Does Rockbox support '.cue' files for mp3's?

[NicolasP]

NicolasP: would you like me to email you some cues which doesn't work with Rockbox?

Of course ! I didn't test the parser on much different cues so it could have hidden flaws. Go ahead

[jaybeee]

Massive thanks for creating this cue sheet support

[jaybeee]

Just got round to installing Rockbox (Version. r12426-070221) with cuesheet support.

- Enabled cuesheet support via the menu & rebooted as required.
- Navigated to a directory with an mp3 file and a cue sheet (all correctly named and referenced [works with foobar etc]).
- So when I select the .cue file it loads and is viewable. But that's it. I can't get it to play. Surely this isn't what it's meant to do right?

[LinusN]

- So when I select the .cue file it loads and is viewable. But that's it. I can't get it to play. Surely this isn't what it's meant to do right?

You are supposed to play the .mp3 file, not the .cue file.

[jaybeee]

- So when I select the .cue file it loads and is viewable. But that's it. I can't get it to play. Surely this isn't what it's meant to do right?

You are supposed to play the .mp3 file, not the .cue file.

ah, ok. I gotcha.

So I think what has confused me is that unfortunately the only mixes I have on my player at the mo that have cue sheets have more than one cue sheet in the same dir referencing the same file (1.cue & 2.cue allows the 2hr mix to be played in 1hr sections so to allow easier burning to CD, whilst 3.cue allows the entire 2hr mp3 to played). And when selecting the one mp3 in this instance no cue sheet playback style is initiated.

I've deleted the extra cue sheets leaving just one and it now plays ala cue sheet style.

I wonder if this is something that can be "fixed"?
TBH it's not something that often happens (more than one cue sheet in the same dir referencing the same file), but it maybe could be looked at?

Anyway, it's easy enough to delete the extra cue files.

Thanks for the swift response LinusN

[Billy]

The simple functionality of allowing a file to be read via a CUE sheet and playing it is all I'd need.  And to be honest, I reckon most people that would want to use CUE sheets would be perfectly happy with that.

Totally agree.. plus skip forward and back...
That is all we need...
To: Developers...

People who use your Rockbox software are not so simple (pug and play, buy and use...), at least they need to be sure what are they doing to install it on device...
I use cd image files in flac and wv with CUE tagged within... it brings an order in my music library...
Most of advanced users are using it as well...

SO SIMPLE CUE SUPPORT for CBR and lossless files even through a plugin ARE VITAL...!!!!!!

[Llorean]

A) CUEs are supported. Please, be up to date before writing your complaints.

B) There is no good reason to use embedded CUE files if you own the CD and are ripping to lossless.

C) If something is VITAL, then surely you want it badly enough to work on it. Rockbox is ENTIRELY volunteer work. So, feel free to improve it. If you don't have the knowledge to do so right now, feel free to spend some time learning first, it'll either still be there when you're done, or someone else will finish it while you're learning, and then you'll have the feature you want.

[bluebrother]

SO SIMPLE CUE SUPPORT for CBR and lossless files even through a plugin ARE VITAL...!!!!!!

For my purposes cud sheets are completely unneeded even as I'm not "so simple" and have quite some requirements to a good firmware. Feel free to consider cue to be "vital" for you, but please don't assume it's vital to everyone using or developing Rockbox. From the responses I'm aware of cue is only wanted by a small amount of users. Calling such a thing "vital" is quite inappropriate IMO.

Btw, there is no need to scream.

[ray]

wow! i haven't updated my rockbox build since late november 2005!

impressed with all the new codecs... but this cuesheet support was one of my most-wanted features!  it's great!

i like how there are "cuts" in the progress bar indicating where each track starts... really elegant!

i also like how winamp's mp3cue cuesheets are supported!

great job!

[Undesirable]

I've just noticed cuesheet support in Rockbox. ESSENTIAL feature since the dawn of time, I now officially consider Rockbox a masterpiece and an absolute necessity on any future portable media player ever. I simply won't buy unless it supports Rockbox.

Since the cuesheet viewer is so great, I had an idea / suggestion that it could be displayed when tracks are being played and you hit the navigation button (with the currently playing track selected, and all other tracks playable directly from the cuesheet viewer). Then you could just press left on the pad to get back to normal file view. There could also be a little progress meter for whatever track is playing just underneath the text. Apologies if anyone else has suggested this. Of course, I'm more than happy with the current cusheet support. THANKS!

Edit: I edited in the bracketed thingy.

[GodEater]

Forums aren't the right place for feature requests.

First search Flyspray and see if they're already present, and if not, then submit them yourself.

[iven]

Thank you to the programmer(s) who added CUE support. Based on my own experience using the latest rockbox build on my iPod nano, it seems there are still limitations to the CUE support (correct me if I'm wrong):

1) It only works properly with CBR MP3s (not MPC or any other compressed format)
2) Skipping to next/previous track is inaccurate for VBR MP3s.

Despite these limitations, I'm still grateful for this feature. Even though I cannot select the tracks in VBR MP3s (or MPCs, etc.), it still scroll the proper name of the tracks at the proper time as the file is played continuously and this is good enough for me. The whole point of CUE sheet for me is to play continuously gaplessly (or with the proper gaps as on the original CD). Without the CUE support, I'd not be able to tell what track is currently playing unless I memorized the tracks' names and sequential order.

[Llorean]

You can play gaplessly by having separate files, so saying that's the point of CUE support is to me somewhat silly: You can do it in a better way without the CUE feature.

And CUE will work for any filetype as far as I know. The problem with some situations (those where seeking is more difficult) is that because a precise seek is difficult, you'll get a seek to a point near where it wants to seek to, rather than exactly at. But with the filetypes where seeks are precise, it'll be fine, if I understand correctly.

[deadkenny]

Main use of cue files for me is with mix and live albums. Some are just one big track but there are cue files available to break it down into individual parts.

Not essential, but handy to know what bit you're listening to.

Secondary to that though is I've generally been ripping to Flac for my server and then convert these into single album mp3s with cue files. I did that because I was originally using the official iRiver H10 software which didn't play gapless and it was an easy solution.

With Rockbox I haven't tried individual tracks yet. I need to reconvert my Flacs to individual MP3s. I think I tried a while back and gapless support seemed a bit flakey, even though my MP3s are all produced from Flac with LAME. Is MP3 even with LAME encoding, reliably gapless? (if the player supports it). Problem I've found is often gapless support seems to work on detecting silence rather than actually spotting the end of a track and playing the next. I assume Rockbox does the latter though (hope so).

Anyway, what I will say is I get nowhere with MP3 and cue files. Just seems to ignore the cue file. They work fine with Flac files though.

I might be a bit out of date though. I'm using the H10 build r13836-070709

If I had enough disc space on my player I'd just stick Flac files on there anyway

[saratoga]

Is MP3 even with LAME encoding, reliably gapless? (if the player supports it).

Yes, provided your LAME build is less then 6 years old.

Problem I've found is often gapless support seems to work on detecting silence rather than actually spotting the end of a track and playing the next. I assume Rockbox does the latter though (hope so).

Rockbox does neither.  Instead, it uses the gapless information provided by LAME to decode the correct number of samples.