Software to rip music directly into mp3

LAME MP3 encoding doesn't come with EAC because MP3 encoding is still covered by patents so distributing LAME with EAC would present a bit of a legal problem.  You can get LAME from rarewares.org.  Download it, install it, and then point EAC to the LAME.EXE file.

In EAC go to EAC >> Configuration Wizard...

Accept all the defaults as you go through the wizard

That will set up MP3 encoding for you

Then in EAC >> Compression Options... >> External Compression tab

Change the Additional command-line options for LAME to "-V 0 --vbr-new %s %d" (without the quotes)

That will set LAME for the highest quality VBR encoding that it can do

Start ripping

Before Head-Fi I used CDex. Easy to use and free..

I thought nowadays everybody has iTunes installed...

Personally, I rip WAVs with EAC and convert them to iTunes Plus for my iPhone and compress the WAVs to FLAC for my PC. Takes about 30 minutes with proper tags and covers but well worth it for an album I listen to for 100 hours.

If you have foobar2k installed, it is convenient to rip CD with it as well.  All you have to do is download "lame.exe" (a quick google search will land you a copy) and point foobar to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wicked.ludicrous 

I've tried asking on the EAC forums for help, but since I have Lame installed, I would rather ask here for help.

Now with Lame, I get a CMD prompt after EAC supposedly extracts each file. Looks like: It's really odd. I know I downloaded the correct version of LAME.

 

And if I close the CMD box, I get a prompt from within EAC.

 

 

 

 

This is kinda frustrating because for some reason, EAC did extract mp3 files but also wav files. I don't understand why it does wav as well. Is that formula you put in for the Additional Command line correct, Ham Sandwich?

You should see that. That's LAME doing it's thing. It's sort of fun to watch, as you get to see just how much of the song was encoded at different bitrates.

EAC extracts it as a .WAV, like all (or most?) extractors do. LAME then encodes it from .WAV (like all (or most?) encoders do) to .MP3. The .WAV file is only temporary and should get deleted automatically after LAME is done encoding the file. That is, if you don't close the CMD box and interrupt the encode like you seem to be doing.

EAC displays the command window by default when you use a command line compression tool like LAME.

EAC has an option to hide that command window if you don't want to see it:  Go to [EAC >> EAC Options... >> Tools tab] and set the option for "Do not open external compressor window"

If EAC does open a command window though, you need to leave it open.  If you close it the compression from WAV to MP3 will stop before it is done.  That's why you still see the WAV files.  If you let the command window run till completion the WAV file will be automatically deleted when the MP3 file is done.

EAC has an option to delete the WAV file after the compression is done: [EAC >> Compression Options... >> External Compression tab] and set the option "Delete WAV after compression"

If you need something easy, idiotproof, and kitchen sink capable... you could try bonkencode