[necropimp]

decided to click that detect button and it turned C2 on and doubled my ripping speed...

 

[cerbie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soundbuff I switched over to the Plextor drive and it IS faster in secure mode. Only about 10 minutes for the CD it is ripping now. Do you have any other tips or recommended changes to the settings for EAC? For example, is MP3 best or is Ogg a better way to go? What's that whole deal about "alt - standard", "alt - medium", etc. that I saw on that one link recommended above...should I mess with that setting?

Plextors should be fine with returning errors, and they don't cache audio.
Format and quality is an issue for you to deal with.
FLAC allows those deicisons later, but is huge (300-500MB per album).
LAME --preset standard is generally considered transparent.
--preset extreme is a bit above that.
--preset medium will be smaller than standard, and well-suited for portable devices.

Ogg Vorbis (Vorbis is the audio--you could make a Ogg MP3 if you wanted) is nice for low-quality stuff, or good ears, as it does not deteriorate harshly (so, if an MP3 is not transparent, a Vorbis of similar quality would sound better to your ears). For portables, though, it will consume more battery life at a given quality (as will AAC, if you're an Ipod type).
You won't be getting 15+ hours from that U2 with Ogg.

If you want losssless, FLAC is a good way to go. A couple others can get smaller, but FLAC is already gaining portable support, and can be played on any platform. Also, you can get it made into another format later, without re-ripping the CD. Since going between documentation can be a pain, and FLAC is very bad about giving you errors it encounters, here's a string to use if you want to try out FLAC, and not spend too long getting it working in EAC

:
Code:

[left]-8 %s -o %d -T album="%g" -T genre="%m" -T artist="%a" -T title="%t" -T tracknumber="%n" -T date="%y"[/left]

 

[Soundbuff]

Another evening of ripping...

I noticed LAME (the program that causes the black box pop-ups to appear?) often keeps working after EAC is done reading the drives. At first I was wondering why sometimes the same rip would be 600, 400, or sometimes 200 MB and I thought something was wrong, then I noticed LAME often keeps going for awhile and files are not immediately compressed down to their final size for several additional minutes after EAC stops.

Is it OK to just keep popping in CD's while LAME continues, or is it best to wait for LAME to finish each CD entirely before starting a new one (when the final black box appears and the final beep from the drive is heard)? Also, could there be any problems from browsing/using other programs while ripping with EAC in the background? I still like to use my computer for browsing while ripping

I've read a thread that says you should clear out the text in the "additional command line options" in compression options and just type "alt-preset standard" there.

Currently, the default dialog box reads:

%l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s %d

Should I just leave it that way or is it better to type "alt-preset standard" instead of that string? It seems wiser to leave the default for now.

Also, if you are using the default above, does it matter what you select for the bit rate? I believe I read on www.bestmp3guide.com it doesn't matter since the standard overrides.

 

[cerbie]

Any command-line encoder will open a new command prompt window.
You can pop the CD out as soon as EAC lets you

.

For settings, check the sticky in the general MP3 section of hydrogenaudio.org. Three strings to copy and paste that also take care of tagging, which EAC doesn't do right. If you have it set to "User Defined Encoder" and pointed to LAME, most of the GUI settings don't matter.

 

[arribadia]

If the CD is really banged up you might want to try burst mode. It is counter intuitive, but hey, I had a couple of scratched CDs which took forever to rip on secure mode, and still have audible clips, but they rip fine on burst.

You just gotta try your luck

 

[Soundbuff]

Don't laugh please...

But what is "tagging"....??

I do not understand what this term means, newbie that I am to MP3's.

Someone please explain.

 

[Soundbuff]

^

 

[arribadia]

You can either use FreeDB or if you are using the EAC > Image > iTunes method, iTunes will tag it automatically for you.

 

[Soundbuff]

Oh OK, so "tagging" is simply downloading the names using the FreeDB icon. I knew what that was...

 

[Feanor]

tagging is also the process of adding the information to the files.

 

[Cyclone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soundbuff Oh OK, so "tagging" is simply downloading the names using the FreeDB icon. I knew what that was...

well kinda. you dont need itunes or freeDB to do tagging. Tagging sounds like what it is, its a "tag" of information that you add to a music file that can show the information of the file. There are several versions of tags out there but the newest ones can support anything from album and genre to standard volume info (replaygain).