I hope this has not already addressed (I made a search but couldn't find...)

I think there are some issues with EAC (0.95 prebeta 5) and lame_enc.dll (3.90.3)

EAC 0.95 prebeta 5 has the new possibility to set "Preset: standard" as the "Sample format" in "Compression options -> Waveform" BUT if you change the Maximum VBR bitrate available in "Compression options -> LAME DLL" and you set it to 256Kb/s instead of 320 kb/s you get exactly that, an APS limited to 256Kb/s. All other options doesn't seems to have any effect on the output, which is surely a welcome, but also an inconsistency in the UI.

To me when LAME DLL is chosen as the Waveform in EAC:

1) the settings for the "Sample format" should be greyed out and the equivalent setting should be made available in the LAME DLL options renamed to "Encoding mode".

2) in case a "preset" encoding mode is chosen all other options should be grayed out and unavailable either by default or through an "Only use preset options" checkbox.

3) the "Do not Write WAV header" shold be forced and grayed out

4) file extension should be forced to ".mp3" and grayed out


Almost the same considerations apply to the "External Compression" alternative, where, when ""User Defined Encoder" is chosen all the quality options (Bit Rate, High/Low Quality, Use CRC check) should be made unavailbale and grayed out.

Also, maybe, similar consideration could be applied to other encoders DLLs, but I can't say as I've not used...

I think this will make EAC much more "Newbie friendly" :-)

One more thing: It would be nice if somebody could develop a fake lame.dll that instead of doing its work will make somewhere a dump of the passed parameters. This will ease the debugging of lame.dll integration with other programs...


Sergio

Edit: corrected from "lame.dll" to "lame_enc.dll"

lame_enc.dll and EAC do not produce exact same result than lame.exe --preset standard

see:
http://www.digital-inn.de/showthread.php?t=25265

EAC asks lame_enc.dll not to produce any frame under 160kbps, whereas lame.exe creates some 128kbps frames.

So to achieve best performance mp3, you still have to stick to lame.exe external compressor.

Yes, verified!

Here is the bitrate distribution for Enjoy by Björk encoded with lame.exe 3.90.3 APS:



and here is the bitrate distribution for the same encoded with lame_enc.dll 3.90.3 APS through EAC:




Definitely LAME APS is *NOT* LAME APS when encoding through EAC and lame_enc.dll


I think this is an even more important issue than the "cosmetic" ones I underlined in my initial post and that the HA community must be made well aware of this.

Sergio

Edit: corrected from "lame.dll" to "lame_enc.dll"

@megar:
Thanks for bringing to our attention this bug!

@administrators:
I think topic should be changed to "EAC and lame_enc.dll BUGS"
This bug was already evidenced but not identified in this post by fairyliquidizer in "General audio". Maybe the two threads can be merged.


Sergio

Edit: .... but don't forget MY issues!!