It's been a long road trying to decide how I should archive my music collection. Because I'm not an audiophile (just a lover not a phile) or a programmer a lot of what I read here in HA boggles my mind and leaves me wondering if I'm doing the right thing. So this is what I've decided - let me know how I'm doing. I also could use a little help with REACT.

I'm using EAC with FLAC and LAME. Thanks to HA for the info and several decent links to configuring all. I wish there was one defacto link for EAC but a combination of The Coaster Factory, Case, Teqnilogik (best detail) got me to a happy place.

I'm not going to be copying my music to an image. Why? I don't know. Am I making a mistake? I can't think of too many CDs that I own with hidden tracks. And when I put a CD into my Plextor drive it lists tracks for me so it seems logical to duplicate the original.

I'm not using ReplayGain. Maybe I don't understand it but I've read til I'm blind and all I can think is that it's an adjustment to the original. Is this feature largely to avoid being blasted out of the room when you're listening to a playlist of different music where one track is significantly louder than the other? Is it really worth it to affect the original recording just so you don't have to push the volume down button on your remote? I would think this is not a feature audio purists would approve of. What am I missing?

I use the Adaptec ASPI interface. Is VOB better?
I plan to tag my files from within LAME and FLAC.
FLAC - -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -5 %s
ID3 Tag Comment >EAC v0.95b4, FLAC 1.1.3
Naming Convention >%A\%C\%N - %T

LAME - -V 0 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tg "%m" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d
ID3 Tag Comment >EAC v0.95b4, LAME 3.97
Naming Convention >%A\%C\%N - %T

This is the preferred method, right? Or would I be better off using a third party application that can also associate album art. Where do I find such an application?

So those are the things I've figured out (really, too much reading makes it very difficult to make a decision) I'm stuck on how to use REACT.

I looked desperately for a tutorial as simple to follow as the ones I found for EAC (mentioned above). There isn't any. Those of you who did comment on your configurations took advantage of far more advanced things than I will. I can't see editing the Cfg. files - Tycho said they're for Advanced users. Which means I certainly can't find a place for command line instructions either.

What I want is for REACT to run EAC exactly as I have it configured:

FLAC - -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -5 %s
ID3 Tag Comment >EAC v0.95b4, FLAC 1.1.3
Naming Convention >%A\%C\%N - %T

LAME - -V 0 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tg "%m" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d
ID3 Tag Comment >EAC v0.95b4, LAME 3.97
Naming Convention >%A\%C\%N - %T

Here's my questions:

Can I add the command line options as I have them written above to REACT's INI file?
Can I create a comment for FLAC (like shown above) and a separate comment for LAME (like shown above)?
If I don't want AlbumGain to be used do I delete +3.0 or replace it with 0?
Does $track$ result in '01' or '1' when assigning the track number to track 1?
Do I install REACT into the EAC directory and click the shortcut for REACT or EAC?
How do I select the cover I want in CoverDownloader?

I guess that's it. Some of you guys did an insane number of things with your INI files and in the CFG files that I just don't understand. Makes me wonder if I'm doing enough. How about a detailed Basic Users Guide and and Advanced Users guide for some of these applications? I'm a full time IT tech and could not piece enough information together from the posts, readme, and Wikki to get myself started. The Readme and Wikki were too vague and the posts were way too advanced

I appreciate the help. I really can't wait to get started. Thanks everyone.

Po

Copying to tracks is fine. When using REACT2, it is safest to copy as image, and then let REACT split the image to tracks while compressing them.

There are two different ways to add replay gain: 1) Adding ReplayGain tags to audio files. It does not change the audio data, but let compatible players adjust volume automatically. 2) For some formats you may *apply* the volume changes to the audio files. I find this to be ok for lossy formats like mp3 and aac, because they playback with replaygain level on every player. For lossless archiving (e.g. FLAC), add replay gain tags only.

REACT does nearly all this by default. Only small configurations are needed.

First: Lame -V0 is in virtually archiving quality, but you already do FLAC archiving. Lame -V4 or even -V5 is transparent to most people. If you want even higher quality mp3's later you can transcode from the FLAC's using e.g. foobar.

1) No. but all everything except for -V0 is already done by REACT. If you really want -V0, press Alt-F2 in EAC (REACT running) to open REACT.ini, and modify the line containing: Opt_LameMP3=-V5 ... Save and close.

2) Yes, press Alt-F3 to open .cfg file. Scroll down to the line containing: IF NOT @Flac@==1. Further down in this block you'll find: -T comment=$q@comment@$q Change it to: -T comment=$qEAC v0.95b4, FLAC 1.1.3$q Similar for MP3.

3) To disable ReplayGain completely, set ReplayGain=0 in REACT.ini. To only add ReplayGain tags (not apply to audio), set ReplayGain=1 and ApplyAlbumGain=0. Note that if you set ApplyAlbumGain=1, only mp3 and aac files are affected. FLAC and Wavpack (and OGG) still only adds RG tags.

4) $track$ resolves in '01', @track@ resolves in '1'

5) You may extract REACT into the EAC folder if you want, but by default it is extracted to REACT2. Click the REACT shortcut - it will start both EAC and REACT.

6) Doubleclick on the album you want and it will be saved to the correct folder. You may configure coverdownloader to auto-close after save.

Lastly: Make sure that Flac=1, LameMP3=1, and the Rest of the formats are set to 0 in REACT.ini. Remember to copy in image mode as mentioned (F10). It will split it to FLAC and MP3 tracks.

Cheers.

That would probably be a good idea it would take some dedication and time to write though. I am not familiar with REACT myself. . Anyone else is welcome to though. The problem is FB2K wiki for instance has 1,000 someone people writing guides and the regular HA only has a few poor souls.

Thanks for the answers and the help. I've been slowly making my way through my music collection and have been very happy. There are a couple more tweaks I need to make to REACT for it to be perfect and I believe they probably need to be made in the configuration file so I need your help to find them.

1. CD Autorun isn't disabled through REACT. It is in my EAC settings but REACT seems to be running entirely from the CFG and INI files, right? How do I disable CD Autorun?
2. For the first time I can recall (I have done some experimental ripping in the past using a couple of guides for configuring EAC) I have amassed a collection of "favorite" discs that EAC can't seem to copy. I have let EAC go at some of these discs for a couple of days and it has not been able to produce results. These discs, however are playable. Anyway I love these discs, if I have to buy new ones, I'll buy new ones. If anyone has a suggestion for how to make EAC read them right . . . I'm all ears.

2a. The real purpose of question #2 is to ask how to configure REACT to NOT lock the CD drawer during ripping. When REACT is trying to rip these discs I can not cancel the routine. If I 'End Now' through Windows Explorer it is necessary for me to reboot the computer, or manually eject the CD, then double click my DVD drive (as if to play the CD) before the system will unlock the drive and let me 'eject' the CD so I can put in another one. I figure it must be the drive locking feature that is making it so difficult to eject the CD but I don't know how to disable it in REACT.

3. How do I get my music to go into a directory like such: Genre/Artist/Album? through REACT? I haven't been doing it thus far but I think I might change.

4. It appears I started all of this at the end of FLAC 1.1.3's life. I'm using the default compression (-5) for FLAC. Aside from speed and compression ratio am I really missing anything by not changing to FLAC 1.1.4?

5. REACT starts its routine before the cover art is selected - didn't I read that there was a way to halt the routine until a cover was selected? How is that done?

6. Media Monkey does not show the actual bit rate of the recorded MP3. Foobar will show the fluctuation in a VBR rip but Media Monkey shows all my vbr -new 0 rips as 320kbps. Is Foobar the only player that shows the actual bit rate? Is there a way to make Media Monkey do it?

I love HA. Thanks everyone!

Po

Their is an option called : EAC options > General > "Disable 'CD Autostart' for audio and data CDs while EAC running", but unfortunetly it dosen't stop autorun enabled CDs from loading their startup program, which means that if having AutoRun/AutoPlay enabled, then to be absolutely safe, then you need to press shift down on every CD-DA you load. To avoid this, then i simply disable AutoRun/autoPlay(but not the usefull Auto Insert Notification). If you would like to disable AutoRun/AutoPlay also, then copy/paste the following text into a file ending with a .reg extension and then double-click it, select "OK" and reboot.


(The first reg key makes sure that you have 'Auto Insert Notification' enabled, by enabling it if it was previously disabled and then the next reg key disables AutoRun/AutoPlay for CD/DVD drives)

To revert back to enabling AutoRun & AutoPlay again(if you ever change your mind), then copy/paste, save and run the following text and reboot afterwards.


If you can see that a disc will take many ours to complete in EAC's secure mode, then secure mode will not really help you in that case and can actually make the outcome even worse because of the repeated back seeking process, which easilly can result in extra sync errors occuring if the disc is scratched and so in this situation, then i would recommend that you rip in burst mode and then afterwards listen to the outcome. If there is clicks and pops in the ripped audio, then run David's DeGlitch.exe tool on the audio file(s). If you are not comfortable with running console apps through the Windows command prompt, then you can use Speek's DeGlitch frontend together with DeGlitch.exe instead : http://members.home.nl/w.speek/deglitch.htm

This is a known problem with the way that EAC is coded. This rather annoying behaviour is because that Andre hasen't used two seperate threads to seperate the ripping routine and the GUI, and so if you select to quit the ripping process on a bad disc, then there can go many minuttes before that actually happens, because EAC only notices that you want to quit when the drive returns the control back to the app itself.

In EAC, then press ALT+F2 and then under the '[UserOutputNames]' section, then change 'TrackDir_Flac' and 'TrackDir_MP3' to the following :

TrackDir_Flac : @OutRoot@\FLAC\$genre$\$cdartist$\$album$

TrackDir_MP3 : @OutRoot@\MP3\$genre$\$cdartist$\$album$

No, but that said, then i can't see why anyone wouldn't make use of those improvements, when the change that needs to be done, is simply a matter of just dropping the new versions of 'flac.exe' and 'metaflac.exe' into your 'C:\Program Files\REACT2\tools' folder.

Sorry, i don't personally use cover-art myself, so i can't help you with this, unfortunetly.

Sorry, i don't personally use 'Media Monkey', so i can't help you with that either, but i know that it's a common problem with many apps that they have problems with showing the correct average bitrate on VBR encoded MP3's.