The flac OST for Warcraft I seems to have a small problem. When I play them, the time is 00:00 for all tracks, and the kbps rate is 0. Weirdly, they play fine, but Winamp (yes, I still use it, it's still the king of players) reports the time and bitrate as 0.

If I had to take a guess, it would be because the original soundtrack of WC1 were MIDI files. The FLAC format is probably doing something unusual to represent those in a lossless fashion, and certain metadata might not be available as a result.

Actually not the case here. There was a version of Warcraft 1 released with CD audio tracks, and that's what GOG released. The CD audio version wasn't too well-known from what I can see, for some reason. I guess it was a late release or something. The FLAC files are from the CD tracks themselves.

I'll re-encode them myself probably, not a huge deal, but it is a curiosity to me.

Ah! That would be why the GOG installer is 493MB and why my old Warcraft 1 installation is only 77MB.

Yup. After you install it, there's a file about ~490 MB in size. It's the .bin rip of the actual CD, audio tracks and all. You can actually use bchunk to extract the audio tracks and ISO track. ...and I just realized I can use that to re-rip FLAC files myself.

Wow, I'm swift.

The CD version included is a dual DOS/MAC release, with CD Audio tracks. The problem is, the DOS version does not support the CD Audio, only MIDI, while the MAC version does support the CD Audio.

So the presence of the full CD BIN file in the installation is just wasted space if the DOS game cannot read the music. My current 77MB installation seems far more efficient.

That's...a good point. I deleted the .BIN file from my Warcraft install directory and it still ran fine. I'm on Windows 10.

Lossless = WAV.

Wow, incredible amounts of bad information here :]

I ran a quick test:
$ flac -t *

flac 1.3.2
Copyright (C) 2000-2009 Josh Coalson, 2011-2016 Xiph.Org Foundation
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac' for details.

Track 01.flac: ERROR, MD5 signature mismatch
Track 02.flac: ERROR, MD5 signature mismatch
Track 03.flac: ERROR, MD5 signature mismatch
Track 04.flac: ERROR, MD5 signature mismatch
Track 05.flac: ERROR, MD5 signature mismatch
Track 06.flac: ERROR, MD5 signature mismatch
Track 07.flac: ERROR, MD5 signature mismatch


$ mediainfo Track\ 01.flac
General
Complete name : Track 01.flac
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
File size : 5.98 MiB
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Cover : Yes
Cover type : Cover (front)
Cover MIME : image/png

Audio
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode : Variable
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossless
Stream size : 4.08 MiB (68%)
Writing library : libFLAC 1.1.4 (UTC 2007-02-13)


So yes, there is something wrong with those files and they were encoded with an ancient version of FLAC (changelog here: https://xiph.org/flac/changelog.html).

WOAH.

Damn, whoever created these rips, update your encoder! I'll re-rip it myself then. FLAC is also lossless. It's more akin to zipping a .wav file.

In Wc2 bonusses lossless = WAV.
FLAC downloaded from some torrents (including non-public music only) or from GOG - not lossless. Except some indie and The witcher.

Just so I understand, when there is a problem with the soundtrack, you mean as a goodies, or during the game?

Game itself use MIDI for dos version. And .cda (combo AudioCD) for Mac OS. I cant find macos data in bin+cue image (wrong cue? or bin not spport this... or MAC ripped off?), but .cda music stiil there. No problems.

PCGamingWiki refer to this thread and say that both version include. Im use Windows, but if proper image file - i can see both DATA section from some software. It works for me for all Wc disc images that i have (from 2 Bne to WoW Pandaria collector's editions) and created with DT Lite in mdx\mdf\mds format. Maybe .bin file include MAC Data, but .cue file is not. In that case, bin file on MAC must be extracted in other ways, than maunted as CD, cause wrong edited image.

Anyway. i think that proper to say that cue+bin image installed with game have DOS version and only 7 audio tracks from MAC. Not a full CD. And cue+multiple .bin not a proper format for that combo-CD, even if we and GOG can create 1 multi-bin file with .cda tracks.