... I may be unlucky with my choice of music, but quite a few of my CD's are not identified on freedb, whereas I know they are on gracenote.
... what is the easiest way to extract using eac/lame and still be able to look up the titles etc on gracenote?

I don't know gracenote. But it could be that freedb doesn't recognize your discs if they are cd-r's which weren't copied right.

edit: if you want people who perhaps know to see your post, ask a moderator to move this to the CD soft/hardware subforum.

Rhellyer, have you submited an email address in EAC Freedb options? I expect you probably have, but its worth checking. If not, any cd will come back as not found

You could utilize CDDB2, which generally is more accurate and complete than FreeDB, by installing the freeware "Player" (http://www.vuplayer.com). Export the info from Player as "cdplayer.ini" for import into EAC--so useful for classical or rare recordings.

Your offsets correct? When I was having problems at first with EAC it was because the offsets were wrong or the drive was having problems writing. Strange thing about the writing problems were the disc would list the songs but the online databases couldn't recognize the disc.

I often have to try one of the other mirrors, like freedb.de.

Have you tried connecting to another server?

It's in a drop box in the cddb options dialogue.

I checked by going to freedb.org and searching for the cd's that i couldn't have it identify ... it looks like they just arent there unfortunately. I'll do my best to submit the right info. Meanwhile I think I'll use the fix suggested earlier in this thread to make a link to CDDB.
Thanks everyone!