I am new to EAC and FLAC. I have EAC installed and configured with AccurateRip and FLAC. All is working well, but I would like to better understand what the FLAC command line options in the External Compression tab means. Here is what I have:

-5 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -T comment="%e" -T "comment=EAC (Secure Mode)" %s --replay-gain

What do -V and -T do?
What are the "artist", "title", etc entries? Are these somehow related to the File Name scheme I have setup under EAC Options?
What is the replay-gain entry for? I thought ReplayGain calculation and application was part of a decoder's function. Should I have ReplayGain installed somewhere in EAC for ripping? If so, how?

Oh, one other thing...in the Offset tab, should I check the box for "Use Offset Correction for encoding and decoding" if I have AccurateRip installed?

Any other comments on this command line? I want to make sure I get it right before ripping my CD library. I want to do that only once!



Thanks for bearing with me.

Regards,
Bob

-V is verify, it makes FLAC decode the output while a track's being compressed to ensure the result is error-free. It stops the process if a problem is found.

-T writes the specified FLAC tag into the file, taken from the informations found in the "CD Title", "CD Artist", "Year", "Genre", "Title" and "Track" fields of EAC. For example, -T "title=%t" is the song's title displayed by an audio player which is capable of reading FLAC tags (most if not all players can read them), -T "artist=%a" is the name of the CD's artist. Note that tagging isn't related to the file's name, it's written into it as metadata instead. This metadata is extremely useful because it allows you storing lots of information about your music in the files, making management of your audio collection comfortable and easy.

ReplayGain is a technique used to set the playback volume of your music to an average level of 89 dB. Since CDs aren't equally loud you're usually forced to play around with the volume slider to prevent your ears being screwed when playing back an extremely loud song after a very quiet one. Have a look at http://replaygain.org for more information about this matter, especially about the differences between Track Gain and Album Gain. With your command line your files are scanned using Track Gain, but if you like listening to whole albums at once, or maybe concept albums as well as live recordings, Album Gain might be more suitable in your case. It preserves the dynamics between an album's songs, unlike Track Gain which simply sets every single title to 89 dB.



Using lossless codecs like FLAC and TAK or gapless lossy ones like LAME MP3 and Vorbis, there's no single reason to check this option.

Thank you very much. This is excellent information. Glad I asked! I do indeed want Album or Audiophile Gain as much of my listening is classical. What would be the proper entry for Album Gain?

Still not clear on one thing. When I rip using FLAC, am I actually placing ReplayGain values in the ripped track's file with this command line, or do I first need to install a ReplayGain plug-in?

Thanks again.

Bob

If you want correctly album gain scanned albums, then you must remove the "--replay-gain" switch from your command-line, and then you will have to ReplayGain scan your albums afterwards with an app of your choise(i would recommend foobar2000), or by running the metaflac.exe "--add-replay-gain" switch on all tracks from the album at once, from a command prompt/batch file. Another possibility, is to use an EAC plugin like e.g. REACT v2, where you can set it up to rip with EAC and afterwards encode + album gain scan your albums afterwards. The reason for the "--replay-gain" switch not working for album gain scanning when used directly from the EAC command-line, is that flac.exe is only handed one file at a time, which will make it impossible for flac.exe to calculate a correct album gain dB value, as this would instead require that all the files from the album where handed over to flac.exe on the same command-line at once, so as flac.exe could know that it where dealing with an entire album here. The flac.exe/metaflac.exe "--replay-gain/--add-replay-gain" switch, will add the recommended gain change and peak values as Vorbis comments(tags) into the FLAC files and then for making use of those RG comments during playback, then you would need to play them through a RG aware player like e.g. foobar2000.


CU, Martin.

Besides, no matter whether you use metaflac.exe or foobar2000, note that the Album Gain scanner will also intelligently add Track Gain values to the files, i.e. your audio player must be set up to read the Album Gain ones. Winamp and foobar2000 both offer this option in their "Playback" fields, Windows Media Player and iTunes can't handle ReplayGain at all. The latter just offers its own "Soundcheck" scan, which is very similar to Track Gain.