Add support for single audio files with embedded CUE sheets

+1 for cue support here!

3 Likes

+1 for embedded cue support. (aka “BUMP!”)

3 Likes

+1
please

support for cue - flac

3 Likes

Hi. I’m a Squeezebox/LMS user and just joined this forum to add my support for wanting this feature. Is it added yet?

FLAC+CUE (or embedded CUE) was the feature that moved me to Squeezebox many years and and the feature that will keep me there if it’s not added in any other ecosystem. I wouldn’t consider Roon without it. Thanks.

1 Like

No response months later… Does this mean the developers don’t participate in the forum? Is there a way we can check to see what’s on the proposed feature list?

1 Like

The developers participate actively in this forum and are as open as they can be on what they are doing without creating expectations they cannot meet. See this appreciation.

Did you see the answer here that was in the link above

Roon is a small team and generally do not respond to something they have already answered unless there is something more to add. They will likely have noted your interest in this feature.

2 Likes

The approach is for Roon to support the cue sheet directly. I believe this is archival grade storage of our audio CDs, which contain the catalog and ISRC code for effective ways to identify our music.

*bin/cue files stores an audio disc image composed of one cue sheet file and one or more .bin files. The .bin files are raw sector-by-sector binary copies of tracks in the original discs. These binary .bin files usually contain all 2,352 bytes from each sector in an optical disc, including control headers and error correction data in the case of CD-ROMs.

An entire multi-track audio CD may be ripped to a single audio file and a cue sheet. However, the obvious drawback is that software audio players and hardware digital audio players often treat each audio file as a single playlist entry, which can make it difficult to select and identify the individual tracks. A common solution is to split the original audio file into a series of separate files, one per track- which is currently done for ALAC/FLAC/AIFF files.

A cue sheet is a plain text file containing commands with one or more parameters. The commands usually apply either to the whole disc or to an individual track, depending on the particular command and the context. They may describe the layout of data to be written, or Metadata.*

Any consideration here along with .iso formats?

1 Like

I would LOVE to see these features incorporated into Roon: .cue and .iso support + the ability to read .ape files.

4 Likes

Any commitment from Roon for .cue and .iso file support ?

All my CD rips are with a single .wav + .cue file pairs.

All my SACD Rips are .iso

I cant even consider Roon without these formats supported…

Sad …

1 Like

Not really, split the wav’s to individual tracks and while you’re at it convert them to FLAC.

Same for the SACDs.

Cue files have advantages that I refuse to give up. They retain the gaps exactly as on the original disc.

Ever heard Pink Floyd with each gap between the tracks either removed or substituted by a 2 second silence ? Same for Classical music or Opera…

Flac files are hardly the way to go for an audiophile. There is a substantial quality difference even between different FLAC encoders with the SAME lossless quality factor…

My 16/4 music is all ripped in cue + wav. . . cant compromise on that.

There is no difference between Wav and Flac if you are using Roon.

The flac files is decoded to the same wav file before it is send to the RoonBridge.

It is only if the RoonCore and RoonBridge is on the same machine you might hear a difference.

[quote=“Dinyar_Contractor, post:16, topic:1794”]Cue files have advantages that I refuse to give up. They retain the gaps exactly as on the original disc.

Ever heard Pink Floyd with each gap between the tracks either removed or substituted by a 2 second silence ? Same for Classical music or Opera…

Flac files are hardly the way to go for an audiophile. There is a substantial quality difference even between different FLAC encoders with the SAME lossless quality factor…
[/quote]You’re categorically wrong on all counts, but I suspect nobody will be able to convince you otherwise.

1 Like

I have ripped about 10000 discs to separate flacs and never had that problem. Your posting suggests that you haven’t worked out how to use your ripping software properly.

Quality difference between FLAC encoders: only if they’re broken.

You must have known that statement would start a firestorm. I will chime in and say that I have the same strong reaction that this statement is categorically incorrect.

(Let’s not re-live the nightmare of the Absolute Sound article series that argued that FLAC files sounded worse after being copied from hard drive to hard drive, among many other specious observations similar to the above statement.)

Let me suggest that you create a copy of your collection that are separate FLAC files for each track. Then tag the .WAV files in your collection as “whole albums” (or however you’d like) and also index your individual track FLAC files into Roon. Then you have the best of both worlds - you can listen to your whole albums as you’d like, but whenever you need to access an individual track, you have that option as well. Storage is cheap these days!

Appreciate all your reverts.

The primary purpose of my post was whether ROON handles / likely to handle (in the near future) .cue & .iso files. I believe that query has been definitively answered, and I appreciate that.

I will refrain from the other topics. It is not my intention to kick up any firestorm.

I politely I agree to disagree.

Cheers

This post by a member of the Roon team may help: Splitting tracks (FLAC + CUE files) [Answered - Use Cue Splitter]

and you may wish to consider this:

[quote]$ ls -la
total 41088
drwxr-xr-x 2 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:28 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:25 …
-rw-rw-rw- 1 x users 42065564 Apr 2 08:21 test.wav
$ md5sum test.wav
6037ed10ab8cb478b5aa49f6712649a5 test.wav
$ flac -8 --delete-input-file *.wav

flac 1.3.2
Copyright © 2000-2009 Josh Coalson, 2011-2016 Xiph.Org Foundation
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac’ for details.

test.wav: wrote 28141103 bytes, ratio=0.669
$ ls -la
total 27492
drwxr-xr-x 2 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:29 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:25 …
-rw-rw-rw- 1 x users 28141103 Apr 2 08:21 test.flac
$ flac -d *.flac

flac 1.3.2
Copyright © 2000-2009 Josh Coalson, 2011-2016 Xiph.Org Foundation
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac’ for details.

test.flac: done
$ ls -la
total 68572
drwxr-xr-x 2 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:29 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:25 …
-rw-rw-rw- 1 x users 28141103 Apr 2 08:21 test.flac
-rw-rw-rw- 1 x users 42065564 Apr 2 08:21 test.wav
$ md5sum test.wav
6037ed10ab8cb478b5aa49f6712649a5 test.wav
$[/quote]

and then finally this:

[quote]$ ls -la
total 41092
drwxr-xr-x 2 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:34 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:25 …
-rw-rw-rw- 1 x users 42065564 Apr 2 08:21 test.wav
$ flac -8 --delete-input-file *.wav

flac 1.3.2
Copyright © 2000-2009 Josh Coalson, 2011-2016 Xiph.Org Foundation
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac’ for details.

test.wav: wrote 28141103 bytes, ratio=0.669
$ ls -la
total 27492
drwxr-xr-x 2 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:34 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:25 …
-rw-rw-rw- 1 x users 28141103 Apr 2 08:21 test.flac
$ metaflac --show-md5sum test.flac
69abf9a1e2accdbee036f086c0021191
$ flac -d *.flac

flac 1.3.2
Copyright © 2000-2009 Josh Coalson, 2011-2016 Xiph.Org Foundation
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac’ for details.

test.flac: done
$ rm *.flac
$ ls -la
total 41088
drwxr-xr-x 2 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:36 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:25 …
-rw-rw-rw- 1 x users 42065564 Apr 2 08:21 test.wav
$ flac -1 --delete-input-file *.wav

flac 1.3.2
Copyright © 2000-2009 Josh Coalson, 2011-2016 Xiph.Org Foundation
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac’ for details.

test.wav: wrote 29934159 bytes, ratio=0.712
$ ls -la
total 29244
drwxr-xr-x 2 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:36 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 x users 4096 Apr 2 08:25 …
-rw-rw-rw- 1 x users 29934159 Apr 2 08:21 test.flac
$ metaflac --show-md5sum test.flac
69abf9a1e2accdbee036f086c0021191
$[/quote]

You are correct here, however, the large file + CUE was only required in the past when players could not play a sample accurate gapless stream. This is no longer a real problem with modern playback engines designed to handle this properly.

FLAC file lengths can be CD sector accurate (no padding), and Roon can play sample accurate gaplessly.

In Roon, whether you stream TIDAL or play FLACs (or any other file format that does not pad), the playback is gapless as long as the format of the audio is the same. It’s as good as a CUE file. In some ways, even better, since you can gaplessly play between non-contiguous tracks (like Nonagon Infinity, which is gapless from last track to first track.)

To directly answer your question:

We feel that CUE files are an obsolete piece of technology, and that there are better more flexible ways to store your content with no loss in quality, assuming the software handles the playback properly. We may add support for CUE files in the future, as a way to support Roon members that have data in this legacy format, but if we do, it would result in reduced functionality as the format is not as flexible as our feature set requires.

1 Like

Danny, Thank you for an informative & constructive post. It has introduced me to concepts I have not been familiar with, and got me thinking of possible migration out of .cue files.

While I have googled a bit based on pointers in your post, could you please provide some info / links for additional reading on the following:

  1. How do I rip a CD so that ROON can playback with the same gaps as on the original CD ? (I presume that is what you refer to as “Sample Accurate Gapless Stream” ?

  2. I read that .wav files can be with our without padding. Are the .wav files created when ripping a CD necessarily with our without padding, or is it un-predictable?

In essence, I want to know is I can rip in .wav and still have ROON playback with the same gaps as on the original CD ? or is this possible only with uncompressed FLAC ?

Your thoughts / pointers on the above, would be most helpful.

1 Like

There is no difference between compressed and uncompressed FLAC. It all decodes to exactly the same audio stream as I demonstrated above.