Audio editing / burning (freeware)

[Blín D'ñero]

ExactAudioCopy
https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

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Audacity
https://audacity.sourceforge.net/

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WinAmp
https://www.winamp.com/

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Foobar2000
https://www.foobar2000.org/
For the playback of SACD ISO's on PC, use the foo_input_sacd plugin (sourceforge.net).
The plugin Audio CD Writer (currently v 3.0.3) adds support for burning audio CDs through context menu commands to convert to normal CD, then burn.
If you want to convert a single FLAC file to the seperate tracks (following the cue) in FLAC, you also need FLAC for Windows. (sourceforge.net) Note: watch it! By default the result is output into a generic Windows folder (you choose), and by default the tracks will be in alphabetical order of their titles (you can change that in options), so before burning you'd have to put them in the correct order again, but if that happens, i re-convert them after i put "track 01 - " "track 02 - " etcetera at the start of each track title.
For .APE in foobar2000 you need Monkey. If you have an APE file that you want converted to FLAC, you need the Monkey's Audio Decoder plugin for foobar.

If the volume slider doesn't work: check your File\Preferences\Settings. Make sure your default device is selected. For instance i have Creative X-Fi. The volume control works normally when my setting says "Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)" or "Primary Sound driver". When nothing in that list is selected, the volume slider will not work (= stays effectively at 100%).

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CDBurnerXP
http://cdburnerxp.se/
If you burn using CDBurnerXP, with .FLAC or .APE or .WV you don't need to convert beforehand: it does that for you.

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MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

The MP3 codec (for COder/DECoder) was developed at the end of the 1980s and adopted as a standard in 1991. As typically used, it reduces the file size for an audio song by a factor of 10; eg, a song that takes up 30MB on a CD takes up only 3MB as an MP3 file. Not only does the 4GB iPod now hold well over 1000 songs, each song takes less than 10 seconds to download on a typical home's high-speed Internet connection.

But you don't get something for nothing. The MP3 codec, and others that achieve similar reductions in file size, are "lossy"; ie, of necessity they eliminate some of the musical information. The degree of this degradation depends on the data rate. Less bits always equals less music.

As a CD plays, the two channels of audio data (not including overhead) are pulled off the disc at a rate of just over 1400 kilobits per second. A typical MP3 plays at less than a tenth that rate, at 128kbps. To achieve that massive reduction in data, the MP3 coder splits the continuous musical waveform into discrete time chunks and, using Transform analysis, examines the spectral content of each chunk. Assumptions are made by the codec's designers, on the basis of psychoacoustic theory, about what information can be safely discarded. Quiet sounds with a similar spectrum to loud sounds in the same time window are discarded, as are quiet sounds that are immediately followed or preceded by loud sounds. And, as I wrote in the February 2008 "As We See It," because the music must be broken into chunks for the codec to do its work, transient information can get smeared across chunk boundaries.

Will the listener miss what has been removed? Will the smearing of transient information be large enough to mess with the music's meaning? As I wrote in a July 1994 essay, "if these algorithms have been properly implemented with the right psycho-acoustic assumptions, the musical information represented by the lost data will not be missed by most listeners.

"That's a mighty big 'if.'"

Read full article: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD stereophile.com

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How to burn an audio CD from .flac files in Windows simplehelp.net

44100, 16-bit, Stereo is the Music CD sound standard.
If the FLAC is in 32-bit, you can resample to 16/44.1 or the software does that automatically for you.
Easiest is to drag the cue sheet into CDBurnerXP, the program will automatically produce the tracks!

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What is dither? (wikipedia)
What is dither? (hifi-writer.com)
Much Ado About Dithering audiofanzine.com

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FLAC - FAQ (sourceforge.net)

In case you downloaded an .APE file, you can play it in VLC Player (videolan.org).
.wv file: sometimes you can rename <file>.WV to <file>.EXE and run it. Or you can play directly in VLC player.
[hr][hr[/hr]
FLAC plays directly in Media Player Classic (mpc-hc.org)
Q: i see 'Standalone Filters' in the sourceforge download list.
What does it mean... Does that need to be installed too?
A: No. If you're using MPC-HC you don't need to download the standalone filters, as they are already built into the player.
The standalone filters package can be used to make Windows Media Player the base to play those kinds of media it normally wouldn't know how to handle from itself.

[Blín D'ñero]

CDBurnerXP
http://cdburnerxp.se/
If you burn using CDBurnerXP, with .FLAC or .APE or .WV you don't need to convert beforehand: it does that for you.


Note, that when you put a blank CD in the burner, do NOT use Windows auto menu that pops up, asking you what you want to do even though it offers "burn cd with cdburnerxp". CLOSE that menu! Otherwise, Windows will mess with the burning process and all you get is an unplayable CD.

You MUST: open CDBurnerXP (i do it from its shortcut on Desktop), and in the initial menu (of the program) you get to choose what you want. I then select to create an Audio CD. Also this is the only way you can select the burning options and they will be applied.

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[Blín D'ñero]

From Hydrogenaudio Forums:

Q. When do we dither?
A. We dither only when reducing the bit-depth of audio (e.g. when converting a 24-bit recording to 16-bit for producing a CD or when decoding an MP3, or after any mathematical operation on the sample values, such as applying gain or attenuation, running a lowpass filter, EQ, resampling etc. where the internal precision is greater than the original and we have to return to the original bit-depth).

Q. Why do we dither when reducing bit-depth?
A. To decorrelate the rounding or truncation error by adding a small random value just before we round that will push the samples value to be more likely to be rounded upward or downwards when it is rounded to the destination bit-depth. If we didn't decorrelate the rounding error, we would get slow fades of a tonal signal (e.g. sine wave) suddenly vanishing to silence. With random white noise, which has a low-strength, flat broadband frequency spectrum, the tonal signal remains distinguishable above the noise floor rather than vanishing and if it keeps getting smaller it will gracefully fade into the noise floor. Another symptom of not decorrelating the rounding error is possibly more severe, and that is quantization distortion, where spurious frequency components not present in the original are actually created by the process of rounding (which is somewhat analogous to clipping distortion). I speculate that this can be a reason that 8-bit sound cards sound rough as well as hissy when playing CD audio. With 16-bit audio it's audible far less often, so lack of dither can be harder to spot without worst-case test samples.

Once the fading tonal signal has been lost through lack of dither when rounding, it can't be recovered by dithering afterwards. Likewise, once spurious frequency components have been created by quantization distortion upon rounding or truncation, rather than being decorrelated by dither before rounding, they are present in the audio and won't be removed by dithering afterwards. In such cases adding dither to 16-bit audio either adds noise, or in the case of 0.5-bit magnitude dither, they make no change at all.

Dither Probability Distribution
A final note about dither - the probability distribution (PDF = probability density function) of the random numbers is also important. Triangular distribution of dither value probability (easily created from the subtraction of one independent random value from another where each have the common rectangular distribution) is arguably best, with a range of -1 LSB to +1 LSB (where LSB refers to the least significant bit magnitude of the destination bit-depth). This has peak probability of adding zero before rounding and low probability of adding 1 LSB. The other minimal fully-decorrelating probability distribution is rectangular dither of -0.5 to +0.5 LSB range, but it allows noise modulation to be created by the underlying signal where the dither noise may vanish and reappear from time to time based on the signal below. Triangular PDF (the sum or the subtraction of two independent rectangular values) doesn't have this disadvantage and behaves in an entirely consistent manner, but it is 3.01 dB louder than the rectangular noise (being the double the power of a single rectangular-PDF random signal of -0.5 to +0.5 LSB range).

Each successive trade-off gives slightly more noise in exchange for an advantage, but spread thinly over a white spectrum, and never concentrated in a peak or trough at one frequency or a group of a few, this is why triangular PDF dither is arguably preferable over:

a: No dither - quantization distortion creating new spurious frequencies or cancelling out intended frequencies entirely (i.e. the rounding error over time has strong tonal components which may add to or subtract from the original signal's tonal components) and varying rounding noise (in the non-tonal sense of noise, i.e. hiss).

or b: Rectangular dither - no quantization distortion, so no strong tonal components, but still varying noise (hiss), which if perceived at all (actually very unlikely for 16-bit audio) is far less easy for human perception to ignore than consistent background noise (hiss).

Some people refer to terms such as "digititis" (e.g. Bob Katz uses the term on digido.com) in early digital recordings, and usually it's lack of dither (though sometimes it's bad A-to-D converters or aliasing of frequencies above the Nyquist limit into audible frequencies below it, which can also be caused by shoddy ADC design or resampling).

Edit (afterthought): On the other hand, don't get too hung up on dither for single processes on 16-bit audio under normal conditions. I'm pretty damned sure my in-car CD/USB/MP3 player/radio doesn't dither and has only a 16-bit DAC, yet it sounds very good indeed even at full volume in a quiet location playing back mp3 files with Album Gain applied (hence quieter than original) or with deep fades applied to the mp3 using mp3DirectCut. I guess I'm no golden-ears but I do at least know what sort of problems I'm listening for. OK, full volume isn't painfully loud because I used Album Gain (50 watt output on 4 speakers isn't too shabby, though)

This post has been edited by Dynamic: Sep 21 2007, 18:12

Source (hydrogenaudio.org)

[Blín D'ñero]

Adobe Audition / Digitizing audio help page:
Comparing analog and digital audio
Understanding bit depth (adobe.com)

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About audio bit depth: wiki, audio bit depth (wikipedia)

16 Bit vs. 24 Bit Audio (tweakheadz.com)

http://www.homestudiocorner.com/24-bit-vs-16-bit/ (homestudiocorner.com)

guide to 24-bit FLAC (blog.bowers-wilkins.com)

Playing 24-bit FLACs on your DVD player (pristineclassical.com)