What do I need to do to get FLAC onto a CD/DVD?

[j_garcia]

There is an artist offering a new bonus disc downloadable as FLAC or MP3. Their MP3s are high quality, but I am looking to try FLAC and see what it gives me. So once I have it, what can I do with it? What type of software do I need to burn it to a CD or DVD to make use of it other than on my computers?

 

[jliedeka]

I would recommend FLAC which is lossless.

To burn a CD:

1. Turn the flac files into WAV files. For example, with the command line flac program: flac -d myfile.flac

That assumes the standard 44.1/16 format. If it's anything else, you may have to add command line options for bps and sample-rate.

2. The next steps may depend on what software you have available. You may have a GUI like Serpentine or Xcdroast that lets you add files to a playlist and burn the cd. Otherwise you need to create a TOC (table of contents) file that has all the WAV files listed in a certain format. You can then call cdrdao with the TOC file to burn the CD.

I haven't tried burning a music DVD. DVD's are supposed to have AC-3 encoding (lossy) but I think there's a way to add lossless files. DVD uses an ISO file system like a CD-ROM but requires a certain directory structure. There are DVD creation utilities out there but I haven't used one recently.

Jim

 

[pzaur]

I second the flac recommendation. There are free programs out there for converting flac to wav and so forth.

dbPoweramp is what I use.

After that you just need burning software.

-pat

 

[j_garcia]

I have software to burn, just needed to know what format and how to convert to get it to a CD. Thanks guys.

 

[allargon]

I haven't tried burning a music DVD. DVD's are supposed to have AC-3 encoding (lossy) but I think there's a way to add lossless files. DVD uses an ISO file system like a CD-ROM but requires a certain directory structure. There are DVD creation utilities out there but I haven't used one recently.

Lossless DVD would only have the bandwidth (and codecs) for two channel PCM. (There are even porno discs with two channel PCM.) However, it is very possible to do lossless on standard DVD but not multichannel lossless. That requires DVD-A.

 

[pzaur]

To create a DVD-A I use a program called DVD-Audiofile. It's free. I used it for the first time yesterday and created a DVD-A that my player played perfectly. I'm a newbie with this format and am learning about the groupings. I don't know what capabilities this program has.

Here is a quick hit for creating DVD-A discs:

Basic 24 Bit FAQ
The link to download DVD-Audiofile is on the page.

The only glitch I saw is that you have to attach the .iso to the name of your file. It isn't automatically set that way.

I then use imgburn to to burn the .iso file to DVD. Great little program.

-pat

 

[j_garcia]

Lossless DVD would only have the bandwidth (and codecs) for two channel PCM. (There are even porno discs with two channel PCM.) However, it is very possible to do lossless on standard DVD but not multichannel lossless. That requires DVD-A.

As far as I can tell, this artist is only providing 2ch (at this time), so that should be OK.

 

[FeisalK]

I have software to burn, just needed to know what format and how to convert to get it to a CD. Thanks guys.

if you have Nero, you can get the FLAC plugin that converts FLAC on-the-fly when you burn an Audio CD with Nero

also check out this page