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Topic: CD Image vs. FLAC (Read 7462 times) previous topic - next topic
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CD Image vs. FLAC

Is there any actual difference between ripping just to a disc image (bin/cue for example) as opposed to a FLAC rip with AccurateRip correction?

CD Image vs. FLAC

Reply #1 –
Of course there is. One gives you a bin image and the other gives you FLAC, either one file with CUE or a series of tracks.

Seriously, in what sense? If playback output, then the short answer is no.
 

CD Image vs. FLAC

Reply #2 –
The only real difference is that the flac will take up less space on your disk.  That's it.  FLAC + CUE is just a smaller version of the BIN + CUE, that also has checksum information to indicate whether the file is corrupted or not.  Those are the only two differences.  I guess it might also be easier to find a player than can handle FLAC, but this shouldn't be an issue.

CD Image vs. FLAC

Reply #3 –
That flac file has the capability to store other things which the bin+cue combo can't, such as album artwork and additional metadata information, though I suppose you can bastardize the CUE file with a bunch of REM statements.

You can have an image comprised of tracks saved as individual lossless files plus the appropriate CUE sheet, as well, of course.

Touching upon SCOTU's point about players, why the bin file and not wave or aiff?  Bin seems to me like just about the most user-unfriendly format one could use. (I'm not advocating wave or aiff over a compressed lossless format.)

CD Image vs. FLAC

Reply #4 –
I was looking more towards which would produce a better copy of the original audio, sample for sample. I know if ripping to FLAC you have to advantage of using AccurateRip, error correction, re-ripping individual parts of a track, etc., etc. With disc images you get none of that.

CD Image vs. FLAC

Reply #5 –
>I was looking more towards which would produce a better copy of the original audio, sample for sample.
flac is lossless (IOW mathematically equivalent).  Layman's terms: there is not one iota of difference in audio quality.

>AccurateRip, error correction, re-ripping individual parts of a track, etc.
There's no reason why you can't rip securely to bin.  With EAC it's a pretty simple configuration.

>With disc images you get none of that.
but flac+cue is also disc image.

I can't think of much more to say.  You've been presented with enough facts to know that ripping to a bin+cue is kinda pointless.

CD Image vs. FLAC

Reply #7 –
Quote from: greynol on
flac is lossless (IOW mathematically equivalent).  Layman's terms: there is not one iota of difference in audio quality.

There's no reason why you can't rip securely to bin.  With EAC it's a pretty simple configuration.

>With disc images you get none of that.
but flac+cue is also disc image.

I can't think of much more to say.  You've been presented with enough facts to know that ripping to a bin+cue is kinda pointless.


I understand that FLAC is lossless, but sometimes when you rip you'll get missing samples that can't be ripped accurately and must be interpolated, thus not making it a complete sample for sample copy. Ripping using programs like EAC and dB allow to re-rip, while you can't do that with ripping to a standard disc image, which by the way I mean something like ISO, BIN, IMG, etc.. The only reason I'm asking this question is because I'm not on Windows so I don't have the nice programs like EAC or dB (and no, WINE isn't going to happen, don't even bother mentioning it). I'll just use something like dd or cdrecord to grab the whole disc as a disc image, but if won't reproduce better than something like EAC or dB, I'm not going to bother.

CD Image vs. FLAC

Reply #8 –
I only learned recently, and largely by accident, that dd (Mac OS X) can rip audio. I was wondering about ways to rip bin/cue on OS X, so now I can rip the former, but I'll need to use something else for the latter. I'll probably try [gulp] compiling cdrdao and using it in combination with its companion utility toc2cue, or maybe even running ISOBuster or similar under WINE.

As for the relative accuracy of bin/cue vs. AccurateRip et al., I suppose it largely depends on the quality/condition of your drive and CD. Certainly you must just hope for / assume the best with the former. I'm only planning to use it for game CD images, so I'm not too worried, and I'm getting less paranoid about completely exact ripping on the rare other occasions that I rip CDs, so I'd probably be able to sleep at night despite the possibility of a wrong sample.

CD Image vs. FLAC

Reply #9 –
There are decent rippers under linux. Rubyripper comes to mind (developed by a HA member IIRC).