Ripping CD's - Settings for EAC + LAME for 'best' MP3 quality?

Posted by: DIL on 17 January 2010

Hi,
about to start systematically ripping my CD collection, rather than ad hoc ripping for feeding the MP3 player... Obviously I don't want to have to re-do this so I'm looking for some advice on the best settings to use in EAC/LAME. Also pointers as to how to set up to minimise mouse clicks

Basically I want to keep a copy of the .wav AND a good quality .mp3 for personal/mobile listening with album:track details etc from eg Freedb (or other?)

1. the out of the box EAC settings mean I have to manually select the track database I want details from, is there any way to do this automatically?

2. is there anything I should change in the out of the box EAC ripping settings?

3. is ther anything I should change in the out of the box EAC compression settings => LAME?
eg the external compression "further comand line setting" (currently "-V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d")
eg bit rate (Currently 192kBit/s)

4. anytghing I've forgotten. File naming conventions, indexing software? ...

Thanks for any help.

/david

Posted on: 17 January 2010 by Jason Milner

Hi David. PC Stockton is a good guy to ask about this. I did a quick Google, & found this recommendation from him on another forum http://hiphopiscoolagain.com/s...th-exact-audio-copy/
FWIW, I'd go for lossless rather than WAV as my "master" copy. Personally I've stuck with ALAC, but if you're not wedded to iTunes, then FLAC makes more sense as an open standard.

J

Posted on: 17 January 2010 by DIL

Jason,
thanks for that, very comprehensive.

Have now ripped an couple of CD's as .flacs any suggestions as to free (PC) software to play these with??? Windows Media player don't want to know.

/dl

Posted on: 17 January 2010 by pcstockton

Try this guide if ripping to FLAC.

http://www2.firehose.us:81/~jiggafellz/eac/index.html

I also recommend FLAC, you can always convert back to WAV anytime you want.

I dont know about settings for ripping to MP3. In fact, Im not sure if it matters outside of tagging. I usually use Foobar for MP3 rips. But that is done very rarely.

Typically I simply convert to MP3 from the FLACs directly in Foobar. I convert them to my "iTunes folder" of lossy music for syncing with my iPhone.

It simply pulls the tags from the FLACs.

That said, I am not sure how you make EAC rip both FLACs and MP3s at the same time. I do think though that there is a setting to keep the WAV file when ripping in EAC. So you might be able to have both WAV+MP3. WAV+FLAC is availble (i think).

I would recommend ripping per the guide above to FLAC, then convert to MP3 as needed. If you want everything as MP3. Simply rip all your CDs to FLAC then batch convert with dbPoweramp to your lossy compression of choice.

-patrick

Posted on: 17 January 2010 by pcstockton

Free software for FLAC playback? There are many.

I use Foobar. You can get a plug-in to allow WMP to play FLACs. But I would recommend a player that supports FLAC out of the box.

Go to the FLAC website for a list.

then use Foobar.

Posted on: 17 January 2010 by DIL

Thanks again for the info.

Clearly this is not new ground, and my not noticing the 'new' (since when?) Distributed Audio forum - to which this thread was moved - an embarasing ommision on my part. And yes I did try the search function before posting, not that that helped.

I have some reading to do.

Later..........

/dl

Posted on: 18 January 2010 by Eloise

Not sure how/if EAC supports it ... but you might want to check out dbPowerAmp which has an addon/plugin which will allow you to rip to both WAV (or even better FLAC which has more universally recognised metadata support) and to MP3 at the same time.

Eloise

Posted on: 18 January 2010 by Adrian Pasciuta

There have been a few open source projects that allow EAC to rip to multiple formats. I think the most current project which supports the latest version of EAC is REACT2 with Akkurat's mod. Google "react2 akkurat's mod" for the wiki page. This is what I'm using to rip to FLAC and MP3, works very nicely.

I also use foobar as my player and for fast, ad hoc conversion from FLAC to MP3.

dbPoweramp is a well regarded ripper/converter/tag editor and has supported plugins for multiple outputs but is not free.

Adrian