Here is the System Info report you requested to be added in support posts. My post follows afterwards.
I don’t know if this is the right place to post this, as it’s more of a bug report, but I thought I'd bring your attention to a problem that has been in Alcohol 120% since 2005 involving the .BIN/.CUE image format. Basically, when dumping a CD that contains data on the first track and audio on the following tracks (an old computer game is a good example), Alcohol will throw the audio tracks exactly 2-seconds out-of-sync. This causes the first 2-seconds of a track to be played at the end of the track preceding it. By this, I mean that a song will start 2-seconds in, play through, get to the end (where a short silence is usually heard) and then instead of going to the next track like it normally should, the first 2 seconds of the next track play as if they are part of the song. Then the next track will start seamlessly, except 2 seconds in, and this process continues throughout the whole CD.
To correct this, you have to edit the .CUE file created by Alcohol with Notepad and shave off 2 seconds from the middle set of digits of every track numbered #3 and onwards (track 1 is data, track 2 is audio but is always in sync). By doing this, the audio is set back into its original position and play's perfectly. The only reason I know how to do this is because I stumbled upon a person who had commented on this on a website, otherwise I would have had no idea why the tracks were all mixed up. Very few people seem to be aware of this problem, and even fewer would know how to fix it.
I know that BIN/CUE is a foreign format to Alcohol, as is CCD, but the benefit of BIN/CUE is its portability and support. Almost every single burning program supports BIN/CUE, while only a few support MDF/MDS or CCD. In its current state, the BIN/CUE support in Alcohol is useless for audio CD's if the person making the image is unaware of the de-synching problem, and even if they were, they’d still have to know how to edit the .CUE file. Given that Alcohol 120%’s is regarded as the best disc-imaging program out there, I don’t think it’s much to ask for it to properly support the most basic of image formats.
I’ve chosen 3 games to use as part of my experiment to show you the problem, each one ripped to BIN/CUE once with Alcohol and then again with CDRWin I’m using CDRWin as a comparison because I had heard that data+audio CD’s ripped with it have their audio in normal sync and, lo-and-behold, as the following experiment shows, they do!. Up until a few weeks ago I thought it was a problem with the BIN/CUE format itself. Anywho, let’s begin:
Monkey Island 1 (1992) - Plain data track and lots of audio tracks.
Quake (1996) - CD-XA data track and a number of audio tracks.
Starsiege (1999) - Predominantly plain data (500mb) with 4 audio tracks.
Here are snippets of the .CUE files for each game, one for Alcohol and one for CDRWin. Note the discrepancies in bold and similarities in underlined italics:
Monkey Island CDRWin .CUE (In-Sync):
FILE "MONKEY1-CDRWIN.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 04:58:00
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 07:00:35
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 09:09:00
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 11:17:30
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 13:16:00
Monkey Island Alcohol .CUE (Out-Of-Sync)
FILE "MONKEY1-ALCOHOL.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 04:58:00
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 07:02:35
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 09:11:00
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 11:19:30
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 13:18:00
Quake CDRWin .CUE (In-Sync):
FILE "QUAKE-CDRWIN.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 08:56:61
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 14:05:31
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 16:31:32
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 24:51:51
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 30:57:05
Quake Alcohol .CUE (Out-Of-Sync):
FILE "QUAKE-ALCOHOL.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 08:56:61
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 14:07:31
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 16:33:32
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 24:53:51
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 30:59:05
Starsiege CDRWin .CUE (In-Sync):
FILE "STARSIEGE-CDRWIN.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 58:51:29
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 61:11:62
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 64:11:12
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 66:26:61
Starsiege Alcohol .CUE (Out-Of-Sync):
FILE "STARSIEGE-ALCOHOL.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 58:51:29
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 61:13:62
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 64:13:12
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 66:28:61
Whew!. As you can see, the games ripped with Alcohol have their audio tracks 2-seconds forward out of place, while the CDRWin ripped games are perfectly normal. The only way to correct the Alcohol created Cuesheet files is by editing them and removing 2 seconds from the middle set of digits of each audio track, thus restoring the tracks original position so that it is identical to the CDRWin Cuesheet. It seems that maybe Alcohol isn’t compensating for the pre-gap or something, I have no idea.
Would you be able to fix this problem?. I don't really know what else to say, but I've tried to provide as much information about the issue as possible, so I hope you can help.
Edited by Robbo, 23 January 2007 - 05:37 AM.
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