EAC help please?

Hello,

As some of you know I've been trying to get into ripping and streaming and I'm getting there slowly.

Last night I downloaded something called MediaMonkey which claimed to be able to rip CDs to FALC - and it did - but I was suspicious because the whole process seemed far too quick for what I thought was supposed to be a very accurate read.

So looking back at all the advice I've had so far I found the stuff about EAC and tonight I've been playing around with that.

I've managed to rip a CD to FLAC ok (takes a while!) and I can play it back ok. So far so good.

The problem I've got is that EAC isn't displaying or recording any information in my 'My Music' Folder on the PC. All it shows is an icon with a couple of notes on a stave: no text at all ???/

That's not going to be much use as a library is it?

When the CD is in the drawer and EAC is loaded it displays the Artist and title at the top of the screen but nothing else to identify the CD: no track titles, just 'Track 1'. etc

I know the CD is 100% because Media Monkey can find all this data without any problems.

So, It's all a bit up and down ATM.

Can anyone tell me what I need to do to get this working properly please?

Martin

 

Don't bother with EAC unless you have a badly damaged disc, life is too short.
Keith.

 

Agree with Keith.

By the time you've ripped a decent collection with EAC, Cameron will starting his third term and William will be on the throne.

iTunes does the job well.

 

I thought the whole point of all this was to get a perfect bit-read, which had the potential to sound better than the original CD played 'in real time' on a CDP? and as far as I can see EAC is the only way to achieve that?

So what are you saying? any old CD ripping software will do as long as it rips to FLAC - or some other lossless compression format?

PS I don't have an ipod or anything to do with itunes.

 

I really do hope you're right about that but I fear he's already blown it. Any opposition to Gormless right now, who can only manage a couple of % points advantage in the polls doesn't really deserve to win do they?

 

Don't read too much into my comment, which was posted given the likely outcome in May rather than the desired one on my part.

I'm not a big fan of New Labour (being a little to the left of Old Labour myself) but give me Brown over Cameron any day.

However, getting back to rippers, I've not seen or heard anything that makes me believe that iTunes or other programs don't give a perfect rip. I know that EAC will try desperately hard to rip a badly damaged disc, but I don't have any.
On normal discs in playable condition I can't see any advantage - and I've not heard it either.

 

...the country needs a change ...doesn't really matter that who it is as they are all to a greater extent the same ...more so when you consider the control of the civil servents ..oh and any pm should of course be ellected unlike the one we have currently

try using cdex ......mine was setup by mr sukebe and to date has ripped all but a handfull of disc out of 1800

takes about five minutes tio rip to flac ... and imports cd and track details too ..

I thought itunes only ripped to the applelossless ?

had the chance early on to listen to flac against apple ...the flac seemed darker ...the silences were more silent somehow ..the apple also seemed softer in presentation ..these are of coures only my impression on a hand full of tracks...but enough to convince me I needed flac as well as ituunes for my nano...

tha said the itune interface is very good

 

In various null/checksum testa that i have read, there has been no difference whatsoever between uncompressed codecs itunes ( aiff )or db poweramp( flac ) are fine, Keith.

 

I think there are two camps to the computer audio thing; those who want the convenience and those who are trying to get better sound by reading the CDs better.

I don't think most CD reading errors are big enough to be audible.

 

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/
Its so easy with this program.

 

Hi Pete,

Fair enough, but be careful what you wish for!
I'll say no more here, even though it is more interesting than CD ripping

iTunes will rip to a number of formats but if you want lossless you are stuck with wav and apple lossless IIRC.

 

I had problems with iTunes ripping some old (1985ish) Philips classical CDs, all in perfect condition and play ok in all my CD players, but EAC found unreadable errors. In desperation I tried iTunes, which seemed to rip them ok but resulted in pops throughout the copies.

I did eventually solve the problem ripping them in another machine with EAC.

I do have a question, if flac is lossless, why does it play at less than 1411kbps on my Duet?

 

You can still compress the file size without actually throwing away data. I guess the best way to illustrate this is to think of how a zip file works. You can compress files and yet restore them perfectly when expanded.

 

So how do you restore a flac to wav format? EAC doesn't seem to be able to do this.

 

To those for whom this post contains nothing new, I apologise.

Problems arise because "compression" is used a number of different ways in the audio world. You will hear the term "dynamic compression". This is where the range of soft to loud is reduced. This could be because the recording will not handle the dynamic range (range of soft to loud) Vinyl records and FM radio will not handle the dynamic range a digital system will. Sometimes the dynamic range has to be limited because of the listening conditions. A radio transmission that a lot of folk are going to listen to in the car cannot use much "soft" - the noise of the car engine makes that impossible. So you will find, for example, that Classic FM use more dynamic compression during the day, and less in the evening. The Dynamic compression makes the music rather lifeless. But in the evening when it is judged more will be listening at home and many on good systems, less dynamic compression is applied and the music "opens up".

The lossless compression of digital file is quite different As Rob said, it is like a zip file. Tricks are used to save space in the file, which is just a series on 0s and 1s.

For example if the original has

00000000000000000000

I can write 20 x 0 (twenty zeros) and save space. All sorts of clever tricks are used, but when the file is "unzipped" it returns to what it was.

Lossy compression is different again. There are rules to decide how much detail can be left out without the loss being noticed too much. Those rules are applied, and then the file is zipped.

 

Hello Brian,

I get that, but if a 'lossless' format is truly 'lossless' shouldn't it play at 1411kbps from these compressed files?

I understand how MP3 works, I think!, it removes things you shouldn't be able to hear to reduce file size, where as flac doesn't, but if flac works like winzip, I don't understand why flac files play a reduced kbps.

I've been putting off asking this for months, I knew it would be hard!

 

You going into more detail than I know.

You have a Squeezebox Duet. I have a Squeezebox Classic. On my Classic I am not sure where to display bitrate - maybe there is a menu option.

Running Foobar I note that Cds ripped to FLAC report 400-500Kb/s

Are you saying the bitrate of a CD quality WAW file should be over 1000?

Could it be that lower number is the compressed bitrate of the file - I do know FLAC achieve a 2:1 compression, so the numbers would work. Are both your Duet and my Foobar measuring the rate before expansion?

 

A wav file is identical to redbook CD. 16bit, 44.1Khz, 1411.2kpbs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard)

There's a + key on the controller of the Duet which shows all the details of the track being played, Wav. files play at 1411kbps on the Duet, flacs ripped on EAC show 860kbps. It shows both before and after, I'll try and get some pics when I have a moment.

In its 'out of the box' settings, the Duet plays wav files with the flac encoder, trimming them down to about 650kbps, you can disable this in the main control panal on the PC so it streams wavs at the proper rate, I asume it's set this way to make it work with slower networks, my Netgear 834 streams wavs perfectly, I can even use the laptop while playing them.

 

It does.

The bps rate you are seeing relates to the data rate that will be read from the file and input to the decoder rather than that output from the decoder and presented to the DAC. An MP3 file may start at 320kbps but will end up at 1411kbps or 1536kbps. A wav has no compression so is stored at 1411, a FLAC is about half.

With Squeeze I can see no good reason to use other than FLAC. And 96k24 FLACs play with no mucking about, whereas 96k24 wavs are silent...

Paul

 

Thanks Paul. That's what I guessed. The lower figure refers to the unexpanded FLAC