Best Regards, Dave
http://www.myspace.com/officialnegativland
www.negativland.com

(imalittlefanaticaboutmusic)

Hiyall,

and I hope I don't come off as a pest.  PeterSt has already said he will work on cue file support so that isn't what this post is about.
Though,
PeterSt, wouldn't a cue file plus a single wav file per CD take care of the Diacritical Marks problem (a MS Vista problem as I see it; won't they fix that?) and the Gapless playback conundrum?  Should you maybe encourage people to go this route?

The Diacritical Marks could all be listed written within the cue file and the actual wav and cue file could be named without diacritical marks in them.  Gapless playback would not be a problem because the gap info would be in the cue file. tada!!

If you've already ripped a lot of CDs you can easily create a cue file for these single song wav files by either:
a)  Putting your CD back in EAC and going into Action > Create CUE Sheet (not reripping the CD; just creating a cue sheet for your wav files)
b)  Using a CUE sheet creator program such as CDRCUE (drag your wav files into it and it creates a cue file for you)

If you want to make your multi-wav  into a single wav of the whole CD,
then load the cue file you just created from the multi-wav into Daemon Tools (a software cd emulator) and rip (very fast rip because they are wav files on HD) with EAC by just pushing the IMG button on the left side of EAC

I know you are after the highest fidelity playback PeterSt, I hope you mainly work on this player for your own use and drag us all along to copy your Front End and file format.  I'm willing to do whatever you choose our front ends to be... just thought that perhaps cue/wav files may be the simplest way to get there.... idk

Hi Dave,

Although you are right in all you say, it's really not an argument anymore since both diacritical and gapless stuff is near solved. Besides that, it is my personal meaning that things should be as elementary as possible. Oh, you can aggregate them as (and when) you want, but you can't go the other way around. Just think of the (one example of) the search facilities the OS just gives you today (Vista would be best at it) which obviously can work on tracknames only if you have them ...

As you know, I will create the support for cue files anyway, but please keep in mind that you'd be always depending on me (and my time) for whatever it is you want to do at the track level. Mayne, just for fun, try to explore the Vista search facility which in the end is a rather powerful query tool of which I still have to find the complete syntax. Otoh, it won't tell you much if the result is not a bunch of coverart to choose from.

Quite another thing is that I really am not bothered by the individual tracks, as long as they reside in their own (album) map, which would mean that you aren't either (hahaha). It just brings ultimate possibilities (today known, or maybe later ...).

Well, I'll admit at this point when I get new discs I've started ripping them into multi song wavs ... but still with a cue file heh.  I'm still using ver D ( ver f for diacritically marked discs...);  I haven't had a need or listened to ver G yet, eh, plus you're probably on the verge of a new version anyway.
thanks, Dave