EAC & LAME for top quality CD to MP3s - 2 great guides

[Rick Nebiolo]

The recent What program on your PC do you use for music thread on OOT finally inspired me to look beyond Musicmatch for converting my CDs to MP3s. I had read that Exact Audio Copy (EAC) was supposed to be the best ripper (CD to .wav files), but it seemed intimidating until I found the this guide.

This sets up EAC so it dumps the output to LAME (supposedly the best .wav to MP3 encoder). The guide was easy to follow and the results so far have been excellent. I used the 320 bit rate setting, but somehow LAME encodes in a VBR format, using the higher 320 bit rate only when it needs to. Very efficient in terms of filespace and sound quality.

Later I found another guide to EAC that seemed equally well written. I haven't tried this guide yet but I noticed it included information on how to auto-dump the EAC .wav output into programs that will convert to FLAC and other formats.

Am still using Musicmatch 7.5.1070 for desktop computer playback but am looking for a less bloated player, perhaps an older version (available at www.oldversion.com) of WinAmp combined with a skin that allows me to re-size the window so my 51 year old eyes can see the text.

Anyway, if anyone knows of any better guides for EAC/MP3/FLAC and so on let me know. The Hydrogenaudio Forums are a bit over my head. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Happy New Year!

~ Rick

[Rick Nebiolo]

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"Later I found another guide to EAC that seemed equally well written. I haven't tried this guide yet but I noticed it included information on how to auto-dump the EAC .wav output into programs that will convert to FLAC and other formats."

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Set up the recommended versions of EAC/LAME using the above guide and encoded a few CDs I got for Christmas. The second guide is more comprehensive than the one I used earlier in the OP. One cool feature is that it shows you how to set up different profiles (e.g., one profile to encode at extremely high quality using more disk space, another for medium quality less disk space and so on). Another feature was setting things up so that the encoded MP3 files are sent to the right directory (e.g., if you convert the Miles Davis CD "Kind of Blue" all the MP3s go to G:My Music/Miles Davis/Kind of Blue/songname.mp3).

Neat stuff and seems fairly straightforward. Also appears that EAC/LAME does not interact with the Windows XP Registry.

~ Rick

[tagtastic]

Yeah EAC + lame is standard for top quality rips.

It's crazy how bad most ripping software is at getting a quality rip. Rips from very popular mp3 "groups" are usually full of clicks and pops as a result of bad ripping. The different mp3 compression software available is usually a lot more subtle.

Get a new cd: EAC rip it, encode w/ FLAC for archiving and computer playback, encode w/ fairly high variable bitrate lame for ipod use.

Start w/ a basic guide, then move up to hydrogenaudio forums if you want to get in deep.

[Osprey]

Warning- I've never figured out what happened, but LAME on my Gen 5.5 Ipod seems to cause hanging near the end of random songs. A few other people seem to have this problem- It doesn't happen in Itunes, only on the Ipod. I swapped out Ipods, with the same problem. I've resorted to converting to MP3 with Itunes, and using EAC to rip the CD.

I asked about in on Hydrogenaudio, and a few other people have noticed the same thing.