APE/CUE --> SonicStage

[Nicolas1400]

Which is the fastest way to import an APE/CUE album (one APE audio file, and one CUE sheet file) into SonicStage 3.3 without burning cds?

I have gigs and gigs of ape albums and i need to find a simple method to import them.

[dex Otaku]

1 - assuming the cuesheet actually points at the APE file, just use something like Nero to "burn" a CD image. In the case of Nero, mount it with ImageDrive, then open SS or SB, and copy the image as though it were an actual CD.

2 - [unrelated to your question] APE has no protection against data corruption. FLAC and WavPack do. What this means is that if your backup CD/DVD with tha APE image on it gets damaged or has a read error of some kind, everything in the APE file past the error is corrupt. WavPack I have found [after archiving hundreds of files this way] to have slightly better compression that APE, even with the overhead of corruption-protection. FLAC and WavPack also allow embedded cuesheets. .. the first thing I do with APE sources is convert them to WavPack. The only advantage APE really has is that its interface is simpler to use.

[Nicolas1400]

Thanks dex Otaku for your quick answer.

I don´t know the WAVPACK format, i just heard it somewhere.. but i never give it a try.

I am very familiar with the APE/CUE and FLAC formats due to their popularity. [the 95% of the loseless albums over the net are APE or FLAC].

But i think it´s a great advantage if the WAVPACK have that error managment you talked before.

Also i was informed APE was the better-compression codec, but it´s great if WAVPACK can do a better job

i´ll check it and tell you !

[dex Otaku]

The differences in compression are pretty minimal, really, i.e. <5% difference nominally. For really large files, that can make a fair difference, though.

I still use FLAC over WavPack for distro CD images because the tools I've found are better for dealing with FLAC with embedded cuesheets than for WavPack.

WavPack in its newest incarnation compresses slightly better [maybe 2% on average] than FLAC, but the real reason I ended up switching was when I was encoding 32 hours of 16-bit audio to compressed formats .. the WavPack encoder is somewhere between 5-15x faster than FLAC on my machine.

[allegate]

I have almost the same question. I've tried several different programs from daemon tools to alcohol 120% to make a virtual image from my mp3's so I can put the songs onto my MD (Sonicstage broke and MD Simple Burner is the only way to get tracks onto the player). Is Nero the only reliable program that does that?