Ripping CD to FLAC - File Size

PoBear · 17 Dec 2018

Hi

I hope this is the correct place for this question.

I've done a couple of test rips to replace to rip my CDs onto a NAS for playback, previously I have used MP3 but now have the space to use a lossless codec such as FLAC.

I'm using Windows Media Player to do the rip.

So far I have ripped two CDs without a problem but whilst the file size for one is recorded as 300,897,431 bytes the size on disk is 2.75GB is round numbers, nearly 10 times the size. The other CD has the same issue

I can't understand why there is such a discrepancy, any ideas?

Thanks

fireberd · 17 Dec 2018

A 16bit/44.1Khz wav file (standard Red Book audio CD music file) is approximately 10MB per minute. How that breaks down to a flac I don't know. Look at other known flac's that you have and you can compare with the songs on the CD.

I do a lot of audio work as I have a recording studio. But, I've never used flac, only wav (full fidelity) or MP3.
I use the free "Audiograbber" to rip audio CD's. I do some recordings for Karaoke singers and Audiograbber will rip both the music and the song words from Karaoke CD's.

Mooly · 17 Dec 2018

That doesn't sound right. I just tried ripping a 65 minute CD in FLAC using Media Player. Size on disc looks correct.

Ripping CD to FLAC - File Size-annotation-2018-12-17-191255.png

PoBear · 17 Dec 2018

This is the properties from one of the files I have just ripped

Ripping CD to FLAC - File Size-image.png

eLPuSHeR · 18 Dec 2018

Why the discrepancy between Real and Disk size?. Are you using a very big cluster size?

PolarNettles · 18 Dec 2018

The file is on a network share. From this forum post it looks like that NAS has a bug when reporting the file size - Actual File Size differs big time to allocated size

jimbo45 · 18 Dec 2018

Hi there

@Mooly

Your sizes are about right --what they should be for that type of music. Flac (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a lossless compression format about 2:1 so a 600 MB WAV CD would be around 300 MB in FLAC. No loss of fidelity either.

If you have Classical Music CD's ripping with the old Winamp is actually very good as it uses the Gracenote built in API so the CD tracks get automatically tagged correctly -- Gracenote is far superior to other free databases for classical music tagging. Winamp still works perfectly on W10. I rip any old CD's with that and then transfer over to the NAS.

Quickest way - simply convert physical CD to audio CD iso on HDD (you'll see a load of tracks marked track1.cda etc). Now mount the iso and rip with winamp --now you'll get all your tracks beautifully tagged !!!

It's easier than doing it direct from the physical cd's -- what I do is convert a whole slew of CD's to audio iso CD's first - then ran a batch job to re-rip them with winamp for tagging.

Here's the winamp options : You don't need to set compression ratio - leave slider -- flac is uncompressed of course.

Note also by converting a physical CD to an audio iso cd first avoids the problem - especially if ripping old CD collections - of Disc read errors etc during the process -- once you've got an audio iso image on HDD you won't get any disk read errors and the rip and tagging of this iso with WINAMP takes place in seconds !!!! W10 can mount isos without problem. !!

@PoBear

typical standard CD ripped to FLAC should be around 220 - 300 MB depending on type of music being ripped - a full symphony orchestra on a 70 min CD will be slightly larger than say a smallish vocal ensemble on a 45 min CD but around 220 - 300 MB is about right.

for example : from music folder on my NAS (running Linux)

Cheers
jimbo

Mooly · 18 Dec 2018

@jimbo45 thanks for the info, appreciate it