I had to start a new thread about my exprience with REACT because everything has changed in the course of a couple of hours. I ripped my first album using REACT tonight thanks to the help Tycho gave me in my last thread. Since that thread was primarily about how challenging it's been getting started I no longer find it a fitting place to continue posting.

I reorganized all my thoughts, laid out my configuration and I'm relatively sure I've got a basic grasp on how REACT works. I do have a few more questions though so here we go:

1. Why does REACT write .flac to Image and then split tracks? What setting do I change if I just want the image (split tracks later)
2. What do would one use to split a .flac image into tracks?
3. Why did MP3 gain run. I like to watch the compressor screens and after LAME was done metamp (I think) ran MP3Gain
4. Why does Opt_LameMP3 specify 'noreplaygain' if you're given the choice to turn it on or off in the [User Settings]
5. What is the --nohist switch in Opt_LameMP3?
6. Configuration file looks like fun to toy in. Now I understand how everyone can get carried away. Is there a list of all of the $ $ and @ @ commands (or placeholders, what are they called?) and what they do?
7. Album Art is named 'Folder'. I should change the name each time shouldn't I? Though didn't I read that REACT would assign the name of album to the picture? Wait ... for the .flac Image the album art was properly named. In the folder with the .flac tracks and the folder with the .mp3 tracks the album art is named folder? How do I fix this?
8. What are:
TrackName_SA_acdir=$n - $~t
TrackName_VA_acdir=$n - $~t [$~a]
What do they do that
TrackName_SA=$track$ - $title$
TrackName_VA=$track$ - $title$ [$artist$]
don't do?

9. What is a good reference for the Genre music is supposed to be in?

I have an mp3 copied using LAME -v0 --vbr-new where the bitrate is 127kbps. Does that sound right? In the past on VBR rips I noticed that the bitrate would occassionaly change throughout the course of the song. That doesn't seem to be happening as I'm watching. At the point I remember seeing that I was playing my music in Foobar. Now I'm using Media Monkey. Maybe it's them.

Thank you Tycho for the information you supplied in my other thread. I really appreciate it. I've been toying with the idea of archiving my music collection since I found HA in Google in 2003. I'm finally going to do it AND be able to do it on my schedule (which has only afforded me the opportunity to toy with this idea for 4 years ) And it's thanks to REACT!

It's kind of sad actually. I spent a good long time learning how to configure EAC and now I don't need to. Thanks for working with the long posts. I'll probably have more questions when I get into the CFG files. Although, I'll be honest, I don't think I need much more than what REACT gives right out of the box.Maybe if EAC could also fetch lyrics from freedb and REACT could attach them? I use Evil Lyrics for myself but I like the idea of streaming my files down to a (soon to be purchased) UPnP media device and having karaoke night in my living room!!!

Po

Hi Po Nice to hear that you have gotten yourself into using Tycho's absolutely fantastic EAC Plugin, REACT

Because you have configured it wrong then Set "ImageExt=" to "flac" and set the following lines like this :

[UserTrackFormats]
Flac=0
Wavpack=0
LameMP3=1
NeroAac=0
iTunesAac=0
OggEnc2=0

The "ImageExt=" variable decides which format you want your lossless image stored in. If you only want lossless track files and not a lossless image or only lossy track files, then set "ImageExt=" to "wav", which then will rip to a WAV image and then split the image up as track files and then delete the WAV image afterwards. Then the [UserTrackFormats] variables defines which formats you want to have your track files encoded to(not about the images). So you set the "ImageExt=flac" and set "LameMP3=1" and the other's to "0".

I would recommend foobar2000, but i don't see why anyone would ever need to do this ? foobar2000 can play the images and also transcode them to lossy track files and Burrrn can write the images with embedded cuesheets to disc, by just droping the image file into the Burrrn window and selecting "Burrrn".

Because you have "ReplayGain=1" and/or "ApplyAlbumGain=1" enabled. metamp3.exe is a great command-line tool which Tycho has made, which incorporates the sources of mp3gain.exe, id3lib and encspotconsole. If you have "ReplayGain=1" enabled, then your images and track files will be ReplayGain scanned and the gain/peak values is added as tags to the formats. If you have "ApplyAlbumGain=1" enabled, then the lossy track files will be applied the calculated ReplayGain gain change directly to the stream, so that the files will play as ReplayGain'ed in all players, even though they don't support reading ReplayGain tags and adjusting the loudness accordingly. Also if "ApplyAlbumGain=1" is enabled, then the files will be applied the gain according to this variable : "AdjustAlbumGain_dB=+3.0". If that variable is set to "0", then the files will be changed directly to have an average loudness of 89dB. If then you keep the "AdjustAlbumGain_dB=" variable to the default value of "+3.0", then the files will be changed directly to have an average loudness of 89+3dB = 92dB. Also remember that this only effects the lossy files, as applying ReplayGain directly to lossless files dosen't make sence, as then the files wouldn't be lossless anymore.

Because lame.exe also by default itself calculates the ReplayGain values and stores them in it's LAME INFO Tag. This takes a little extra processing time during the encoding process and as nearly no players supports reading and using this ReplayGain info from the LAME INFO Tag, then many people decides to switch this default ReplayGain calculation of lame.exe off, to get a little faster encoding. Also if adding/applying ReplayGain to the files after lame.exe has encoded the files, then the extra ReplayGain processing time of lame.exe is pretty useless anyway and hence, that's why many people disables lame.exe's ReplayGain processing with the "--noreplaygain" switch.

It disables the bitrate histogram that's shown by default. Disabling this feature will reduce encoding time by a very small fraction, but using "-S" would be better in this regard, as this disables all output. Also, some people use that switch for having a cleaner console/log output, which isn't cluttered up by the big space that the bitrate histograms takes up. I have timed the encoding speed differences once, and found the difference to be about 1 milisecond per track encoded, so at the time when i made MP3's, then i didn't used "--nohist" or "-S", but i did use "--noreplaygain", as that saved about 30 seconds per album i.e. about 3 seconds per track and as i did use ReplayGain in the tags, so that the LAME INFO Tag ReplayGain data would be useless to me anyway(i only use foobar2000 for playback, which dosen't support ReplayGain through the LAME INFO Tag).

This is a good reference : http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=REACT

I don't use album art personally, but i know that the default name for album art for many apps is a file named "folder.jpg" in the directory of the music files. If you still want to change it, then change this in the REACT-image.cfg :

Find this line :

Then go a few lines down and change this line :

To instead :


The first set of names are defining the naming-scheme used when pressing F10 in EAC to rip, which means that you rip to an image which is later splitted up to track files and the CFG file which handles this mode, is the "REACT-image.cfg" file. The second set of names, defines the naming-scheme used when pressing F4 to rip in EAC, which means that you rip to track files and the CFG file which handles this mode is the "REACT-track.cfg". SA means "Single Artist" and VA means "Various Artists". The naming schemes are setup per default to name SA albums as "01 - Title.mp3" and VA albums as "01 - Title [Artist]".

Sorry, i'm not a perfectionist when tagging is concerned and just use the Genre and other info which freedb reports.

If you used "-v0", then that's wrong, as it's "-V0", and then the default lame.exe encoding mode is used instead which is 128KB CBR

Martin,

Thanks a lot for getting back to me. Sorry I was slow to post my appreciation. I took the weekend off. Your answers to my questions helped my ammend my configuration to near perfect. Thank you very much I came up with a few other questions if you're up to the task



Thanks. After giving it some thought I decided that an image archive was more than enough for my .flac version. The additional split to tracks would've been too much.


I'm interested in this. When I doubleclick the image in Explorer it loads the entire album (of course) into Media Monkey. Is there a way to make the image and put in track markers of some sort just in case I want to play my .flac version on a shuffle for example?

That I did. Strangely, there was a whole section of the INI that was duplicated. An erratic Copy & Paste I suppose. Problem solved.


This was huge. Thank you. I've now gone into the CFG file 2x and both times I have achieved an excellent level of customization. I'm so happy with REACT that I added it to my ID3 comment. As REACT,EAC,LAME,FLAC all get better I'll know which files I have to go back to and copy again.

REACT,EAC,LAME,FLAC ---Power Team

Is there anything I haven't thought of? There's no real reason to use FLAC -8, right? I've done a comparrison - the storage gain is negligble. I'm using -5. Seems I read somewhere that this was a great setting. I've purchased the storage to accommodate V0 in my LAME files. I'm tagging, and embedding pictures. I've decided to pass on Replay Gain ( I figured if this was a mistake I'd be flamed and I wasn't) so I guess I'm done, save the few questions above.

Any suggestions for how to label singles? I don't really want a folder for the album and artist for singles because I may not have anything else from that person. One too many clicks to get to the song in Explorer (old habit, I'll get better - but for now I think about my music in an Explorer window)?

Oh yeah, one more thought - how do I configure REACT to disable CD autoplay?

Thanks again,

Po

You are very welcome, mate Your questions are answered further down

Yes, there is -8 should be used for people wanting the absolute best compression ratio out of the FLAC format with no regards to encoding time. One of the many great things about the FLAC format is that it uses assymetrical encoding/decoding. This means that FLAC will decode just as fast with -8 encoded files as with -0 encoded ones(there are small differences though, but they are small enough to be considered completely neglible). This means that the different compression modes will effect only compression ratio and encoding time accordingly. The default compression mode(-5) has been choosen since it gives a very good compression ratio compared to the needed encoding time(i.e. effeciency), but for people wanting the absolutely best compression ratio possible without regard to encoding time, then they have the possibility of using -8 instead, since that will give a better compression ratio with no decoding penalty, and only cost additional encoding time. I personally use the default level, since to me then the compression ratio gained with -8 is to small to justify the much larger encoding time(about 0.3% better compression for about 4.2 times longer encoding time), but that's just me, and many people feel otherwise I rip to images, so the encoding only starts in EAC after the ripping has completed, but for people ripping to track files, then often the ripping time will be slower than using FLAC -8 and hence, in that situation, then using anything other than -8 would be pointless

Hmm, i don't have any singles myself as i only rip full albums, but if i did have some singles, then i would store them all in a "Singles" folder in my main "Music" folder, but i'm not sure how i would name the track files though, and i would first have to do some serious re-reading on some of the many naming-scheme threads posted previously on this board for inspiration

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.


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.


CU, Martin.