I'm using EAC with lame "lame3.90.2-ICL" ("lame-3.93.1" until today). I have downloaded Chris Myden's profile for MP3 ("MP3byMyden[Adapter1].CFG" in my case) to use lame with --alt-preset standard

My question is concerning the bitrate you set in EAC? I have read that --alt-preset standard overrides "Compression options->External Compression->Bit rate", but this is not entirely true in my case. The default setting from the Chris Myden profile is 128kBit/s for this setting. When I use this, the file is encoded just fine in VBR, but when I use Encspot 2.0 Basic it says e.x. bitrate 240kBit/s for a particular file. This is ok, but EncSpot can also show some extra Lame info, and under ABR Bitrate it says 128kBit/s. For an album, the first one is, as it should be, different for each file, but the last is the same.
To see if this was because of the setting in EAC, I changed it to 192kBit/s and encoded the file once more. This proved my suspicion because Enc Spot reported ABR Bitrate to be 192kBit/s.

Can anyone explain this to me?
Does it make a difference?

The bitrate set in EAC can also be read from the log file:

[log]
Used drive : HITACHI CDR-8335 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure with C2, accurate stream, NO disable cache
Read offset correction : 0
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No

Used output format : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\lame.exe (LAME MP3 Encoder)
192 kBit/s
Additional command line options : --alt-preset standard

Other options :
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Installed external ASPI interface
[/log]

Modifications I have done to the Chris Myden MP3 profile:
*Filenaming
*unchecked "Drive caches audio data" (My drive has no cache)
*another CDDB
*no playlist creation
*checked "Drive is capable of retrieving C2 error informations" but I have not chencked "Use C2 error information for error correction"

I guess none of these affects my question...

Sorry for the long post

use lame as a User Defined encoder and check if this still happens.

When I change only that setting lame does not start encoding.
I have set the path right, but I still have to pick a bitrate in EAC (v0.9b4).

[log]
Used drive : HITACHI CDR-8335 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, NO disable cache
Read offset correction : 0
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No

Used output format : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\lame.exe (User Defined Encoder)
192 kBit/s
Additional command line options : --alt-preset standard

Other options :
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Installed external ASPI interface
[/log]

Select user defined encoder. Enter the following in the additional command line options:
%l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s %d
Select low quality for 128 ABR, select high quality for APS. Picking the bitrate in the drop down box should not affect the encodes.

Does this work?

That's fine, but instead of
use
--alt-preset standard %s %d

[EDIT]
You might find this thread interesting:
Does EAC add aguments to --alt-preset standard
[/EDIT]

Thanks, I'll try this tomorrow. It's about bedtime here in Norway now...

After reading the thread tigre linked I got the answer. Thanks tigre!

The short answer to my question is this:

You have to choices:
1)'Parameter passing scheme' in EAC = 'User Defined Encoder'
2)'Parameter passing scheme' in EAC = 'LAME MP3 Encoder'

This produces identical files, but 2) sets the 'ABR Bitrate' in the lame header equal to the bitrate selected in EAC. When using 1) this field says 'unknown' in EncSpot.

Please read this thread. It will answer all your questions.

P.S: Sorry, looks like Tigre already pointed out the same link to you.

Thanks anyway, and especially for the great job you did there