Hi! I can't find an option to rip and compress the audio at the same time. I think it was possible with older versions? any help?

EAC Options->Tools->"On extraction, start external compressors queued in the background" (set the number of threads to 1 unless you have a multiprocessor system).

Note that on some people's systems this causes EAC to spontaneously flash in the taskbar and/or pop up to the foreground (even unminimizing itself to do so). It still rips and encodes fine, it just means you can't use your computer while doing so (since EAC will keep popping up...).

I found a workaround for the EAC popping up problem, at least on Windows XP. When EAC pops up and won't let you switch to another app, click once on the flashing taskbar button and then click on another app on the taskbar that you want to use. Not sure if this will work for everyone but play around with this and it should work.

Thanks for replies, but I already tried that. It works for external lame.exe, but i wondered about lame.dll

This workaround works for me. I'm on XP too. Thanks!

@Mambrax

There is actually a version of lameenc.dll compiled by Dibrom in which the -q switched are linked to the --alt presents in some manner. Regardless, I prefer to use the lame.exe because ripping slows down a lot otherwise as the cdrom-drive has to wait for the ecoder most time. To me, it's much more comfortable to have a encoding queue, so that I can rip a dozen CD's in little time and then let EAC do encoding without need for my attention. The only circumstance where the lameenc-way realy makes sense is, if you are limited on hard disk-space (why not buy a new disc? ), or if your cdrom isn't able to do exact extraction on higher speeds, so that you need to slow down extraction anyway.

Northpack

Thanks for your replies guys!

Northpack:
I don't think i'm limited on hard disk space (60 Gb free), but yesterday I tried to encode mp3 VBR With nero, and the speed was really astonishing (correct word ? don't forget i'm french ) : 50x, so i'm wondering if the little difference in quality is worth the half-an hour of encoding with lame on my Athlon 1333...

yeah its worth it, because the quality you'll get will be superior to every other encoder. And think about how often you listen to file and then do a comparison to the encoding time