Thanks. Based on the clarification from you and
@availlyrics, I shall stick with the Wav format (my streamer reads it and it is uncompressed) and ripping each track in separate file.
Two questions:
1. Should I create a cue file too? What does it do? Why is it needed?
2. Once a CD is damaged and I have to recreate a physical copy (write a CD), will I get an exact replica of the original CD from the ripped Wav files? If not, what do I need to do while ripping to be able to do this if needed in future?
has very consisely and accurately answered your queries.
I would like to provide a slightly more detailed explanation of the .cue file, its function, advantages and disadvantages.
1. First its necessary to understand the way a CD is structured and how its meta data is provided by online CD databases like
Discogs, freedb, MusicBrainz, GD3 etc
Lets say a CD has 12 tracks, each track will ofcourse be of different duration.
The 1st Track is positioned near the inner diameter of the CD (Opposite of an LP), and the last track close to the Outer diameter of the CD.
Each track is separated by a silent passage ... There is No fixed silent passage ... some CDs like Wall of PINK FLOYD (or many western classical CDs) may have practically no silence between tracks... One track merges with the next track. Only a marker (not silence) locates the beginning of the next track.
I am listing below the cue file of the WALL CD 1 which I have ripped using EAC [Exact Audio Copy, Freeware]
(I have added a blank line after each track to make reading easier).
Just look at the Highlighted text:
REM DATE 1979
REM DISCID A409D60D
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.0b3"
CATALOG 4988005070425
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
TITLE "The Wall"
FILE "Pink Floyd - The Wall.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Hey You"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078842106
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Is There Anybody Out There?"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078842107
INDEX 01 04:44:26
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Nobody Home"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078842108
INDEX 01 07:32:61
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Vera"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078842108
INDEX 01 11:09:54
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Bring the Boys Back Home"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078842110
INDEX 01 12:31:46
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Comfortably Numb"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
INDEX 01 13:48:26
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "The Show Must Go On"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078941216
INDEX 00 20:08:64
INDEX 01 20:12:51
TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "In the Flesh"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078941217
INDEX 01 21:49:64
TRACK 09 AUDIO
TITLE "Run Like Hell"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078941218
INDEX 01 26:05:12
TRACK 10 AUDIO
TITLE "Waiting for the Worms"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078941219
INDEX 01 30:28:41
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "Stop"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078941220
INDEX 01 34:24:71
TRACK 12 AUDIO
TITLE "The Trial"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
ISRC GBF078941221
INDEX 01 34:57:44
TRACK 13 AUDIO
TITLE "Outside the Wall"
PERFORMER "Pink Floyd"
INDEX 01 40:15:15
The Cue file indicates the name of
Track1:
"Hey You" which starts at:
INDEX 01 00:00:00
Track 2:
"Is There Anybody Out There?" starts at
INDEX 01 04:44:26 (ie 4 minutes, 44.26 seconds)
... and so on till the last (Track 13) starts at
40:15:15
The cue file is a tiny text file (less than 10 KB) and does not contain any music... You cannot listen to a .cue file by itself.
The Music is ripped as a separate, SINGLE .wav file that contains all the music & silence between tracks, on the CD, as a .flac or .wav file.
I only rip to .wav (that's another story!
) so the music file in this case (line in the cue file is called "FILE
"Pink Floyd - The Wall.wav" WAVE"
Think of the .cue file as the index pages of a book and the single .flac / wav file as the entire books content.
The Index page tells you where (Time since start) each chapter (song / track) begins.
You can read the entire book (listen to the entire CD) as a single piece but need the .cue file to identify each song, as well as let you jump to the song you want to listen to.
So when rip as a .cue file, you get 2 files, a tiny index ( .,cue) file and a large (eg 433 MB in this case) .wav / music file. You MUST have BOTH files to be able to play specific tracks.
If you are using a streamer, only the large music file will be sent (actually attempted to send!) The file is too large to send quickly and in real time. The .cue (text) file is never sent in the stream (which is a single music file streamed at a time only) .
Say you want to listen to Track 3... there is really No separate File for Track 3! All tracks are just 1 large file!
Hence a Streamer CANNOT play a .cue file based ripped.
If you rip each track separately, the intertrack silence is lost and when the group of tracks are burnt on a CDR, a 2 second silence is inserted between each track. This Completely destroys the Track times of the CD (Reference to the start of the 1st track) and the CD will never be recognised by any online database.
However, each individual track is easily streamed ... the file sizes are relatively small (about 10 MB per minute for a 16/44 wav file).
So individually ripped tracks can be streamed, but cannot be used to reconstruct the original CD
If a CDR is burnt using a .cue + .wav file pair, it will EXACTLY reconstruct the layout and timing of the original disk and the created CDR will be recognised like the original CD by any online database.
Hence you have the choice:
1. Rip a CD so that you can re-construct it (Using a .cue + .wav or .flac) file pair
OR
2. Rip a CD into individual tracks so that you can stream it.
Some programs such as JRiver, will open a .cue + .wav / .flac file pair and transparently show you the individual tracks and also play the individual tracks.
However this playback is ONLY possible via a USB connection between yr DAC and Computer. It will not stream such ripped albums.
Apologies for the long post, my intention was to provide a detailed explanation to yr 2 queries.
P.S: An
.iso file is a single file combination very similar to a .cue + .wav file, but in addition to the time stamp, it also contains details of where (physical location of) each block of data is located .... This is irrelevant for a music CD where tracks are written one after the other.... But on a hard Disc, data is written all over the HDD, to protect the file and enable reconstruction of the data via error correction, if some portion of the HDD gets spoilt.
