Hey everyone, sorry for my ignorance, but I'm not really all that well versed in the world of digital audio.

I am about to begin transfering my CDs to FLAC, which I'm planning on storing on an external HD. I'm planning on using EAC, because everyone says that's the best. I have two obstacles/reservations right now:

1) I'm kind of confused about the WAV settings. The default on EAC says "Windows MSAudio Encoder" with sample format settings of "128 kBit/s, 44,100 Hz, Stereo". Is this the best setting? I'm confused about what I keep reading about 24bit/96Hz settings. Can anyone clarify that? I know 16bit, 44100Hz is the standard for CDs, but what about those ones that claim to be "24-bit remastered"? Can I use a setting that makes my digital files higher quality than this "128 kBit/s, 44,100 Hz, Stereo" setting that I see on EAC?

2) Can I and should I go directly from CD to FLAC using EAC, or should I go to WAV and then go to FLAC with another program? I don't see the FLAC option in the pulldown menu on the USE EXTERNAL PROGRAM FOR COMPRESSION option on EAC, so I'm not really sure what to do here.

Basically, this is obviously a pretty time- and energy-consuming undertaking, and I want to make sure that I lose absolutely zero quality in the process of duplicating my CDs. I really appreciate any help anyone can offer this novice.

Thanks!

http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/EAC/index.html

Direct conversion to flac is eplained, and will solve all problems (especially the first one).


EDIT: another one:
http://users.skynet.be/fa214783/eac/eac2.htm

You're gonna want "Microsoft PCM Converter", "44.100 kHz, 16 Bit, Stereo" under the Waveform tab... I remember running into problems with this before, it'd rip to whatever else first, then convert to mp3, and have a horrible sounding end result. Make sure to uncheck compression, set these settings, then go and recheck.

Hi, thanks for the responses, they've been helpful.

I must say, though, I am still a bit confused about the Bit and Hz stuff. Can someone point me to a place that might answer this question that I posted?


In essence, I am worried that I may not be getting optimal quality if I rip the FLAC files at the 16 bit/44100 Hz setting.

Thanks for the help!

24/96 remastered mean that the editor worked on a digital master of 96 Khz 24 bits (for remixing, DSP, etc... stuff). The results is downsampled at 16/44.1 in order to respect the Red Book (CD audio) specifications.

If you rip an audio CD, stay at 16/44.1. Other sampling/frequency rate would change the whole signal (and your rip won't be lossless anymore).

Thanks a lot, that really answers my question... Now one more last thing:

I tried to change the settings in the "waveform" tab per theGrue's advice:

But when you go back and click "use external program for compression," it automatically sets the wave format to "Windows MSAudio Encoder" with the "128 kBit/s, 44,100 Hz, Stereo" setting. This doesn't seem to produce anything other than a 16 bit, 44,100 Hz FLAC ultimately, but I'm a bit concerned since this setting doesn't confirm that. Why does it say 128 kBit/s, and why does EAC automatically revert to that setting when you convert to FLAC?

When you effectively "turn on" a user defined encoder, its effectively "turning off" the wavform screen. You use one or the other, not both.

I don't have an entry for "MSAudio Encoder" but on the waveform tab, it is giving you options as to the type of output that will be created from the the item selected in "Wave Format". If you had Monkey's Audio installed, it would be an option in that field, and your choices for "Sample Format" would be Fast, High, Etc.

As for the bitrate (on the external compression tab) when user defined encoder is selected, its not used (to my knowledge) unless you're passing that information to the command-line anyway. I've always hoped that Andre would remove those fields from EAC, but they've been there as long as I can remember.

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Domain

For further clarification, ALL of the settings circled in the image below are ignored when you set the parameter passing scheme to User Defined Encoder.
www.geocities.com/dj_moguta/EAC_FLAC.png

All you need to worry about is the file extension, the correct path to flac.exe, the commandline options, and whether you want the WAV files to be left behind after encoding. Everything else will take care of itself.