Here's an odd one: for whatever reason, my previous install of EAC setup with FLAC compression would properly tag CDs that had various artists, yet my current install will not. For instance, I have a standard %A - %T for my file names. Previously, with various artist dics, EAC would rip with the file name proper, and FLAC would tag it correctly (example: with the Battlefield Vietnam soundtrack, Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love would rip to filename "Jefferson Airplane - Somebody to Love.flac" and the tags would be proper; Title: Somebody to Love; Artist: Jefferson Airplane). However, with my current setup, while EAC will rip the file name correctly, FLAC will not tag itself in the manner I wish. The result I'm currently getting has the artist and song title in the Artist tag, but nothing in the Title tag.

I'm sure it's just a setup issue, but I for the life of me can not figure out how to get it back to the way it was. Any help?

Even after a few days of messing around with settings and searching forums, I seem to have somewhat figured it out minutes after posting this thread. Oy.

Anyways, from what I can tell there is little difference in the set up - however, it seems EAC and/or FLAC has a special thing to determine filenames under certain conditions.

What I've been trying to rip has been the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, which has been giving me tagging issues. On a whim, I recalled most of my CDs with various artists had, under their respective freedb info, their artist and song names divided by a "/", and not a "-". For whatever reason, EAC take the / and changes it to a - in the filename, and the FLAC encoder translates that / as a cue for the difference between the artist and track titles in its tagging scheme. Odd, as this causes no problems with artists that have / (such as AC/DC) or track titles that have / (such as Megadeth's "Last Rites / Loved to Deth"): these all register as I wish them to in the filenames and tagging schemes.

I assume, now, that the artist-title separation by / only registers during encode for various artists CDs. I wonder, what would be the result if the song also has a / in it? Now I'm curious.

In order to help us in helping you, please provide the command line options you use with flac.

EAC will only interpret a slash as the separator between the track artist and track title if the Various Artists check box is selected.

It sounds like you are using this freedb entry.

Firstly, some idiot has set the Album Artist as "-". Check the "Various Artists" checkbox in EAC manually.

You should also edit all track titles, changing "<title> - <artist>" to "<artist> / <title>" (ensure there is a space either side of the slash).

This should all then work as intended.

Unfortunately, the quality of some freedb submissions is very poor.

OK, I guess you must have check the VA checkbox yourself.

The reason for this is EAC is expecting the tracks in the format "<artist> / <title>". As no slash is found the whole value gets used as the artist name, with nothing as the title.

(Sorry, initial answer was a bit gung-ho after reading your second post.)

There is a tool in EAC to transform some of the more common db tagging schemes for VA into the proper form for eac. Somewhere under database.