How about archiving .wav's?

[tokalash]

Hi there.
I have a question I think some of you might be able to help me with.
I've been trading for audio CDR's for five years and still do, from time to time.
As you've probably experienced, some discs tend to be more popular than others. To avoid ripping these everytime, I've been thinking of putting them on a large hard drive in WAV format. FLAC would be a better format to archive, but what about burning an audio disc from FLAC's? What if the other trading part trades the disc later as an audio, and some other guy encodes it to FLAC's? If I didn't still trade audio discs, this would not be a problem but now I feel I could need some advice. Thanks for reading.

[Five]

FLAC is the same as WAV, but it is smaller and can be self-tested for errors. you can always get the WAV that you started with from a FLAC file.

people shouldn't trade audio discs burned from FLAC files, as errors creep in. in fact it is so difficult to exactly copy an audio cdr that the ppl who know how to do it are the most likely never to do so.

check the links in my signature, the EAC config link will show you how to set up EAC so that it can really make an exact copy (which is not possible without making some changes in the settings specific to your drives). The other link shows (among other things) how to tell if one audio file is the same as another by generating .st5 checksums. An .st5 checksum will remain the same for any lossless file no matter what (wav, flac, shn, ape, etc).

So get EAC, configure the read offset & set all the error recovery settings to highest quality and make sure it is in secure mode. then you can rip your audio cdrs to wav, then encode to FLAC using TLH or similar. Once the files are encoded to FLAC, you can run a test on them years down the line and if there is one iota of difference the test will fail (unlike audio cdrs where the only test is to listen intently on headphones and hope your ears are sharp enough to catch small/large glitches).

[TheMamba]

Originally Posted by Five

the ppl who know how to do it are the most likely never to do so.

But seriously, what you (tokalash) described is the exact reason why it's "bad" to trade audio discs.

Do yourself a big favor and make the switch to FLAC.

[tokalash]

Thanks for your advice.
I think I'll store them as FLAC, and while ripping to wav, burn backup copies to store away in a closet.

[Five]

burn backup copies of the FLACs as data discs and store them in your closet! it is better than wav, trust me.