Squeezebox > Cue Sheets? Mass Cue Sheet Cutting?

miklorsmith · « **on:** 2 Mar 2006, 04:49 pm »

Hey, computer audio's getting cool. We might need to rename the "Square Circle" to something else, like the "Streaming Circle" or "Bit Shredders". heh heh.

Seriously though, I've been ripping CD's for personal copying for a couple years. For various reasons, I decided EAC worked best ripping CD's whole, with a Cue Sheet. It's worked great and I have no complaints for that purpose.

But now I have a Squeezebox. The few CD's I have ripped as individual files work great but the SB won't read the whole files. It shows the album as one file but refuses to read it.

Ideally, I'd be able to get the SB to recognize the Cue file. Absent that, I'll need to cut all the .wav files, hopefully en masse.

Anybody have any tips on this problem or suggested solutions? I REALLY don't want to have to do this album-by-album.

Thanks in advance,

Mike

chadh · « **Reply #1 on:** 3 Mar 2006, 02:12 am »

That's weird.

I've ripped most of my CDs track-by-track. But I've ripped the live ones as a single file with cue sheet so that I don't get disturbing gaps between tracks. But with the cue sheet, slimserver identifies distinct tracks: I can play just one at a time.

I use the IMG option from the icon menu on the left of the screen. This doesn't compress the files - but that's okay for me. On the "action" menu you can choose "copy image and create cue sheet" and it gives you the option to compress there. Seems I'm just too lazy to do it!

Anyway, I don't know why I'm telling you this: you obviously know how to do it. But once I've done it, I have no problem with playing distinct tracks. To test, I selected "Afro Blue" (track 1) from Coltrane's "Live at Birdland". I save this tune up for special events like testing EAC/SB issues. I even had the band play this at my wedding!

Chad

ted_b · « **Reply #2 on:** 3 Mar 2006, 02:26 am »

I don't yet have a Squeezebox, but I've set up Slimserver. I have nothing but cd-sized files (800 of them) with cue sheets (FLAC in my case). Slimserver sees each track. I have my cuesheets all named the same as my FLAC files, of course, except for the file extension. They are in the same library or folder. Dunno, maybe my Squeezebox will act the same way...but so far Slimserver sees the track names, etc.

Nick B · « **Reply #3 on:** 3 Mar 2006, 04:30 am »

For the first few days after I set up my SB2, I kept getting a "cannot open file" error. Finally I am able to play the one CD I've put on my D drive. I'm still looking for a primer on all this cue shett/file/folder/directory /sub-directory stuff. A bit confusing if you haven't done it before.

miklorsmith · « **Reply #4 on:** 3 Mar 2006, 04:01 pm »

Thanks for the tips, guys. I've only had the SB a few days so I'm in the really steep part of the learning curve.

I'm not sure the cue files are in the same place as the main files. Maybe SlimServer can't find them. I'll try that. . .

ted_b · « **Reply #5 on:** 3 Mar 2006, 04:24 pm »

Quote from: miklorsmith

Thanks for the tips, guys. I've only had the SB a few days so I'm in the really steep part of the learning curve.

I'm not sure the cue files are in the same place as the main files. Maybe SlimServer can't find them. I'll try that. . .

The other thing I found about Slimserver, although this may be old news or a bad workaround, is that anytime you change something (like moving cuesheets into the same folder as the flac files) it's best to uninstall/reinstall. As I said, this may be fixed in a newer release or just my bad habits, but I didn't get the changes I expected to see by simply rescanning the collection.

chadh · « **Reply #6 on:** 5 Mar 2006, 07:06 am »

Okay, now I'm not a happy camper.

After I rediscovered the way to compress the file when ripping a whole disc at a time, I ripped a bunch of my live CDs that way. And guess what? It all shows up on the squeezebox as a single track. (For some reason, that single track always gets the name of track #2 on the CD, too. Lord know why). I'm pretty sure this was not a problem when I ripped the whole disc at once without compression.

I'm going to go back to do these without compression tomorrow. I shall report my success (or lack thereof).

Chad

miklorsmith · « **Reply #7 on:** 6 Mar 2006, 03:36 pm »

All is not lost! When I mass-compressed my .wav files to .flac files, I went back to the .cue sheets and renamed the attached file ".flac" instead of ".wav". Voila - mass encoding AND .cue recognition.

This is done in the text file editor in Windows. Thanks, Google.

For now, the .cue and .wav files are showing up in the SB menu, which needs to be fixed somehow. At least I have functionality without disc-by-disc .flac encoding.

ted_b · « **Reply #8 on:** 6 Mar 2006, 04:00 pm »

Quote from: miklorsmith

All is not lost! When I mass-compressed my .wav files to .flac files, I went back to the .cue sheets and renamed the attached file ".flac" instead of ".wav". Voila - mass encoding AND .cue recognition.

This is done in the text file editor in Windows. Thanks, Google.

For now, the .cue and .wav files are showing up in the SB menu, which needs to be fixed somehow. At least I have functionality without disc-by-disc .flac encoding.

There's a plugin for EAC that actually does that automagically, but yes, I do that for each cue sheet thatEAC creates. I keep a "wav" version in a folder I call "decode" (so whenever I decode a flac file to burn for a cd I might need, for instance, I have a cue sheet that refers to the wav file) and a cue sheet that I fixed via Notepad (change ".wav" to ".flac" in line 3) in the flac folder. It sounds complicated but it takes about 10 seconds, and the extra set of cue sheets take up no room, they're 1-2k each. Foobar and slimserver both see only the flac version of the cue sheet and all is well.

miklorsmith · « **Reply #9 on:** 7 Mar 2006, 11:39 pm »

Good tip on the two sets of .cue files. I'll definitely do that.

Hey, if you're using external .cue files, have you been able to hide either the .flac or the .cue file, or do you have to skip through two filenames for each album?

ted_b · « **Reply #10 on:** 7 Mar 2006, 11:55 pm »

Whta do you mean by "external cue files"? The cue file points to the FLAC or WAV file; no duplicate scanning or anything.

miklorsmith · « **Reply #11 on:** 8 Mar 2006, 12:09 am »

I have a .flac file in the main directory, and a .cue file in the same directory. To play individual tracks, I point the player to the .cue file and it works great.

But, the display also shows the .flac file. So, the display shows two entries for each album. I would like to hide the .flac file.

Thanks,

Mike