SACD ISO Patcher — a tidy SACD library on your Eversolo

SACD ISO Patcher 2.1.0

A lot has piled up since 2.0.0, so let me go through it section by section.
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Audio: extraction and compression

Most of these weeks went right here, and this is probably the main thing.
The code that unpacks the compressed DST stream from the disc and packs it back, I rewrote from scratch. Extraction has become fast and it uses all cores. But more important than speed is accuracy: the unpacked audio matches the reference bit for bit.
Re-packing into DST is lossless, and the file is usually no larger than it was on the disc: on average about 1-2% denser, up to 6-7% on good recordings, and in some cases it comes out the same as the disc. There are four modes to choose from, all lossless - the difference between them is mainly in encoding speed, while the size varies by only a fraction of a percent:
- max - maximum compression, the default (the slowest);
- high and fast - noticeably faster, almost the same size;
- turbo - the fastest, files a little larger.
For reference: in maximum-compression mode, stereo encodes at roughly ~9 times faster than real time, multichannel at about 1.6x; the other modes are faster.
You can extract to .dsf, to .dff (unpacked DSD), to .dff with compressed DST (an exact copy from the disc, fast and compact), and to Edit Master (one file for the whole area, with track marks). "Pure" DSD images without DST are supported too - they can also be extracted and, if you like, compressed into lossless DST (right away, on the fly).
Tags in the extracted files behave differently for the two formats:
- .dsf: the full set of tags is written the standard way (ID3v2 at the end of the file, as the DSF format expects), and practically all players and taggers read it. Fields: title, artist, album artist, album, track number and total, disc number and total, year, genre, composer, publisher, copyright, ISRC, catalog number, songwriter, performer.
- .dff: of the standard DSDIFF fields, only artist and album are reliably read (plus a short comment). The whole rest of the rich set I additionally put into a separate ID3 block inside the file - foobar2000, for example, reads it, but it is not part of the DSDIFF standard, so other players may not show it (I haven't checked in Eversolo).
How all of this was verified: a multi-day run over almost seven hundred tracks checked each one against the reference bit for bit, and verified that after unpacking and re-packing the data matches one to one. Discrepancies - zero.
==

Stereo and multichannel can now be edited separately

Previously, if a hybrid disc had different tracks or different titles in these two areas, the app edited them as a single whole (and on some discs that mixed up the ISRCs and genres). Now, when the content differs, tabs appear, and you edit each area on its own, with its own ISRCs and genres. Identical areas - same as before, a single panel. Import from Discogs and MusicBrainz, in turn, distributes the release across the areas by track title.
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Support for almost any disc, and diagnostics

Previously the app would not touch some images - because of an unusual internal structure, or because the rip was padded with empty data up to the full disc capacity (some rippers and old PS3 images write them that way). Now almost everything is editable: out of nearly 350 discs in my collection - all of them, except outright broken rips.
When a disc is opened, the app quietly checks it against the standard and, if something is off, calmly reports it without raising a panic. And if a disc still cannot be touched safely, or will not open at all, instead of a dry "didn't work" it shows a clear window with an explanation and an address where you can send the image (link!) or a screenshot so I can look into it. There is also a new "bring disc to standard" button: it neatly repairs the mirror copies of the service tables and splits apart text strings shared between fields that would otherwise have to be edited by hand.
==

Metadata

Now from MusicBrainz and Discogs it pulls not only the performer, but also the composer, songwriter and arranger - for each track. Performers can be pulled together with their instruments, in the same form MusicBrainz shows them: "Name (instrument); Name (instrument); ...", and the vocalist and orchestrator roles are no longer lost.
A small honest note about performers: these credits are written into the track's metadata on the disc itself, and they are seen by players and taggers that read the SACD layer directly (foobar2000, for example). But the Eversolo library has no separate "Performers" shelf, so they will not show up there as a separate filter - that's a quirk of Eversolo itself, not of the app (composer, artist, album and genre Eversolo does show).
After you search for a release in Discogs or MusicBrainz, a link to the chosen edition stays in the field - handy to copy and open to make sure it matched exactly the right one. While you type, the app hints if a character does not fit the disc's encoding. And in the very rare case when the text does not fit the SACD format's limit (in practice it almost never happens), it now shows a clear hint instead of a technical string.
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Backups and safety

I tried very hard to make sure the image is not harmed during editing: before each write, every sector that gets touched is saved to a backup (by default, next to the image itself), and the edit follows an "all or nothing" principle - if something goes wrong, the file stays byte for byte as it was, and it can always be brought back from the copy. The audio is not touched at all when editing metadata. Everything to do with the disc format I verified word for word against the official Scarlet Book specification, not by eye, and ran the code through several independent reviews. And still, a general piece of advice: keep your own copy of valued rips - that's the right thing to do in any case.
==

Small stuff

A track field's value (performer, composer, genre, and so on) can be applied to all tracks of an area with one click. Automatic Title Case in titles is now applied only to Latin script and does not mangle other writing systems. Interface labels are translated on the fly when you switch language, the changed-date marker became visible, and the change counter in separate mode counts precisely. Plus a couple hundred small fixes to the interface and wording.


==
The app is always attached to the first message of this topic.
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I'm just trying it, you did an amazing job again. I extracted an ISO in dff/dst format. I'll let you know tomorrow. The only thing is that dst is written at the end of each song name. Is there a way to avoid it?
Thanks

 

If the disc contains uncompressed DSD, then during extraction you can choose the same uncompressed .dff, or compress it on the fly to DST. But it will still be .dff.
So the files will have exactly the same names and will simply overwrite the previous export.

I simply forgot about it because it was not important to me. I will fix it. I have some ideas...

 

I'll give you a preview of the test I did yesterday, I had an ISO with 5-channel files in DST and two channels in uncompressed DSD, I extracted everything in DFF/DST and everything works perfectly, even foobar via the foo_dsd_converter plugin you can do the same thing (you can also put the DSF or DFF file directly instead of the ISO) but with foobar the uncompressed DSF file transformed into DFF/DST does not carry all the tags on eversolo, basically the file obtained with your eversolo program recognizes the artist name, song title and album, with foobar instead only the song title and album, with the foobar file the artist name is not recognized by eversolo, so yours is much better.....

 

2.1.2
Some bug fixes.

 

@Nejiro
Currently, when extracting to the selected folder, a folder named Artist - Album (year, if available) is created, and inside it stereo/multichannel subfolders are created, depending on what is being extracted. The files are extracted there. No dst in the name anymore.

 

I have some ISOs where the genre is populated for the album and for the disc, but not for the tracks. Is there a way to apply the DISC genre to all tracks?

 

Yes. Select the required genre on any track, and on the right there is a “button” to apply it to all tracks.

 

v2.2.0
Adds a command-line tool, fills the ALBUM ARTIST tag from the disc artist on
single-disc albums, and softens recoverable warnings.

 

Further releases of new versions will be posted here: https://reauthor.foreigner.cc

 

I noticed that Eversolo only reads the Song Title, Artist Name and Album Name tags on the dff/dst file, foobar instead reads all the tags, is it not possible to make Eversolo able to read some more tags such as the genre like rock, jazz etc....?

 

I don’t think Eversolo engineers will read it here. And they already know that the scanner does not read many things.
I don’t expect anything to change, but there’s no harm in asking.

 

It is a good thin, IMHO, that these independent, no-profit initiatives exist. This thing is a huge aid.
I do not use the ISO format (despite believing that it is the ONLY way when it comes to SACDs... But as a developer myself, I can see the hard research and work behind it.
Keep up the nice work, fella, it is a gem.

Cheers, Al.

 

Who knows, maybe they can't do it. If Foobar reads them, it means it's possible. Maybe Eversolo would make this effort, or maybe they give us a reason why it can't be done...

@Zidoo Support-Kim

 

Is that table referring to the ISO file? I mean the DFF files.

 

Yes, I think that is the case. ISO files only.

I have some .DFF files which the eversolo library does not recognise and therefore are invisible in a music search (but are discoverable and play perfectly if you look for them via a file search; whilst others fully visible in the library with albums, artists and tracks fully searchable. It's a mystery.

 

"... from the SACD image"

 

If you try to edit a dff tag using Eversolo, it won't allow it, and I knew this, but the tag contains the artist name, album artist, and song title. All these tags are available in the library. Foobar, on the other hand, reads all the fields, including copyright, etc., and includes them in the library. If Eversolo could support a few more tags (not like Foobar, but a few more), you could easily use dff files. I'm using them like this because it's better than nothing.

 

I really fail to understand why DFF files are being tagged. Their format forbids that. For tag-able DSD files use the specifically designed for tagging format DSF.
I hate this mess, and then it becomes the normality. And we screw formats once more, and then become demanding towards the devs, that simply (as they should) follow standards...

My bad.