I've been using EAC to rip CDs for a while now. I've followed the tutorials on the internet showing how to setup EAC as best as I could understand so I think I have things configured properly (but I'm not 100% certain on that). I really like how EAC works. The only thing that really bothers me is the fact that EAC adds several seconds of silence at the end of each track during the WAV extraction phase.

For example, I'm trying to rip a track that on the CD itself is listed at 2:51. When I rip the CD with the "Delete leading and trailing silent blocks" unchecked, I get a rip at 2:54. If I check the box the checkbox and rip again, this time I get a rip of 2:52. In the tutorials I've seen, they generally leave the checkbox unchecked, so I'm really having trouble figuring out why there those extra seconds of silence are being added to the rips.

Does anyone have any settings they could suggest I check or any ideas for me to try?

My CD (really DVD) drive is: JLMS XJ-HD166S.

The only thing that I haven't done in the tutorials is to set the offset correction. I looked on the accurate rip website and while they have a drive model close to mine, there isn't one with the exact numbers. I don't own any of the CDs listed on the calibration list, so I haven't changed the default offset numbers. If I understand offset correction, it's just the positioning of the laser beam so even if I were to adjust this, it wouldn't reduce the overall amount of silence, just how much would be at the beginning or end of the track. Am I wrong?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Jonathan

I've noticed that several different programs will report different length for one CD. Not having any reason to care about it myself, I haven't bother to try to figure out why. I prepare a project in CoolEdit. Its information is very precise; I can look at and measure to the millisecond. I write the CD in Nero. Its total is a little different than CoolEdit's. I examine the finished CD in EAC, in order to easily make a track list. Its total is different that either CoolEdit or Nero.

Maybe what EAC tells you isn't exactly what you think you are looking at. Are you certain that, in your example of 2:51 vs 2:52, that an extra second of silence is really there? Have you tried writing a CD, then extracting from that CD to see if you really get what you expect?

Are you doing gap detection and if so what gap option have you told EAC to use when ripping?

Offsets only result in a shifting of audio data. The amount of data does not change.

Deleting leading and trailing slient blocks leaves with blocks that are entirely comprised of null samples out. These blocks actually do exist on the original CD and checking this setting will give you something that is different than what is on the CD in that tracks that fit the criteria will be shorter. Checked or unchecked, this setting shouldn't ever give you a track that is longer.

The only thing I can think of is what Societal Eclipse alluded to: gap detection is at play. But you should also be seeing some tracks that appear shorter, since the total time of all the tracks should remain the same (so long as gaps aren't being left out). BTW, gaps are not the same as silent blocks.

Could be the drive, could be the way you are measuring tracks. It's hard to say.

One way of doing a sanity check is to rip an entire disc as separate tracks and generate the proper cue sheet. Load that sheet into EAC (as if you were going to burn a copy) and compare what's in the CD Layout Editor window with the track listing in the main window. Compare the start times for the 01 index for each track. Ignore the lengths that are specified since they are on a per-index basis, otherwise they need to be summed.

By default, EAC appends gaps to the end of previous tracks. (just like most other rippers)

Track lengths as printed on the CD/case are often not accurate.
Or they might be accurate, but don't include silent gaps between songs.

Read offset can figure into the length of a ripped track, depending upon overread ability/settings and the "fill up missing offset samples with silence" setting, but the difference would only be a small fraction of a second (missing) on the first or last tracks.

Thanks for your replies! I'll start with the top and work down.

When I've mentioned having extra silence, I've opened up the wav form, found the spot were the music faded down to nothing and used that as the point for determining that there was too much silence at the end. In both the 2:52 and 2:54 examples I used, both of them had extra zero amplitude silence after the music had completely faded out.

Regarding GAP detection, no I generally haven't used this. Is this something I should do? In my options I have it at Method B and secure. Is that correct? The tutorials I read, didn't say a whole lot about what method is best.

Greynol said that "Checked or unchecked, this setting shouldn't ever give you a track that is longer." However, when I ripped a track to test this the WAV for the rip with the delete silence blocks check resulted in the 29k KB file resulting in a 2:52 file and the WAV for the rip with it unchecked was 30K KB and that was 2:54.

After reading you posts, I did check and saw that by doing a Gap detection, EAC seems to think that the track is really 2:54. Is there a way to prevent EAC from including the 2 seconds of silence from in between the tracks so that it doesn't rip this 2 seconds of "nothing?" Is that what the delete silence blocks is supposed to do?

Greynol, no I've never seen tracks that end up shorter. They always have too much silence at the end. None of them are ever too short. (I've ripped a lot of CDs -- in the hundreds -- and I've never once seen one that didn't have those extra seconds of silence at the end)

As far as it possibly being the drive, I don't think that is the case. I actually have used 3 different computers for ripping and they all do the same thing -- 1 and IBM Thinkpad Laptop using a Mitsumi DVD drive, 1 an IBM desktop using the drive I mentioned above and 1 a Dell Desktop but I can't remember the drive brand.

Cosmo, I think you've hit my problem -- the 2 second silence in between tracks. For the most part, the track times listed on the backs of the CDs I've been ripping have been correct. I believe the problem is that 2 seconds of space in between tracks. Is there a way to keep EAC from including this in the WAV?

Thanks everyone for your help so far . . .

Jonathan

I'm talking about the same kind of "gaps" that the others are talking about. These gaps (which are often called pregap) are a normal occurance at the beginning of a track - the length of time between 00 to 01 index points. (some explanation) The length of gaps varies, and sometimes they don't even exist. EAC will not introduce silence between tracks that does not exist on the original CD.

The best gap detection settings to use will very depending upon the drive. Trial and error.
In my experience, a combination of settings that gets accurate results will typically also be a fairly quick process. (as in - not several minutes) Though I've heard of drives that struggle no matter what settings are used.

I meant to say that this setting can never be responsible for giving you a longer track than what is on the disc. You will either get a track of the same size or a shorter one, depending on if it is checked and whether the track either ends or begins with silent blocks. The description of the setting is pretty straight forward. Blocks (588 stereo sample-pairs) that are totally comprised of null samples which exist on the disc at either end of a track will not be extracted. My apologies for not communicating this clearly earlier (hopefully this is more clear).

I'm not sure if you're interested in preserving the CD the way it was produced or if you are interested in altering it by removing silence.

Do try that sanity check I mentioned. It will either prove to you that the lengths are correct and shed some light on what gaps are or it will help to show that there is some type of problem that needs to be addressed. Leave the gaps setting at the default which is to append to the previous track. When creating a CUE sheet, choose "Current Gap Settings" or "Noncompliant". Provided that the gaps setting was left defaulted, these two choices will give you an identical CUE sheet.

Cosmo is absolutely right, the track times listed on the case aren't always the same as what is on the disc. And yes, fill up missing samples needs to be checked if you have an offset correction configured with overreading unchecked or else either the first or last track will come up short by the size of the offset correction, though I think this is clouding the issue.

I would trust a normal CD player to report the disc length correctly.

I think I was able to go one step better than generating my own que sheet. I deal with a genre of music that itunes doesn't sell, so I actually was able to get an official cue sheet for one of the CDs I have from the original vendor. I don't understand what all of it means, but I do the majority. I'll type it up and then explain what I did:

According to the official cue sheet for the CD: (the numbers are in minutes:seconds:hundreths)
Track#- Start at- Title- Length- Stop At - Pause
1 00:00:02 Achieved Is the Glor . . . 03:06:05 03:08:05 00:02:00
00:00:00 00:02:00 Index 0 Pregap
00:02:00 00:00:00 Index 1 Audio Start
2 03:10:05 The Heaven's Declare . . . 03:13:20 06:23:25 00:02:00
03:08:05 00:02:00 Index 0 Pregap
03:10:05 00:00:00 Index 1 Audio Start
And so on . . .

Now, in EAC here is what I see after doing Gap detection:
Track #- Start- Length- Gap-
1 0:00:00.00 0:03:08.05 0:00:02.00
2 0:03:08.05 0:03:15.20 0:00:02.00

Now, when I rip the track (after doing gap detection) with "Delete Leading and Trailing Silence Blocks" as unchecked, and I open the wav in Audacity, itunes or whatever, I get a track that is 0:03:08.05. Then when I rip the track again with "Delete Leading and Trailing Silence Blocks" as checked and this time check the play time in Audacity and I get 0:03:06.05. So I go back and look at the original cue sheet and find that the correct track time without the gap is 0:03:06.05. From what I understand people saying, unchecking the option should result in the correct length and checking it should make the track time shorter; however, in my case it looks as though checking the delete silence option results in the correct track length and unchecking it results in a track that is longer than the original b/c it is including the 2 second gap.

Am I still doing something wrong? Or am I missunderstanding something still?

Thanks,

Jonathan

The ripped track is 3:08 because you probably have "Append Gaps To Previous Track..." checked at the bottom of the Action menu. There is a two second pregap at the beginning of the next track that is being appended to the end of this one.


Apparently the gap, which would normally be appended due to your setting in the Action menu, is being deleted in this case.


If you don't want the pregaps included, the correct thing to do is to select the "Leave Out Gaps" option in the Action menu, not "Delete Leading and Trailing Silence Blocks". (Unless you're a person who insists that there is absolutely no digital silence at the front or end of a track.)

Again I refer you to this link for additional insight into gap settings. And this one if you want to study your options for using cue sheets - especially if you want to make a backup that can accurately reconstruct the original CD layout.

Ah. That solves it. When I heard appending gaps, I knew that option sounded familiar and went looking through the EAC menu options and screens to try to find it, but obviously I didn't. Thanks for those links. I'll definitely read up on this.

And thanks to everyone who replied. I appreciate your help.

Jonathan