Not streaming - dedicated PC

[markshan]

See if this helps...

Dude "A" records the Phish show from the audience. He then goes home and cuts that file into individual tracks, not knowing that there even is such a thing as a sector line that the audio is supposed to be cut at, and burns a CD. He checks the CD by playing it in his computer and it sounds great. He then gives the CD to his friend, dude "B".

Dude "B" plays the CD back in his car and he is really digging it, except that there is this tiny but really annoying burst of static at the end of each song. He goes on line and finds out that it is caused by an SBE, and also finds that there is software to correct it. So his rips the disc and reburns it, not knowing that his "correction" has fixed one problem but created another. So he gets back in his car and digs the show again, except that now instead of bursts of static between the songs, now he has silent gaps between the songs. He shrugs his shoulders and says "oh, well" because the silence, which not great, is better than the loud burst.

Now the only way to remove the gaps he has introduced is to edit them out of the file completely. If he had corrected the disc from dude "A" by moving the sector lines instead of correcting it by padding with extra zeros, he would not have had this problem.

Of course, as CDs are going the way of the dinosaur, this is becoming irrelevant, save for old shows that have been improperly traded.

 

[atrocity]

I think the source of your confusion is that you are still talking about SBEs and files corrected with padded zeros interchangably. An SBE is simply a marker placed in the wrong spot.

I think we're both right. Certainly you're right that I'm using the terms interchangeably. But I think I'm right as well because, given a file not cut on a sector boundary, wouldn't any hypothetical burning software that doesn't re-align tracks pad with zeroes? Or is there something else it can do that's a true null or a less than zero or...something? Either way, I'd still expect the result to be just as disruptive in the sense that where the desired signal should be there'd instead be something unwanted.

I think that by definition you couldn't place a track marker in the wrong spot (i.e., a cue sheet with an invalid position would be rejected by burning software), but you could certainly build a CD from individual files that may be the wrong length. (It's entirely possible that we're saying the same thing and I'm unintentionally being ultra-pedantic or otherwise flogging a dead horse.)

 

[markshan]

No, lots of software, Nero I'm sure, will just burn the file at it's given length without padding or correcting. That's when you get a click but not a gap.

but you could certainly build a CD from individual files that may be the wrong length.

Yes, this.

 

[atrocity]

Of course, as CDs are going the way of the dinosaur, this is becoming irrelevant, save for old shows that have been improperly traded.

And I'm sure this is one reason I can't just let this go: I've received too many of those improperly-traded shows! And I'm still hung up on "He checks the CD by playing it in his computer and it sounds great." How, short of some kind of additional software processing, would a CD with SBEs sound great when played on a computer?

It's the kind of minutiae that's probably easy to work out face to face but difficult in text.

 

[markshan]

Our answers crossed order. See above.

 

[markshan]

If the CD you got just clicks, rip it and run it through TLH with the "shift sector lines" (or something similar), correct the files and reburn. If the CD you got has gaps, that is real work. You have to edit out all of the gaps, reconnect all of the files and recut on boundary lines (or recut where you want and run those files through TLH before you reburn).

 

[atrocity]

No, lots of software, Nero I'm sure, will just burn the file at it's given length without padding or correcting. That's when you get a click but not a gap.

OK, I think maybe I'm finally starting to get this. If I am, that means my prior comment about it being impossible to put the track mark in the wrong place is not true. It sounds like you CAN burn a disc with genuinely incorrect track markers, hence the previous comments about some players dealing gracefully with them and some not. This is the first time I ever realized that it was possible to create such a disc, but if that's the case, I finally understand what we're talking about.

Thank you!

 

[markshan]

Oh, and just to add to the fun, know that you can introduce clicks when you are correcting them as well. When you recreate the one long file from which to create tracks, don't forget to tell your software to "smooth edits" or you will create little clicks at the joints if they aren't precisely lined up.

 

[markshan]

OK, I think maybe I'm finally starting to get this. If I am, that means my prior comment about it being impossible to put the track mark in the wrong place is not true. It sounds like you CAN burn a disc with genuinely incorrect track markers, hence the previous comments about some players dealing gracefully with them and some not. This is the first time I ever realized that it was possible to create such a disc, but if that's the case, I finally understand what we're talking about.

Thank you!

Yes, you've got it.

 

[markshan]

When I'm slicing up a needledrop, I always select "snap to sector boundaries" even if I'm not planning to burn to a CD. It's just best practice, but lots of people are unaware.

 

[markshan]

When they first wrote those burning programs, they likely didn't even consider the fact that some people would be using files that originated somewhere other than from a commercial CD. Once the problem of the errors came to their attention, they were faced with the same dilemma as you are, how to best correct the problem. I'm sure "pad with zeros" became the default answer, but isn't the best answer if the playback needs to be gapless. They were likely thinking about people making "mix tapes" rather than people sharing shows.

 

[markshan]

If I have to fix a set of files in TLH, I select, "move boundary forward" and "fill last gap with zeros" because that keeps each file cut at a sector and it doesn't matter if the fade at the end has added silence.

Trader's Little Helper really is a wonderful little piece of freeware. I wish I could thank the guy who made it. He did a real service. I always test my files with it before I send them out into the wild. You know, just in case I missed something.

 

[atrocity]

Yes, you've got it.

Thank you for your patience!

And I follow your process as well: I make sure anything I digitize is 100% CD-ready even though the odds that I'll ever make a disc are slim. It takes almost no time at all and has literally no downside whatsoever.

I also agree about TLH: If I download a show, having TLH look at the sector boundaries is step one!

 

[HomerJAU]

I may be over obsessive, but I don't like anything messing with my audio bits before they get to the DAC. So, RG is not an option for me.

ReplyGain doesn’t alter your audio bits. It adds metadata tags just like adding ‘Artist’ or ‘Title’ to any audio file.

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

I think sukothai may have been referring to the actual gain adjustment ultimately performed on the digital audio stream by ReplayGain compensation, which does alter the bits. But it's worth a (hopefully friendly) reminder that this adjustment involves nothing more than a single floating-point multiplication, which is demonstrably inaudible.

 

[markshan]

As someone alluded to above, if it altered the bits, DTS files would turn into noise, right?

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

I think there is an option in Foobar (and probably other players) to actually alter the audio file to "bake in" the ReplayGain adjustment, instead of using the metadata tags. This would definitely FUBAR a dtsWAV file. I suppose this option exists so that RG can be used on file formats that don't properly support metadata, like .wav? I dunno.

 

[atrocity]

As someone alluded to above, if it altered the bits, DTS files would turn into noise, right?

Yes. I've accidentally added ReplayGain tags to DTS files and just got noise when I tried to play them. But because they were only tags, all I had to do was remove them and everything worked again.

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

Have you guys tried this recently? In Foobar at least, I've had no trouble converting raw dts44 files to FLAC, then adding all sorts of tags, including RG. They still decode just fine, and RG works too! I've even tried converting one back to .wav, and it still decodes, although of course the RG adjustment is lost (no tags in the .wav file).

(My Foobar is v1.3.16, by the way.)

 

[atrocity]

Have you guys tried this recently? In Foobar at least, I've had no trouble converting raw dts44 files to FLAC, then adding all sorts of tags, including RG. They still decode just fine, and RG works too! I've even tried converting one back to .wav, and it still decodes, although of course the RG adjustment is lost (no tags in the .wav file).

(My Foobar is v1.3.16, by the way.)

It's an interesting idea, but would I be correct in assuming that only Foobar would know how to properly handle the results? Obviously that wouldn't be a problem if Foobar is all you use, it just wouldn't work for me.