Single file + CUE sheet solves lead-in thingie problem, by storing both timestamps (time when player should start showing 'Track 2', and time which servers as zero for track-relative timestamps)
It pretty much mirrors actual CD structure of TOC (containing all necessary timestamps and metadata) and continuous sequence of frames with audio data
Re:Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping
by kevin_thibedeau on Saturday January 14, 2023 @01:29PM
(#34382609)
Cdrdao preserves all lead-in data for rips in DAO mode. I split tracks to separate files with lead-in of the following track included at the end. Combined with Lame's gapless encoding support you can have seamless playback of CDs that blend tracks.
> For your setup-- if I do original CD -> accrual's rip -> burned CD, does burned CD == original CD for all values of original CD?
I was curious about this as well, and the answer was "no". I meticulously followed EAC setup guides for three drives in EAC, I used the recommended gap settings, the results were completely verified by AccurateRip, I was storing the results as a CUE sheet and single WAVE file, all drives would produce the same file, I was using EAC to burn the CUE sheet and WAVE file back to new Verbatim CD-Rs, re-ripping was done with the same setup in EAC, and the files still didn't match. I've been meaning to dig deeper and compare the files in binary, but haven't gotten around to it.
I'm mostly thinking of those interstitial lead-in thingies on live and concept albums. E.g., if you let a CD play from track 1 to track 2, there may be 5 seconds of crowd noise leading in to track 2. CD players would show this as track 2 at timing "-5", then count down to zero to get to the actual beginning of track 2.
If the user skipped directly to track two, this interstitial thingy wouldn't be played.
Edit: wording