Lossless Audio Files To Play On iPhone

I know of two apps that are able to play lossless audio files on iPhone:

- FLAC Player
- GoldenEar

Each have its unique features:

FLAC Player only plays FLAC, but it includes an equalizer with lots of presets.

GoldenEar plays FLAC, APE and some other loss-less audio formats. It does not have an equalizer.

So far in my testing, GoldenEar seems to handle CUE sheet better. Given a FLAC file and a CUE sheet, it represents the FLAC file as an album (just as expected), and individual tracks are correctly recognized as songs. FLAC Player, on the other hand, does not seem to recognize CUE sheet in my testing. A FLAC file is played like a song without splitting out individual tracks.

Both apps plays FLAC well. While GoldenEar also plays APE, it did have some problem play one of the APE files in my testing. The beginning 1-2 seconds of the file sounded like skipped and broken. It seems the app is lagging on trying to process the file. The rest of the file plays fine.

Since FLAC Player seems to be more advanced in playback due to its cool equalizer, it would be a waste if the problem with CUE sheet and other loss-less formats (like APE) prevents us from using its full potential.

One way to go around CUE sheet is to extract individual track on a computer, and then copy the FLAC of individual track to FLAC Player. A free tool called CUETools can do this pretty well. Use the CUETools.exe to accomplish this.

APE files can be converted to individual FLAC tracks using foobar2000.

Using DeltaCopy to backup files with Unicode file names and long file names

DeltaCopy is an open source (free) program for backup files in Windows. I have seen it working on XP, Vista, and Windows 7, and I also believe it will run on all Windows server versions. Its most important feature is that it performs incremental backup: only the changed part of a large file will be backed up. DeltaCopy uses a client-server model so you can backup files to another computer as well as backup files to another hard disk drive on the same computer (a single computer acting as both the client and the server).

While on-line backup is gaining popularity, the main reason that you should stay away from it is the slowness of the data transfer speed over the internet. If you only want to protect your data in the case of a disk failure, and you don't need to:

1. backup the data to another part of the world, and
2. share the backup data over the internet

then you should stay away from on-line backup. You can easily use DeltaCopy to setup a good backup strategy on your home network.

DeltaCopy's website gives you two install options: you can download a Windows installer setup file, or you can download a zip-compressed file of the whole program. Since all of the necessary files are located in the DeltaCopy's folder, and there is no registry update and other additional processing to the setup I like to get the zip.

There are two limitations of the out-of-the-box DeltaCopy program:

1. It cannot handle Unicode file names
2. It cannot handle long file names (files which has more than 255 characters in its path from the root of the backup folder)

If you only have problem with the Unicode file names

One limitation of the out-of-the-box DeltaCopy is that it does not properly backup file names with Unicode characters. This is important to you if you have file names in foreign language, for example. The solution to this problem is posted on UTF-8 Cygwin. Simply put: replace cygwin1.dll in your DeltaCopy folder with one that is Unicode-enabled. Follow the link on UTF-8 Cygwin to get the file.

If you have both the Unicode file names problem and the long file names problem

I got the solution from reading this post and I'm really glad that it worked. Many of the files that are included in the DeltaCopy download are out of date. You can get the more up-to-date files by installing cygwin. You will need to get the following files:

chmod.exe - get the latest version
rsync.exe - get version 3.0.6 (version 3.0.7 does not work)
ssh.exe - get from the latest version of openSSH
cygwin1.dll - part of cygwin
cyggcc_s-1.dll - get the latest version

Next, copy these files into the DeltaCopy folder to replace the old files. You need to do this for both the client and the server.

Finally, add the following to the deltacd.conf:

uid = 0
gid = 0

That's all.

Lossless Audio Files To Play On iPod

Single Ape or FLAC With Cue Sheet

I have tried the method described here on FLAC using Nero 9. Nero 9 includes the FLAC plug-in and everything works. It looks like I need to install an APE plug-in for Nero 9 and I'm still not sure how to do this.

To convert APE/FLAC with cur sheet to MP3, in general, you use Nero 9 to open the APE/FLAC cue sheet with the help of the plug-ins, and then burn it to a virtual CD which creates a .nrg image file. Next use Daemon tools to mount the .nrg file so it looks like a CD drive to the computer. In order to create MP3 files you need LAME and I found one here. This is a "back-end" file. EAC provides the front-end for extracting the tracks from the .nrg file into individual MP3 files using LAME.

FLAC to MP3

Individual FLAC files can be converted to MP3. This guide is great. The method uses foobar 2000 to convert FLAC to MP3. It needs LAME to create the MP3.

APE to MP3

not yet.

Use Windows XP as printer server - the TCP/IP way

*This doesn't work

By default, when a printer is shared on a Windows XP box, clients need to add the printer using its NetBIOS name. Using NetBIOS name requires the server box and the client box to have the same workgroup name. This requirment is sometimes hard to satisfy, in particular when the client box is on the domain at work, and is shared between work and home. Alternatively, one can use IP address as the NetBIOS name and it will work. However, no one likes to remember IP addresses. It makes more sense to use DNS name to refer to a shared printer. To set this up you will need to install the LPR printing protocol (platform independent also works on UNIX) on the server box. This can be done by installing the Printing Services for Unix which is available with Windows NT 4.0, 2000, and XP.

http://www.sepialine.com/support/papers/lpr/

This article mentions that you need to manually start the TCP/IP Print Server after installing Printing Services for Unix.

Still cannot get it to work. I rather assign a static IP to the server, and add the network printer on my Windows XP clients using the server's IP address.

Keep drive letters unchange for USB devices on Windows

Why not turn used computers into home network servers?

File Server - fs

A file server is a central place for home data. It has the following responsibilities:
1. Maintain data integrity (minimize data lose)
2. Backup
3. Allow data sharing and access control

External USB hard-disks are getting cheaper and are easier to maintain than internal ones. A handy tool for USB hard-disks is USBDLM - USB Drive Letter Manager for Windows. It allows a permanent drive letter to be assigned to a USB hard-disk by its permanent device-ID (and many other criteria). With this, it is now possible to use the same hard-disk for multiple computers (say if you have a desktop PC and a notebook) while be assured that the same drive letter can be used on every computer. In addition, now you can sign up for one online backup account (IDrive, MozyHome) and use it on multiple computers to backup the data from the same USB hard-disk.

Here is a sample minimum USBDLM configuration file to reserve drive letter F for my USB hard-disk:

[ExcludedLetters]
Letter1=F

[DriveLetters1]
DeviceID1=USBSTOR\DISK&VAN_WD&PRDXTERNAL&RE_V5.00\444333385654776334321212&0
Letter1=F

Media Center Server - mcs

Media files guide for Windows

Media players:

Media Player Classic
Notes: Good video player. Ok audio player.

DirectShow-based media codecs:

How to play FLAC files
Notes: To play in Media Player Classic we need a DirectShow filter. Illiminable OGG Directshow filter is a good one.

Monkey Audio DirectShow Filter Source Filter
RadLight APE DirectShow Filter
Notes: You need both of the above to play APE in Media Player Classic.

FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder
Plays H264. Has versions to use CPU's MMX or SSE/SSE2.

Haali Matroska Spiltter
For the most popular mkv.

CoreVorbis
Open-source audio compression comparative to MPEG-4(AAC), higher performance than MP3. Aka OGG.

AVI files encoded using IV31 IV32 IV41 IV50
Some very old AVI files were encoded using IV50 (in my case). Microsoft disable the playback of these files in Windows Media Player for XP and onward. You now need to pay f**king $15 to get it from Ligos. Ridiculous! Rest free, there is an alternative site. Install iv5setup.exe here and use Media Player Classic to play these files in Windows XP. The big disappointment is that his doesn't seem to work in Windows 7. My suggestion: as soon as you get the codecs, convert these files to a more universal video format, don't pay the stupid Ligos.

General

General playback of media files
Notes: Has how-tos for many media file types.

Other Useful Tools

GraphEdit
Final Codec 2009 ny
CoreAVC Pro Edition
Any Video Converter Free Edition