EAC Ripping Guide (Windows/Unix)

With this guide you can learn to back up your CDs to lossless flacs easily. You'll make an exact copy and then encode the files losslessly to flacs.

1. Download EAC from: here and install it

In the following steps, only change settings in the tabs mentionned. You don't need to change anything in the other tabs.


2. Launch the program, the following will appear:



Cancel the installation wizard as we will set all the advanced options manually, with full control.


3. AccurateRip Drive Offset Auto-Install

Choose a rather popular cd and put it in your cd/dvd-drive. Accurate rip is enabled by default from version 0.99pb4 of EAC onwards and will attempt to configure the correct read offset for your drive automatically. This is the first thing that happens when loading a CD after a fresh install of EAC and should take a few seconds. If successful you should see this little symbol at the bottom right of EAC:




To be extra-sure, click on EAC --> Drive options (or hit F10), click off the information box that appears and look under the offset/speed tab. An offset value corresponding to your drive should be present, written in grey, and the "Use AccurateRip with this drive" box checked. In my case, my drive has a read offset value of +6.

While you're here in the offset tab, make sure speed selection is set to actual, and that the following additional boxes are ticked:

- allow speed reduction during extraction
- CD-Text capable drive





4. Freedb Database Options

click EAC --> freedb options (or hit F12) and enter an email address. It is required for EAC to access the database.




5. EAC Options

Click on EAC --> EAC options (or hit F9).

Tick the following boxes:

- Fill Up Missing Offset Samples With Silence
- Synchronize Between Tracks

Set Error Recovery Quality to high.

Tick the "Lock Drive Tray During Extraction" box if you want (prevents accidental tray opening during ripping).




6. EAC Options, General Tab

Still under the eac options, click on the general tab.

Tick the following options:

- On Unknown CDs, automatically access online freedb database
- Show Status Dialog After Extraction

Set EAC language selection to English. We only accept logs in English.




7. EAC Options, Tools Tab

Still under the eac options, click on the tool tab.

Tick the following options:

- Use CD-Text Information In CUE Sheet Generation.
- Create '.m3u' Playlist On Extraction
- Check Automatically Write Status Report After Extraction.

If you want to encode to flac during extraction (recommended), tick the following boxes also:

- On Extraction, Start External Compressors Queued In The Background (and set Use 1 simultaneous compression thread(s) to 1)
- Do Not Open External Compression Window (unless you want to see a flac.exe window popping up for each track compression)




8. EAC Options, Normalise Tab

Do not tick anything at all. If you do you will alter the wav file and not have a lossless rip.




9. EAC Options, Filename Tab

- In the Naming Scheme box, fill in %N - %T (for track number - track name)
- Tick the Use Various Artists Naming Scheme option and fill in the following in the input box: %N - %A - %T (for track number - track artist - track name)




10. EAC Options, Directories Tab

- Use a directory not showing your name. Choose something short and anonymous, as C:\DAE (DAE stands for Digital Audio Extraction)




11. Drive Options, Extraction Method Tab

Click on EAC --> Drive Options (or hit F10)

Click on the extraction method tab and tick the following boxes:

- secure mode with following features enables (recommended)
- Drive has 'Accurate Stream' feature
- Drives caches audio data




12. Drive Options, Drive Tab

Click on the drive tab, put a disc in the drive and press the autodetect read command button. Use the setting found after the autodetection.




13. Drive Options, Gap Detection Tab

Click on the gap detection tab and set the detection accuracy to secure.

Now you need to test your drive with the various gap retrieval methods to find which is the one your drive needs. Try each of them, three times. Choose detection method A, put a cd in, detect gaps (press F4) and write down the resulting gap values. Eject the disc, re-load it and re-do this operation two more times. If the gaps resulting from the three detections are the same, the detection method is accurate. Do the same with methods B and C. The fastest detection method to give three identical results is the one you should use.




14. Compression Options

Click on EAC --> Compression options (or hit F11) and click on the compression option tab.

The only file format we allow is flac. Set up EAC to use flac.exe to compress the wav files. With the recent versions of EAC (EAC 0.99 pb4 and pb5) flac.exe comes within the package and installs within the EAC directory. Point EAC to use the correct path for flac.exe.

- set "user defined encoder"
- put ".flac" as the file extension

- Point EAC to use the correct path for flac.exe:

c:/Program Files/Exact Audio Copy/Flac/flac.exe

or

c:/Program Files/Flac/flac.exe

if you installed flac.exe separately (from the flac installer).

- additional command line options:

if you use EAC 0.99 pb4 use the following:

-8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%x" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "ALBUM ARTIST=%v" -T "ALBUMARTIST=%v" -T "COMMENT=EAC V0.99 prebeta 4, Secure Mode, Test & Copy, AccurateRip, FLAC -8" %s

if you use EAC 0.99 pb5 use the following:

-8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%x" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "ALBUM ARTIST=%v" -T "ALBUMARTIST=%v" -T "COMMENT=EAC V0.99 prebeta 5, Secure Mode, Test & Copy, AccurateRip, FLAC -8" %s

- bitrate: doesn't matter, leave it as it is
- Delete wav after compression: tick unless you want to keep the wav files
- Use CRC check: tick
- Use ID3 tags: leave unticked. Flac uses vorbis comment tags.
- Check for external program return code: tick. Very rarely, flac.exe will report an error. You want to know about it if it happens.




15. Ripping Procedure

01. Insert CD
02. Check that the information retrieved from freedb is correct and that there is no NON-ASCII characters in any of the artist, album or track names.
03. Detect gaps: hit F4
04. Test Gaps for silence: hit F3
05. Create a non-complient cue sheet: click on "Action" --> Create Cue Sheet --> Multiple wav files with gaps... (noncompliant)
06. Rip using test and copy: hit shift+F6
07. At the end of the ripping process, the Status Report Window will show up. Read through it looking for possible errors.



08. Check that the CRCs all match (both test CRC and Copy CRC) in the EAC window.



All CRCs match, the rip is accurate.


09. Check your .log file
NEVER EDIT YOUR .log FILES, EVER!!!!!