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U2Lynne
2006-08-29, 05:01 PM
OS: 10.4.7
iMac: 800 MHz G4

I downloaded a show yesterday in flac from a taper. I ran the flac files through xACT shntool len and found no sector boundary errors. I then converted to aiff using xACT. Then I burned using Toast 7.0.1, DAO. I then went to listen to the disc and there was a tiny click between the tracks. So, I opened up the disc aiff file in Audacity, and sure enough, there is a small space at the beginning of the tracks (all of them and all of different lenghts). So, I then went and looked at the aiff files on my harddrive. They have no gaps at the beginning. So, then I made an md5 of the aiffs on my CD and tested that against the files on my harddrive. As you would guess, they failed (yes, I made sure to change the name since Toast renamed the files).

Track 4 on hard drive:
http://u2lynne.sandsmuseum.com/images/track4HD.jpg

Track 4 on burned CD:
http://u2lynne.sandsmuseum.com/images/track4CD.jpg

Track 4 images one of top of the other. Notice how they are also shifted :hmm: :
http://u2lynne.sandsmuseum.com/images/track4to.jpg

I am burning shn, flacs, and DVDs just fine (I just did some yesterday and ran the md5s or ffps on the burned files and all was fine) so this seems to be an audio problem only.

ffooky
2006-08-29, 06:04 PM
Wierdsville. Shot in the dark...are the FLAC files 48kHz ? Shot two: what happens if you convert to WAV instead of AIFF. Do the AIFF and original FLAC files have the same shntool md5 ?

You could not expect the burned and unburned files to have the same MD5 hash anyway as Toast cannot compensate for the burner's offset.

U2Lynne
2006-08-29, 06:59 PM
Wierdsville. Shot in the dark...are the FLAC files 48kHz ? Shot two: what happens if you convert to WAV instead of AIFF. Do the AIFF and original FLAC files have the same shntool md5 ?
You sure do shoot well in the dark. I should have read the text file more closely. Yes, they are 48khz:

Cores Sound mid price mikes > bass roll off > Sony D8 48 khz

Computer that has digital sound card can't dither down to 44 khz so transfered to computer using analogue.
RCA jacks ( not 1/8 plugs)
Tascam DA 20 MK 11 > (Gina Soundcard)computer Cdwav (split tracks) small fades first & last track

And, the aiff shntool md5 is the same as the flac fingerprint.

You could not expect the burned and unburned files to have the same MD5 hash anyway as Toast cannot compensate for the burner's offset.
Um, yeah, silly me, I don't know what I was thinking of there.

So, I've never come across a show that is still at 48 kHZ before. What do I do on my Mac to resample it? Is this something I can do in Audacity?

ffooky
2006-08-29, 07:13 PM
You can definitely do it with Audacity but whether it's the best tool for such a conversion I really don't know.
I'd take a punt that QT might do the job better and I'd go about it like this:

1) Make a cue file of the original 48kHz FLAC's with xACT.
2) Join 'em all up with xACT.
3) Export the resultant big FLAC to 44.1kHz AIFF with Toast (Best Quality render setting, 16 bits sample size).
4) Split the big AIFF according to the cue file you made in 1) which will guarantee sector boundary compliance.
5) Toast the buggers.

U2Lynne
2006-08-29, 09:49 PM
You can definitely do it with Audacity but whether it's the best tool for such a conversion I really don't know.
I'd take a punt that QT might do the job better and I'd go about it like this:

1) Make a cue file of the original 48kHz FLAC's with xACT.
2) Join 'em all up with xACT.
3) Export the resultant big FLAC to 44.1kHz AIFF with Toast (Best Quality render setting, 16 bits sample size).
4) Split the big AIFF according to the cue file you made in 1) which will guarantee sector boundary compliance.
5) Toast the buggers.
OK, I got up to step 3. I can drag the flac file into Toast and ask to have it converted to aif, but then I don't get the options you noted. If I drag and aif into QT though, I do see those options, but I can't drag the flac file into QT. Do I need some special plugin perhaps? (I do see Toast say Options next to aiff, however, it is ghosted out for me.)

Edit to add: Google found me two QT flac plugins, however both have comments saying it doesn't work under OS 10.4

ffooky
2006-08-30, 04:30 AM
Do you have QT Pro ? I suggested using Toast to go 48k FLAC->44.1 AIFF because I thought it was independent of whether you had QT Pro but if the options are greyed out I suppose it must not be. The quickest method would have been 48k FLAC->join with xACT and output 1 big 48k AIFF->downsample with QT but I was sure that would require QT Pro.

Unless you want to spring for QT Pro (comes in pretty useful but not as nice as free) I suppose Audacity will be your best option and I'd change the workflow to:

1) Make a cue file of the original 48kHz FLAC's with xACT.
2) Join them all up with xACT but output to one big WAV (Audacity seems to be quicker with them).
3) Downsample to 44.1 with Audacity.
4) Split the downsampled biggie according to your cue from 1).

The QT FLAC plugins only worked with QT 6 and the current ones only work with Ogg FLAC but if you can wait that long, QT in Leopard is FLAC compatible :)

Sorry to send you up a blind alley first time around but this will definitely work.

ffooky
2006-08-30, 06:26 AM
When you say Toast 7.0.1 do you definitely not mean 7.1 ? If you can upgrade I'd definitely advise it before buying QT Pro (if you intend to) just in case that makes a difference. I know other export gremlins were fixed in the revised release.

U2Lynne
2006-08-30, 10:40 AM
I had looked at updating to Toast 7.1, but I didn't see anything that I thought would impact me. But, I just upgraded and now the options box is not grayed out. Funny that it was there but I wasn't allowed to use it. You would think they would just not put it there if it wasn't an option.

Anyway, I'm continuing with step three right now.

By the way, what was it that made you think it was a 48 kHz show?

U2Lynne
2006-08-30, 11:28 AM
Argh!!! If it's not one thing, it's another.

OK, I now have one big "joined.aif" file. So, I thought I would just open up xACT and go to shntool > split, throw the joined.aif file in there, when asked, select "cuesheet.cue", tell it where to save these new aiff files and away it would go. Nope. Error:
"shntool [split]: warning: file '/path/to/file/joined.aif' is not handled by any of the builtin format modules
shntool [split]: error: cannot continue due to error(s) shown above"

I noticed the first line of the cue sheet said "FILE "joined.wav" WAVE", I changed it to "FILE "joined.aif" WAVE" and get the same error. I tried changing WAVE to AIF and AIFF, and still I get that error. It seems like what I'm doing is the right thing, but obviously not.

(The person I grabbed this show for would *really* be going crazy at this point. But, I'm trying to not pull my hair out.)

ohkeepa
2006-08-30, 11:31 AM
my Toast should be coming UPS within a couple hours

ffooky
2006-08-30, 01:25 PM
Lynne, it looks like the curse of AIFF again. Try converting your biggun to WAV with xACT, Audacity, Toast, whatever and then see if that does it. I reckon it will.

Since Toast finally got its WAV act together I recommend using WAV files rather than AIFF wherever there's an option, particularly in combo with xACT/shntool.

I guessed it was a 48kHz show in line with the Sherlock Holmes thing about when you've excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. From what you'd said it seemed the only conceivable possibility.

Yeah, why have the options but grey them out ? Glad you've got them now anyway.

U2Lynne
2006-08-30, 02:58 PM
Well, I'm now really confused and back to square one (I think). I decided to create an shntool md5 of the wavs I ended up with and guess what? It's the same as the one for the original aiffs I created. I also took another look at the text file he posted, and he wrote:
Cores Sound mid price mikes > bass roll off > Sony D8 48 khz

Computer that has digital sound card can't dither down to 44 khz so transfered to computer using analogue.
So, it appears he stated it was in 48 kHz and that he did end up converting to 44 kHz (I think he meant 44.1 kHz) by using an analogue method instead of a digital method.

The thing is, I burned two shows yesterday morning. The other one is totally fine. It's only this one that is off. I think I'll try burning again only using the wavs and the upgraded Toast and I'll see if this happens again.

ffooky
2006-08-30, 03:26 PM
Drop any of the original FLAC files on xACT->shntool->info and you'll see if it was 48 or 44.1kHz. If you seeCD-quality properties:
CD quality: yesit's 44.1. This one's got legs :)

U2Lynne
2006-08-30, 04:41 PM
file name: /my/path/Track03.flac
handled by: flac format module
length: 4:36.64
WAVE format: 0x0001 (Microsoft PCM)
channels: 2
bits/sample: 16
samples/sec: 44100
average bytes/sec: 176400
rate (calculated): 176400
block align: 4
header size: 44 bytes
data size: 48836928 bytes
chunk size: 48836964 bytes
total size (chunk size + 8): 48836972 bytes
actual file size: 26842075
file is compressed: yes
compression ratio: 0.5496
CD-quality properties:
CD quality: yes
cut on sector boundary: yes
sector misalignment: 0 bytes
long enough to be burned: yes
WAVE properties:
non-canonical header: no
extra RIFF chunks: no
Possible problems:
file contains ID3v2 tag: no
data chunk block-aligned: yes
inconsistent header: no
file probably truncated: unknown
junk appended to file: unknown
odd data size has pad byte: n/a

This is very strange indeed. I haven't had time to burn another set of discs from the wav files with the upgraded Toast yet. I'm tempted to look around for our rw disc to try burning with original aifs again (I've only got two CD-Rs left, the new ones should arrive anyday, but they didn't arrive today.)

U2Lynne
2006-08-31, 05:16 PM
Well, I got the same results by burning again.

Funny thing is though, I can burn DVDs just fine (I always verify with the md5 that I burn in the EXTRAS_TS folder) and I can extract DVDs just fine (I always make an md5 from the DVD then use it to verify the files once I copy them to my harddrive) and burning shn/flac files is fine (again, I verify with the checksums). So, this problem only occurs when burning an audio CD. So, does that or doesn't that mean it's my burner?

ffooky
2006-08-31, 05:41 PM
If all the original FLAC files share this reportCD-quality properties:
CD quality: yes
cut on sector boundary: yes
sector misalignment: 0 bytes
long enough to be burned: yesthen I can see no reason why Toast would feel the need to pad anything with silence. I give up but, just for interests sake, how does Toast cope with burning an audio disc straight from the FLAC files without prior decompression ?

Which burner, at what speed and is its firmware bang up to date ?

U2Lynne
2006-09-01, 10:57 PM
Oh yeah, as I'm sure you could guess, same thing burning from the flac files.

Next up.... transferring the show to hubby's mac and burning from there (he has a one year old tower).

U2Lynne
2006-09-06, 12:08 PM
Well, I found another firewire burner sitting around here, hooked it up, and burned one of the shows again from the flac files. I listened to it and it sounded just fine. However, upon opening the wavs in Audacity again, there is still that 0.012 (or so) second 'flat spot' that I posted images of on the first page. I am baffled by this. It was burned on a totally different drive (a Mitsumi CD-48X9TE according to Toast). This was burned using Toast 7.1 . Isn't it weird that the same gap appears after burning it using two different drives? Is it possible that this is 'normal' for Toast and I just never before looked at the wavs in an editor and so I just never noticed it before?

edit to add: The size of the gap appears to be about 1 sector. Hmmmm

reece
2007-06-28, 12:44 AM
I've spent most of the day trying to find apps for joining lossless (yes, I completely forgot I already started a thread for that topic) or uncompressed files and resampling/dithering. I finally get around to asking the question here but I see the subject has already been discussed. It's always the last place you look. :lol

Thanks Lynne and Ffooky.