okay, so now i've got EAC and Lame working properly to rip my cd's. yippee!

just wondering what the consensus is on these EAC/Lame issues:

1) is it necessary to listen back to my newly encoded mp3's to be sure there are no glitches/pops etc. or can i put my trust in the program when it reports "no errors?

2) isn't it possible to rip "compressed wav files? if so, how do i do this? is there a specific command i shoud use? i thought i read about this somewhere but now can't seem to find it.

3) is there any audio degradation by using EAC/Lame's "normalize" function? I've been reluctant to use it, as I figure the more processing the audio has to go through, the greater the chance the songs won't sound quite as good. i'm aiming to keep the quality as high as possible.

thanks, this is a very informative forum!! glad i found it. lots of interesting threads.

If you have set up EAC in secure mode, and it says there are no errors, then there won't be any errors.

I strongly recommend also using the AccurateRip database, that will also tell you if other people got exactly the same results when ripping the same CD (it is extrodinarily unlikely that someone else with the same CD would get EXACTLY the same errors).
http://www.accuraterip.com/

WAV is an uncompressed format, there are some compression formats called LOSSLESS which, unlike lossy formats such as MP3, enable perfect (mathematically identical) reconstruction of the original WAV file. One popular lossless format is FLAC:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/

I have about 500 GB of FLAC files on my computer, the average bitrate is 865 Kbps, which means the files are about 40% smaller than ripping to WAV, but the FLAC files can be converted back into the exact CD data, whereas MP3s work by throwing away a lot of the original data.

I wouldn't use the normalise function. It is best to use MP3gain after if you want to make the loudness of your files the same:
http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

Put another way, FLAC is like WinZip designed especially for WAV files. The WAV that goes into FLAC is exactly identical to the the WAV that comes out of a FLAC. Hence, think of FLAC as a type of compressed WAV files. You can configure EAC to convert your ripped tracks directly into FLAC and MP3 at the same time. In order to achieve that, you have to use a tool like REACT.

I wish this were true. Unfortunately, it isn't. There are countless discussions covering this very subject.

If you're only concerned about audible errors, based on my experience, you can trust EAC when it says no errors.

Right - Several environmental influences affect accuracy.
EAC has to "trust" receiving information responses coming from devices (CDROM drive), external software and databases (AccurateRip).
A wrong setup of EAC can also cause hidden errors.

Even if AccurateRip says it ripped fine?

Secure mode has nothing to do with accurate rip, you should say "If you have set up EAC in secure mode PLUS ACCURATE RIP, and it says there are no errors, then there won't be any errors

It depends on the drive and the disc being ripped.


While it is possible for AccurateRip to give false positives resulting from discs with a manufacturing defect, buggy drives, buggy ripping software, or any combination of the three (these have indeed happened and have been reported), AccurateRip is far more trustworthy than a set of matching CRCs, especially if they were generated using the same drive and the same ripping configuration.


Well, no. In addition to what I said, there is no reason that EAC needs to be set up in secure mode. A single pass in burst mode can be adequate. In the case of dBpoweramp, this so happens to be exactly what is done.