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Tip: Importing Incompatible Formats

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atreyu

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I don't know if folks have discussed this much, but since (with one exception) SS is fully compatible with WMA 9, it also supports the WMA Lossless format.

Anyway, I got to thinking today about how this makes it possible to get files of any format (OGG, FLAC, MPC, whatever) into SS reasonably-easily, tags & all. Please, no flames re: transcoding degradation... in my case I'm converting from either FLAC or high-bitrate MusePack. Besides, some people just don't care as much.

In the past I've imported incompatible formats by using the excellent (and did I mention FREE?) dBpowerAMP Music Converter to convert the file into a stereo .WAV file, which I then imported into SS. The big problem was the fact that in doing this I lost all my tag information, and was forced to re-enter the info manually.

Well, what I do now is convert my files into WMA Lossless, then import them into SS! No added deterioration introduced by going, say, FLAC->MP3->Atrac3plus, since going FLAC->WMA Lossless->Atrac3plus is exactly the same as going FLAC->Atrac3plus. And best of all.. all the tags (minus track#) are preserved!

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...you could do the Image Drive/simple burner  trick with both Flac and WMA lossless. That way you simply trash the image when done, and don't clog your system with more and more copied files.

See... that's what I used to do, but I like this method better. For the ImageDrive/SB trick to work you need *every* track on the CD archived (including crappy songs and even throwaway tracks and loooong tracks with a hidden song at the end). Otherwise Gracenote doesn't recognize the disc and I'm stuck with no tag info again. That's wasted space... I only want to archive songs I like, and if there's a hidden song on a track after 9 minutes of silence I'd rather rip it to WAV, edit it into two tracks and store those two tracks separately.

Plus I'm not clogging my system... as I said in my initial post I'm deleting the WMA after I do the initial conversion to my format of choice (Hi-SP). Then the tracks are ready to transfer immediately, no conversion required. With the ID/SB trick I have to hunt down the right archive DVD, load it, fire up Nero, burn the image, mount the image, convert it realtime as I tranfer (slooow), delete the image, and then the next time I want to load up that album I have to go through that all over again.

Edited by atreyu
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  • 2 weeks later...

The discs have to have the CD-Text info on them. While CD-Text has technically been around for a long time, I have never seen a single commercially-produced disc that actually had the info on it.

It's rare, to say the least.

If you're burning your own CDs, you have to make sure that:

* your burner supports CD-Text disc creation

* your burning app supports it [Nero does, for instance], and that

* you title things accordingly in the burning app, and enable the option

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Infact the majority of my CD collection is made from CD-Text CDs. And they all worked perfectly with CDex, EAC, Nero, my decks, .... That's why I do not understand why SS3 and SB2 does not retrieve the CD-Text infos.

Edited by JFK
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Problem in the problem is that my two drives : CRW-F1 (Yamaha) and SOHD167T (Lite-On) have the same issue with Sony softs. Moreover I have some cue audio CD images (with CD-Text) and when mounting them with Daemon Tools the image drive produced does have the same Sony-related cd text problem

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  • 4 weeks later...

Installing the 3.1 French version, I have disolve the problem regarding SS and CD-Text, but the SB/CD-Text bug is still there. Does those two programs use different "routines" to read CD-info ? Have you got ideas of the problem ?

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It's a shame : SS whose purpose is to convert "all" files (from your HDD or your CD-Rom) has CD-Text support. And SB which is dedicated to the MD burning operation from Audio-CDs doesn't have this CD-Text support ... What is the psychothinking-model of softwares designer ? Are they mad ?

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SB never had CD-text support to begin with. And given the rarity of commercially prodcued disc with CD-text to begin with, i'm suprised this was included into SonicStage to begin with. Perhaps this will be included for SimpleBurner in future versions.

If you are using NetMD Simpleburner v1.x (old version of Simpleburner only compatible with NetMDs), there is a work-around: you can use a program called CD-Text Manager (google it!) to read the CD-Text of the disc and import the CD-text data into the NetMD Simpleburner database, prior to launching SB itself.

Upon the release of Simpleburner 2 (HiMD/NetMD version), I contacted the author of CD-Text Manager as it appeared it would not function with SB2. He wrote back saying that Simpleburner 2 did not store its CD info in the same manner that SB1 did, and he was unable to find the database by simple file search.

If anyone could find out how SimpleBurner 2 stores it's CD info, it would be quite easy to incoporate this feature into a prog like CD-Text Manager or an other application we could write for this purpose.

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I ve already try CD-Text Manager, but has you mentionned it did not work (as I got an NH1, I will not use SB1).

It is astonishing, I am having an PM discussion with Ishiyoshi and he says thaht his SB2 can return CD-Text info from the inserted CD-Audio. Without any special soft. What is the final word ?

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So, as far as I know :

SS:

CD-Text support when importing a CD in the Atrac database

CD-Text support when creating a CD from Atrac database

SB :

???

With my SB 2.0.04.18080 I cannot retrieve CD-Text info from audio-CDs (with CD-Text of course, verify with such softs like CDex, EAC or CD-Text Manager...). So if your SB version get you CD-Text, please give-us your build number.

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I've a further question:

I try to import MP3-Files. Some work but some do not and I get the "format-not-supported-message". What is the difference between those files. I thougt ss supports all MP3-formats?

could be the VBR(variable Bit Rate)-bug in SS... try searching MDCF for "VBR" Or "Variable Bit Rate"... this problem has been discussed in great lenghts

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