Exact Audio Copy

Exact Audio Copy
Guide To Making Proper 1:1 Copies
Version 1.5
Step 1. First you must get the program of course, from http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/.
Step 2. After extracting the program to wherever stick a cd in and open EAC.
Step 3. Simple enough. Next go to EAC menu and select the first option.
Step 4. Set the options to match the picture, although you can set it to allow your drive to cool down after a set amount of time...
Step 5. The next tab is “General” and doesn't need. It is mostly just personal preference aside from the first option which won't provide a 1:1 copy if
checked. So I'm skipping to the “Tools” tab. It is advisable to set the options as shown below, although not necessary. If you want a playlist file then
check the appropriate option, but they are not needed for cd duplication.
Step 6. The “Normalize” tab is pretty self explanatory. Make sure normalization is turned Off.
Step 7. Under the “Filename” tab simply set it to your preference.
Step 8. You can skip the “Catalog” tab since it has no affect on the audio. Under the “Directories” tab set the path to wherever it is you want your
files to go. The write tab is just a few unimportant cd writing options, a matter of preference again. Under the “Interface” tab, if you have installed
ASPI, which I think is required on Win9x/ME select it, or on Win2k/XP you can use the native interface. You can also install ASPI if you like.
Step 9. You done here, hit “OK” and move on to the next step.
Step 10. Go to the EAC menu and select “Drive Options.”
Step 11. There will be a little window pop up with a message, read and do what you want with it. Next you'll be looking the “Extraction Method”
tab. Set it according to the picture below, or choose “Detect Read Feature.” If you have a drive capable of making 1:1 copies it most likely will need
to be set as shown. Not all drives cache audio data or have proper C2 error features. Detecting the features often reports the drive is C2 capable
although it is not. Having C2 disabled will assure it won't be screwing anything up. Also on drives that don't reportedly cache you may as well check
it anyway to be safe, since it won't affect anything.
Step 12. The next tab is the “Drive” tab. It's shouldn't be necessary to change anything here if you have a decent CD drive.
Step 13. The “Offset/Speed” tab is probably the most important set of options for making a 1:1 copy of a disc. If you have one of the drives in the
offset list list on the Accurate Rip page (http://accuraterip.com/driveoffsets.htm) you can get you offset there, or use the “read sample offset
correction...” option but there aren't many cd's in that database. The other options are either searching around the net or the EAC forums, or
installing Accurate Rip and letting it find out for you. Once you have the proper offset, put in the first box on the tab and set the rest of the options
according to the image...
If you have a nice Plextor drive or one of the other top cd drives you should be capable of over reading into the Lead-In/Lead-Out. If you get errors
at the beginning or the end of extraction with this option on your drive cannot over read and thus cannot make a 1:1 copy of a disc. Also, in order for
this option to take affect, I've found you have to restart EAC. Without over-reading the lead-in/out a 1:1 copy is not possible.
Step 14. Now on to the “Gap Detection” tab. This is needed to guarantee a proper cue sheet is generated. Some drives may not work with “detection
Method A”. If this is the case try either B or C, but make sure the accuracy is set to “Secure”.
Step 15. The next and last tab in the drive options it “Writer.” These options are also crucial if you want to burn the extracted audio back to a cd. I
was fortunate enough find my write offset without burning a cd. You may be able to find it for your drive on the net, or you can just use a cd-rw.
Once you know your write offset fill in the box accordingly. Hit “OK” and your almost ready to start “backing up” your cd's.
Step 16. If you want to compress directly to some for of lossless compression like flac or wavpack set you options form the “Compression Options”
menu. I'm not going to go into detail about that since there are plenty of front ends and guide to doing this with EAC already.
Step 17. Now your back to looking at EAC's main window. Go the “Action” menu and select “Detect Gaps.”
Note that all not all cd's have pre-track gaps, although will have at least a 2 second gap before the first track due to the lead-in and Read Book audio
standards.
Step 18. With that done you'll need a cue sheet to properly burn the tracks later, so select “Create CUE Sheet -> Multiple WAV Files with Gaps
(Noncompliant)”. The Noncompliant part is rather outdated since most burning programs that can use cue sheet can now use this kind. The option
under the main “Actions” menu “Leave Out Gaps” would be used with a cue sheet “Multiple WAV Files With Leftout Gaps.” The option “Append
Gaps To Next Track” would be used with “Multiple WAV Files With Corrected Gaps.” NOTE: Technically, in order to get a true 1:1 copy of a
cd you would need to use “Append Gaps To Next Track” because using the default (Append Gaps To Previous Track) will not include the
pre-gap on track 1 if it is longer than 2 seconds. For example, 311's “Music” has a pre-gap on the first track of 2.32 seconds IIRC. The cue
sheet for the default option however specifies no pre-gap, whereas using “Append Gaps To Next Track” and a cue sheet with corrected
gaps has the pre-gap of 0.32. There is 2 because a 2 second gap is automatically burned on ever cd so the cue sheet only needs to list
anything exceeding this. Using the default option audio will not be extract until after the gap for the first track since it appends gaps to the
previous track and there is none. However, the default option is recommended for listening to the extracted files rather than burning.
Appending gaps to the Next Track option will leave you with some silences at the beginnings of some tracks although if burned this would
not be the case. It's complicated, but trust me. :)
Step 19. You now have a proper cue sheet, and all thats left is to extract the audio. If your error correction goes beyond the first bar you will likely
not be able to have to rips with matching md5sums, hence, no 1:1 copies if your disc is too scratched. For the extra paranoid, go to actions and select
“Test And Copy Selected Tracks” either “Compressed” or “Uncompressed”, however you want it. If your not that paranoid just extract it normally.
It's normal for the error correction to do something at the end of a track. Again, one bar is ok, the resulting file will be identical if ripped multiple
times, although if your paranoid compare md5sums of any track in question...
Step 20. All thats left now is to save your setting. At the bottom of EAC's main window select “New” choose a name, Select “All EAC Options”
and save it. If you ever lose your settings you can simply load this file and you'll be good to go. It is also very useful for switching between different
compression options.
Thats all. You now are ready to make perfect copies of your cd's.
Guide To Extracting Directly to a Lossless Format
This should be a pretty self explanatory section. Below are detailed instructions for ripping directly to a lossless format. I will give examples for both
FLAC
and WavPack along with some pretty pictures.
Assuming you've already followed the rest of the setup options above this should only take a minute or two of your time.
Step 1. First you need to get the command line .exe for the format you want to use for compression.
FLAC: http://flac.sourceforge.net/
WavPack: http://www.wavpack.com/
For FLAC you only need flac.exe, although I recommend keeping metaflac.exe contained in the same zip file. I'll explain why later. If you already
have the flac frontend installed you don't need to download anything unless your still using 1.1.0 since there is no reason not to update to 1.1.1.
For WavPack you only need wavpack.exe, and I also recommend using WavPack 4.2 beta 3 which can be found at http://wavpack.com/wp42b3.zip.
The beta version doesn't need any other command line tools to add tags like the older version did, such as wapet.exe.
Now that we have or exe files we can move on to hardest part which isn't very hard at all.
Step 2. Put your executables somewhere you'll remember. Installing the flac frontend puts them in C:\Program Files\FLAC
I keep a copy of flac.exe and wavpack.exe in my EAC directory.
Step 3. In EAC go to the EAC tab and click on “Compression Options”
Step 4. We're going to start on the second tab, “External Compression”
You'll want to check “Use External Compressor” and select “User defined encoder” in the drop down list.
FLAC:
For FLAC fill in the file extension box with .flac as shown in the picture and browse and select your flac.exe.
Uncheck “Add ID3 Tag” and match the rest to of the check boxes as shown in the image.
The flac command line is pretty simple. I use
-8 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "album=%g" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "title=%t" -T "date=%y" -T "genre=%m" -T "encoder=EAC v0.95 pb5
| Flac 1.1.1, -8" -T "comment=Ripped by xxx" %s
-8 is the compression level, 8 being the best, although you can use number 0-8. There is also the compression level I do not recommend use,
--super-secret-totally-impractical-compression-level. It's really in there, but I really suggest against using it as it is very slow and yields little or not
extra compression.
-V verifies the flacs after compression.
-T signifies a tag field. For example, if I wanted a field for Artist I'd add -T “artist=%a”. You can also have pre-defined custom tag fields, as shown
above, like -T "encoder=EAC v0.95 pb5 | Flac 1.1.1, -8" or whatever you like.
NOTE: You do not want to add a flag to add replay gain during extraction as it will treat each file as an individual album. Add this later if you like,
it is explained below.
WavPack:
WavPack's setup is pretty similar to flac. Fill in the file extension box with .wv
Match all the check boxes to the picture below, ID3 tags are bad.
The following command line is what I use for WavPack:
-hx2m %s %d -w "artist=%a" -w "album=%g" -w "tracknumber=%n" -w "title=%t" -w "date=%y" -w "genre=%m" -w
"encoder=EAC v0.95 pb5 | WavPack 4.2b3 -hx2m" -w "comment=Ripped by xxx"
You have a few more options for WavPack compression.
-hx2m is the compression method used. -h is for high mode, -f is for fast mode. High mode is slower, but give better compression, where as fast
mode is fast but less compression. The x2 part represents “extra” compression mode. Using a number form 1-6 you can add an extra level of
compression at no cost of decode time. I use level 2 since it is about the same compression speed as flac like this and yields smaller most of the time.
Having m in you command add the md5sum into the file, and later you can run the wavpack decoder with -Vm and it check the current md5sum
with the one from the original encoding.
%s and %d tell the encoder some basic stuff, which i can't remember, it's for EAC more than wavpack though. It will not work without them. Has
something to with source and destination files.
Adding tags is also rather simple, pretty much the same as FLAC. Here we specify -w “tagfield=value”. Pretty simple. The w must be lowercase.
Step 5.
Moving on...
Shouldn't need to do anything under the “Waveform” tab, as all the options should be grayed out.
The Offset tab should look like this...
The ID3 tab also shouldn't need changed, but just in case, it should look like this...
There is no reason to touch the “LAME DLL” tab since were not using LAME.
Step 6. Thats it. To extract the audio as your preferred format simply click “MP3” on the side rather than WAV.
Or go to the “Actions” menu and select “Test & Copy Selected Tracks”- > “Compressed” if your paranoid.
Step 7. After each track finishes extracting a command prompt window will pop up showing the wav being compressed and will close when each
track is finished.
Step 8. If you want to add replay gain to your files after extraction this can be a few different ways.
FLAC:
Using metaflac.exe is the first method. Create a shortcut to your metaflac.exe. Right click it and go to “Properties”
In the “Target” box add "C:\Program Files\FLAC\metaflac.exe" "--add-replay-gain" including the parenthesis.
With this you can now select all the tracks in the album and drag and drop them onto this shortcut. A command window will pop up and appear to
be doing nothing. Give it a few minutes and it will go away and you files will have replay gain info added as once album, including per-track gain
also.
FLAC & WavPack:
The second method is for foobar2000 users. If you don't use it I suggest checking into it, as it is an excellent media and is very customizable.
(http://foobar2000.org/)
Put your album into the playlist. Select all the track and right click them and select “Replay gain” -> “Scan Selection as Album”
Thats it, you done. You now have a nice 1:1 copy of an album with proper tags and replay gain info applied. Have fun!
Thanks to Andre Wiethoff for writing EAC.
Guide by Duble0Syx. Last Updated January 6th, 2005. Use as you wish, just give me credit for it.