I wanted to preserve the sound quality as much as possible, and make it a one step burn so I made the songs wave files. I wanted it to be played on actual hardware, and not just emus. Downloading doesn't take that long, and once your burn it to CD the disk space isn't an issue either. I guess I'm just selfish because I prepared this exactly the way I always wanted someone else to do it, but they never did.
Also, the world needs APE like I need another hole in my head. I'm all for alternatives, but not when they aren't needed whatsoever. Ditto for FLAC.
I guess more explaining is needed then. Sound quality would be preserved 100% as both APE and FLAC are lossless audio encoders/compressors. They're simply heavy duty PowerZip programs but they're specialized for audio files such as waves - They're not the same thing as MP3/OGG/MPC, etc. which discard/eliminate massive amounts of original audio data. So, with a batch file and the lossless audio decoder to restore the compressed files back to waves, it would still remain a one step burning process (Unless the one-time extra step of clicking a batch file and having to wait to decompress the audio files back to waves is what you mean, and wanting to have avoided that.). As such, there'd be no issue with the resulting ISO/WAV/CUE image file set functioning with real hardware or emus for that matter; this was just about providing significant extra compression of the wave files that cannot be achieved with RAR or ZIP, etc. alone to facilitate faster sharing. Every byte of every file would remain the same in the end... Zero loss.
That being said, you seem to know both of these programs already, so I may have wasted my time explaining this and that the problem really was that you believe both of them to be unreliable. You said, "I wanted to preserve the sound quality as much as possible" in response to the suggested use of either APE or FLAC which unlike MP3/OGG/MPC, do just that... It's a zip/unzip process as I said and they do use checksums to try to trap any decompression/decoding error whether it was caused by the file being bad/incomplete or it's the result of bad memory on your system, just like any other ZIP program. But yeah, if you were worried about the off chance of bugs in these programs, with candidate versions being out there and what not, then OK, my misunderstanding. What I did with my archives is simply included an extra SFV file with all the checksums of the waves before having compressed them. That took care of any paranoia I might've had when doing this. After the user would run the batch file and had all the waves decompressed back, he could SFV check them and see that all the CRC32s matched with what was computed from my originals. Anyhow, I understand if this is too much of a process for what you intended to be a one time thing.
Now on disk space being an issue, I didn't care about that. What I cared about was that it took me most of the day to download it. I wanted to close my PC down, but I had to leave it on since the transfer was slowing to crawl, sometimes around 4KB/s. The best speed I got was around 13KB/s, so I can't agree with "Downloading doesn't take that long" for 700 MB which is why I recommended compressing the thing in the first place. Obviously, if I downloaded it as fast as you appear to indicate I should have (or could've at some other time), I wouldn't have bothered saying anything...
It's funny about your selfish comment - I know how you feel. You and I have a common bond in this regard it seems. See, I created TurboRip because I wanted a ripping program that prepared an ISO/WAV/CUE image file set of a PCE/TG16 disc exactly the way I always wanted some other commercial or freeware program to do it. But... yup, you guessed it! None of them never did...
Thus, it now exists. Now had CDDissect (one inspiration for TurboRip) allowed you to rip an audio track raw to a wave file and not force you into MP3, I probably would not have pursued the creation of this program.
As for hating on APE, FLAC, etc. OK, whatever. I simply picked two known encoders that I've worked with for this very purpose and am confident about. In APE's case, so much so that I added direct encoding support with TurboRip in order to allow you to create 1:1 lossless backups of your games. If you already knew of a better lossless audio encoder for this purpose, great. Regardless, I didn't really intend (nor have the interest) to get into a pissing contest about it, but since you go so far as to indicate both APE/FLAC need not exist (I've not heard anyone so strongly condemn these in particular and in such a juvenile manner), which other lossless encoder have you found that is much better? I can't imagine they've improved _that_ much, but I admit it's been a while since I've taken a look at any updates or possibly new ones. Of course, if this was meant as a comment against all lossless audio encoders in general though, then you couldn't be more wrong. They exist for music lovers that wish to create 1:1 perfect backups of their CD collection, but want significantly better compression rates than what ZIP/RAR alone affords you.
Actually here, lemme refer you to this
old chart I once made. The best example is the game "Arunamu No Kiba." If I only RAR either the ISO/WAV/CUE image file set or the BIN/CUE image file set, it compresses down only to 463 MB. BUT, if I take the ISO/WAV/CUE image file set, compress the waves individually with APE and then RAR it all up, it compresses down to 280 MB. Thus, I can share a perfect 1:1 image of the game at only 280 MB. That's a savings of
183 MB. To me, that's very worthwhile and with the right batch files, it's no sweat for the archive creator to create and the end-user to use. A few other examples: Ys Book I & II, I can save 72 MB, and with Xak III, I can save 92 MB, etc. Now granted, this was much more valuable back when the only methods to get these archives was from one person at an average speed of 8-16KB/s, etc. via DC++ or whatever, but still... When there are only a few people still online with a torrent, that's about the speed you get if their upstream sucks.
But yes, do tell, given that I went to the trouble to write all this out. Help me see the light. How is it that APE (and/or FLAC) is "not needed whatsoever?" That's a pretty definitive statement with no wiggle room. I should take that as an insult to my intelligence for having wasted my time in adding such support to TurboRip and for having ever used it to create lossless backups in the past then, right? Let's see, the world needs APE like you need another hole in your head, right, right... OK. Well, we can conclude you feel really strongly about it, so it's gotta be something so eye-opening, so obvious, it should make me completely reconsider ever having endorsed/used it I would imagine, just like that. I look forward to seeing what that argument is because I'm very curious. To think you must know something that I never knew and that had I known it, I never would've wasted all that time with APE support and the like... It's devastating, really.
Anyway, I'm not sure if you originally read some antagonism in my recommendation to compressing your remix, which might explain the "f*ck off with your suggestion" kind of tone you decided to take here, but there wasn't any, just so you know. That time. I simply didn't think others will have the patience to wait 16-18 hours to get this, time which could've been cut down quite a bit had it at the bare minimum been RAR'ed. So, I figured a) you were just in a hurry and/or b) perhaps the speeds were better earlier which you expected to last. The suggestion was only intended to help spread the remix faster for others, as I had already downloaded it before posting, but OK, you like doing it your way. Gotcha.
