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One Stop Ripping All Your FLAC Audio Needs

September 13, 2009 in Audio Server, Backups, Computer, DIY, Mark, Music by Mark Beattie | No comments

Thought I’d throw out a quick post while I was doing some searching for “best practices” in FLAC image extraction of audio CD’s for backup purposes. Basically follow this guy’s instructions:

http://hiphopiscoolagain.com/jiggafellz-step-by-step-guide-to-secure-cd-ripping-with-exact-audio-copy/

In EAC you’ll click the “Actions > Extract Image + Cue Sheet > Compressed” function using your basic FLAC settings. Also be sure to enable Accurate Rip and do the automatic detection on all the drive settings. Save a .log file. There should be three files upon final output: the FLAC image, the CUE sheet, and the .LOG. That’s it. Simple is as simple does. If you feel like embedding the CUE sheet in the FLAC you can use Foobar2000 to do such, know however that it’s non-standard as far as burning back out. Apparently it’s always handy to have a separate CUE sheet. Good to know.

UPDATE: So, two things I realized. One: XLD (X Lossless Decoder) for OS X does pretty much the same thing as EAC. However, if you’re still hell bent on using EAC and XP (couldn’t get EAC to go under Darwine) it’s important to know that it won’t easily embed cuesheets (.cue sheets) automatically as XLD does. Embedded cuesheets do make life a little easier as your playback software can look at either the .cue or the .flac file and see all the tracks from the single disc rip.

To embed a .cue using Foobar2000 right click on the .flac image file select “Utils > Edit cuesheet” a window will pop up, check “Embed cuesheet” and then “Load .cue file” from your extraction directory, click “OK” to save. Bingo bango. XLD can do this automatically. I really cannot say which is better per data integrity, YMMV. Obviously if you’re running Windows EAC is a “reference” standard.

Album art is another grey area as either the %Album Name%.jpg or simply “cover.jpg” can be used inside the album folder. Also, what about album dates? Certainly, we can agree that the album’s original release date is the important date here in metadata, and per genre conventions I tend to trust MusicBrainz. For a good read I really liked Daniel Stout’s article about simplifying down to 25 main “top level” genres and tagging comments/notes metadata with sub-genres. The moral here is you should read up as much as you can. Either EAC or XLD will do fine with rips to backup your audio CDs. Cover art and sub-genre notes I’m going to have to keep exploring.

Exact Audio Copy

Gaggia little Gaggia, the light of my life.

September 1, 2009 in Coffee, DIY, Mark by Mark Beattie | No comments

Found a used Gaggia Classic on newyork.craigslist.org. Took the train up to Greenwich, paid the the cash to the pusher man in the back of his SUV and took home a “marginally used” single pump/single boiler w/3 way solenoid valve home espresso machine. The Rancilio Silvia currently goes new for about $600 or more, the Gaggia Classic is usually just under $500. I paid less than half of that so I feel good about it. Now the grinding, that’s another story. My vintage PeDe hand grinder goes pretty fine, but it’s still a bit coarse for the Gaggia. I had Ellen at Sweet Leaf grind me some Hairbender with their Mazzer profi grinder and it’s perhaps too fine; I’ll try less tamp. This morning it has tended towards a bit sour extraction though blonding doesn’t seem to be happening as quickly and I’m getting the full 30 seconds if not more, which makes me think it’s too fine. With the Larry’s espresso I was using and the PeDe I was getting 15 seconds max but it was much sweeter, though likely much less extracted, so it’s a fine line.

So yeah, at this point I have some cleaning to do: back flush the porta filter basket and 3-way valve, and do a full descale of the system. So far it doesn’t look like it was too heavily used though when I pulled the screen off the group head there was a pretty serious buildup of coffee soot/sludge so I’ll likely need to do a bit of cleaning around the group.

Gaggia Classic Espresso Machine

I did find a few terrific videos concerning grinding and cleaning I’ll link to here, from Seattle Coffee Gear and their blog here, The Brown Bean:

Temperature surfing your single boiler home machine

Pulling with a bottomless portafilter to better your shot

Descaling and cleaning

Dialing in your grind settings

Linux is a temperamental mistress

May 20, 2009 in Audio Server, Computer, DIY, Linux, MythTV by Mark Beattie | No comments

There is not doubt that you get out of MythTV what you put into it. I spent a good day, post system build, just getting things going. I upgraded to the 180.51 stable NVIDIA driver for the 9400 GT card that I have, at first it presented some problems, but I used Synaptic upgrade manager with Jean-Yves’ Avenard.org optional kernel builds with VDPAU support and the machine seems to run pretty cool. Yes that Antec 120mm fan is loud but I think I can run it on the low setting. Why Antec builds cases with fan holes that seem to be able to produce noise is beyond me. Since it’s an exhaust you’d think they might as well make it a super open mesh or just an open circle.

The Apple “mini” Remote still doesn’t work. I was able to get LIRC to recognize it via the HDHomeRun IR input, and it wrote to some .conf file somewhere, but it’s unclear exactly how to set it up from within Myth. But Apache works, I need to install Avahi and Netatalk again so I can get access to all the recordings from the other computers on the LAN. I still wouldn’t mind having a low powered server as a dedicated back-end, especially if I could run MT-DAAPD on that, ideally it’d be gigabit and something like an old Sempron 3000+ headless with say over 2 TB’s of free space.

I fixed a floor pump today that had a bad O ring using only teflon tape. Science. Also I had a double Americano using Stumptown beans at City Girl cafe on Thompson this morning. So good… wicked Sláinte.

City Girl Cafe via Noyda on Flickr

Hairbender via Lameen on Flickr

I am Netatalk you are Netatalk we are Netatalk

March 23, 2009 in Apple, Audio Server, Computer, DIY, Leopard, Music, Technology by Mark Beattie | No comments

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it spend all weekend working out Ubuntu 8.04 command line shell commands to make a beautiful thing happen? Namely, mount an Apple Time Capsule share over ethernet via Samba/CIFS and and then serve the data via mt-daapd to iTunes and Airport Express. All from the command line baby. Yeah. Compile that package of Netatalk with libcrack2 and ssl. Talk to me dirty with inexplicable buffer writes in vi baby. And you’ll do a lot of apt-get. And if you’re lucky you’ll do a few apt-get purge(s) thrown in there for good measure.

What about mounting the Time Capsule in Ubuntu? Shouldn’t that be simple beans? You know, smbclient, smbfs, and GO right? It just works. Hah. Apple doesn’t exactly have a support page for this sort of thing. The crux of it for me was the domain=workgroup option, and figuring out that with Netatalk everything referenced .local addresses no the local IPs for some reason. Whatever. The FLAC flows now. OGG, wavpac, you name it, this little Linux machine can serve it to iTunes whole. No more dealing with that cursed iTunes XML library. Unless of course you want to put music on your iPod. I still don’t have that part completely figured out. My feeling is you copy and add music as you want it on your iPod.

Metal Shop and Pop: Sheet Steel and You

March 23, 2009 in DIY, Mark, Metalwork, New York, Travel by Mark Beattie | 4 comments

So I went down to NC for a couple of days to build a welding table with my Dad. It turned out pretty nicely all things considered. We needed more practice on our MIG welds, but constructing a 4×4 foot table proved to be good exercise. We added a small 26 inch long extension off one side that will be my Dad’s cutting area where he’ll slot in steel strap for cutting with his plasma cutter and or Oxy-Acetylene torch if he ever goes that route. So that was a pretty solid few days of work. At the metal shop in Brooklyn I’ll have a slightly different tack for building a base for our kitchen counter. My plan there is to build metal brackets to go around the 3×3″ wooden legs and then finish the skirt with wood and hanging drawers. Zoe’s aunt has a bed that will replace ours as I’ll be cutting up the bed frame I build to use for the legs.