Before last night, all my mp3s had been extracted and encoded using Easy CD-DA Extractor with LAME 3.92 encoder all in one shot, encoded on the fly using normal 192kb/s. Sounded fine to me.

I read about EAC and then using a separate program (which turned out to be RazorLame for me)... so I've been extracting using Secure Mode (Accurate Stream, Caching enabled, C2 Detection Disabled) and then using the --alt-preset standard commandline in RazorLame. However, whenever I finish encoding, I get an error message:

Command: E:\applications\LAME\lame.exe --alt-preset insane "E:\music\temp extracted\01. Coldplay - Politik.wav" "E:\music\temp extracted\01. Coldplay - Politik.mp3"
LAME version 3.90.2 MMX (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
-- Compiled at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org
-- Check this website for up to date information on the --alt-presets
CPU features: i387, MMX (ASM used), 3DNow!, SIMD
Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 20094 Hz - 20627 Hz
Encoding E:\music\temp extracted\01. Coldplay - Politik.wav
to E:\music\temp extracted\01. Coldplay - Politik.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz 320 kbps j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (4.5x) qval=2
average: 320.0 kbps LR: 12179 (99.84%) MS: 20 (0.1639%)
RazorLame encountered an unknown message from LAME while trying to encode "E:\music\temp extracted\01. Coldplay - Politik.wav"!

Anyone know what was up with that? I realize I was using the -insane preset, but that was because I thought it wouldn't give me the error anymore. Anyways, the mp3s that were encoded sound perfectly fine (and to be quite honest, I cannot tell a difference between these mp3s and the ones encoded using LAME from Easy CD-DA with no presets.)

Also, My 24/10/40x Lite-On burner only extracts to .wav at about 4.3x and in Burst Mode, only at 12x! I've seen reviews of 40x reading burners extracting using Secure at 12x and Burst at 40x... is there a fix for this?

Thanks in advance for putting up with my newbiism.

I kept getting similar messages on similar system. I use speex's frontend now for lame and I do not. Currently I'm working on a frontend for several codecs in vb. If I ever finish it I'll post it.

-Jeff

This looks like a simple problem that Razorlame doesn't recognize the output of the 3.90.2 Dibrom Lame compile, it can be fixed by copying razorlame.dat from the lame 3.90.2 package to your razorlame directory.

[edit: Did't remember where I got that modified razorlame.dat from ]

From the List of recommended LAME compiles:

"Make sure to read the instructions for RazorLAME etc."

My bad... thank you!

My next problem now is the slow extraction from EAC...

What is the fastest method to use in Secure mode?
Caching and C2 checked or Accurate Stream and Caching checked or... you tell me!

Caching is bad for audio extraction (makes the process slower and more unreliable). C2 error correction speeds up the audio extraction process, but it's not 100% reliable on most drives that have this feature. Checking Accurate Stream feature only should give 100% reliable results.

If you click the auto-detect button and EAC tells you that your drive caches audio data, then you will want to make sure that the checkbox for caching is ON. I know the wording is a little confusing, but if your drive caches audio data and you leave the checkbox unmarked, then EAC will read the data the first time, and compare it will the second read which comes from the cached audio. So if you have an error on the extraction, then EAC will not know the difference. However, if your drive caches audio data and you put a check in the cache box then EAC will read the data the first time, clear the cache, then read the data a 2nd time, and compare the two. So trust EAC with what it auto-detects, but always double check to make sure.

Anybody please correct me if I'm wrong.