Varying .cue files

[SuperPotSmoker]

I've been an avid fan of PSX emulation the past few years, watching it develop and being perfected to something that is 10x better than playing the real PSX (particularly ePSXE). I've always been a BIG fan of the older PSX games with the multi-mode tracks (data followed by CDDA tracks), and although playback of CDDA music in some emus, the timing still isn't right yet. Perhaps it's at fault of whatever CDR-plugin is being used, since it may be possible that they all don't time the playback of CDDA tracks the same way? Or maybe its because the CD emulation application (Daemon-Tools or Alcohol 120%) may not all run the same way. But then I noticed something more tangible. When I used different CD-image creation applications, I noticed that their .cue files varied in some significant ways. Examples, shall we? I used Ridge Racer Revolution as my test subject, only including the first five tracks to save space:

1) CDRwin 3.9E (the original backup utility)

FILE "RRREVOLUTION.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 01:02:34
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 01:11:46
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 02:54:47
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 05:11:47


2) Blindwrite 4.5.7.49 (my favorite)

FILE "RRREVOLUTIONUSA.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 00 01:02:34
INDEX 01 01:04:34
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 00 01:11:46
INDEX 01 01:13:46
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 00 02:54:47
INDEX 01 02:56:47
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 00 05:11:47
INDEX 01 05:13:47


3) CloneCD 4.2.0.2 (most popular)

FILE "RRREVOLUTIONUSA.img" BINARY
TRACK 1 MODE2/2352
INDEX 1 00:00:00
TRACK 2 AUDIO
INDEX 1 01:04:34
TRACK 3 AUDIO
INDEX 0 01:11:46
INDEX 1 01:13:46
TRACK 4 AUDIO
INDEX 0 02:54:47
INDEX 1 02:56:47
TRACK 5 AUDIO
INDEX 0 05:11:47
INDEX 1 05:13:47


It seems obvious to me (or maybe I had to much to smoke...), but it would seem that this could (should?) have a great effect on the playback of CDDA tracks (and on the emulated CD layout itself?). All three programs create the same raw image file (.img & .bin files are the same thing), but spit out completely different .cue sheets to read them. Perhaps we need to establish which is the correct method to go about creating our backups, and for all of our authors to be aware of the discrepencies among the solutions that we are all implementing today.

But my main purpose is to pose this question: What is the difference between the three methods above? If there is, how could it possibly affect playback? Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this.

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