Does pcsxr read cue correctly?

[yayo]

hello! : )

I'm trying to get my old psx games to work on the pc with pcsxr (and making some backups where possible), but all the mixed cd (data/audio, es: tomb raider) are giving me lot of troubles. I want to understand if I'm doing something wrong or it is the software which has some kind of bug.

I ripped the data from the cd with cdrdao and I got a bin/toc couple, and then converted the toc to cue with the toc2cue app that comes with cdrdao (pcsxr doesn't seems to load toc).
But when I load the cue I get white noise in place of music during the game. It's like if the emulator is reading the data track in place of the audio one, or something.
I supposed the cue is wrong, but if I burn a cd and then load the game from the cd (in the emulator)... it works! : /

Since the cd is created from cdrdao with the bin/toc couple, I guess either it's some kind of difference between toc and cue (some data lost during conversion?), or it's the pcsxr itself which has problems with cue.

I also tried to convert the toc to cue with different software, like cueconvert from cuetools, but this produced something even more confusing: the cue made with (cdrdao's) toc2cue uses progressive position numbers (es: 30:59:53, 31:00:01, 32:03:68, 32:03:74.... probably start points taken against the beginning of the whole dataset of the bin file), while the one made with cueconvert uses small random numbers (00:00:23, 00:00:06, 00:00:16... ?? maybe the length of the track in seconds, taken each track against the previous one?? which would be still weird, since the 3rd value according to wikipedia is not supposed to be seconds but samples, 75xSec, and 6 is like too much short!).
The second kind of cue doesn't even work (pcsxr refuses it), unless I (re)add the FILE "gamename.bin" BINARY line at the beginning (lost during conversion for mysterious reasons). Doing this makes the file loadable, but then the games totally lacks music.

Hints? ._.

[yayo]

Ok, I found! (About the music, at least.)
The emulator can read the toc file.
Despite all the info I found up and down over the internet to open a cue to get the cdda to work, I have to load the bin instead, and pcsxr loads the toc file automatically.

(That's what a man page is supposed to be, but pcsxr man page is barely a list of command line options... -_-' )

Now, if I understand why some games lacks sfx or play it 3-4 seconds late I'm done, otherwise I'll come back... : /

EDIT: After some more testing, I found out that pcsxr searches for the cue file 1st (but this one apparently has something wrong, and causes the noise mess), and if the cue is not present it loads up the toc (music ok). So I also need to completely remove the cue file. I don't even have to create one. ._.

[Ant P.]

How are you ripping the discs? Most PSX emulators need a very specific format and don't like "normal" rips. Some games expect to find things in the error correction gaps that usually get discarded too.

I use this script to rip CDs for retroarch, it's worked so far:

[yayo]

My 1st attempt has been the same (exactly the cdrdao command line you wrote), but later I found somewhere else a note about subchannels.
I'm not sure it's the same thing you're referring to, but I read that from 1998 on, psx games got protection code inserted into the subchannels, so it's required to read them too (and that's the reason for the "read subchannels" option in pcsxr, useful when you start a game from cd, I guess.)

So I ripped the games again with also "--read-subchan rw_raw", but that didn't give me a copy good for the emulator.

Sadly some cd seems to have scratches or something, and result in 1 or 2 L-EC error (probably data, I don't think this rip is really ok), some others in Q subchan CRC errs (probably music, which shoudn't be a problem instead).
I'm also trying to burn some test CDs to see:
1st: if I can do backups good even for the console
2nd: to understand things better (what works where and why!!).

But to be honest I'm confused. Now (with another game) it's the opposite as before: the burned cd makes static in place of music, while ripped data are ok in the emulator...
I would just to understand how the cue has to be done to work correctly.

Boh, it's a bit of a mess... I guess I'll have to be happy with the few ones I'll manage to get working with the emulator, and stop. : /

EDIT: Gh! I found it! It's the "swap" option (maybe). Because audio tracks have inverted byte orders or something... (But still I don't get why the other one was ok... duh?)