Re: [tlug] Ubuntu / EPIA / Media Player

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On Mon, 7 May 2007, Lyle H Saxon wrote:

> Does it save much space to save an entire album as one file versus
> saving each track on the original CD as one file?

The short answer is, "no, not at all."

The longer answer: if you're on a filesystem with fairly large blocks,
which is what you'd want to do if you're storing a lot of large files,
it get up to a half megabyte per album. Still not a big deal when you're
talking three or four hundred megabytes per album; even with 831 discs
(including a fair number of CD singles), 400 MB is not a big dent either
way in 235 GB.

There were a bunch of reasons behind my thinking to rip CDs as single
files rather than per-track. (Well, they're not really single files; for
each FLAC file I have another file for the TOC and yet another for the
CDID.) In sort of random order, they are:

    * It's the same information, anyway.

    * It seemed to me easier at the time to deal with less than 3000
    files rather than some 30,000.

    * It's easier and faster to burn a new copy of a CD from a single
    file, rather than trying to put the tracks back together again.

    * I could just start ripping, and worry later about getting track
    title information.

    * I didn't have to worry about how to deal with tracks that start at
    -00:07 or some other negative value.

    * Possibly one avoids issues with live albums or others that have
    continuous music across several tracks.

    * It makes it easier to preserve subcode information in the CD.

Personally, I don't recommend doing it this way unless you've got a
pretty good reason for doing so or you're just uptight about keeping as
close as possible to the original format (as I am). All of the software
I've ever seen out there is designed for one-song-per-file, and has no
concept of anything else.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974

Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com