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- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
-
- Many thanks to Mike Fitzhugh for collecting questions and answers from
- mailing list and forum!
-
- 1. General Questions
- 2. Extraction Questions
- 3. Compression Questions
- 4. Offset Questions
- 5. Write Questions
- 6. WAV Editor Questions
- 7. Utilities Questions
-
-
- 1. General Questions
-
- Q:What is EAC?
- A:EAC is "Exact Audio Copy". It will help you to copy (extract) audio
- tracks, or even parts of them, to the harddisk. In newer versions it
- also includes some audio CD writing routines and a small audio editor.
-
- Q:Why should I use EAC, instead of AudioGrabber, WinDAC, etc.
- A:EAC features some special read modes, known as "Secure Modes". Using
- these secure modes, every sector read will be doublechecked and reread
- or corrected if necessary. On many drives the extraction is not error
- free, thus these routines will make sure the track is read correctly.
-
- Q:Audio extraction is purely digital, how could unremarked errors occur?
- A:The data transmission itself is purely digital and also the data stored
- on the CD. But the Red Book standard (standard for audio CDs) is very
- weak and only little error correction will be performed in the drive.
- So on bad CD-ROM drives it is possible that you receive erroneous
- results.
-
- Q:I want to install a newer version of EAC, do I have to uninstall the
- previous install first?
- A:Unless otherwise indicated on a new release, for updates just extract
- the new exe file in your EAC dir. (I.e. overwrite the old exe) and you
- will retain the old settings. If you want to delete the old options
- nevertheless, just delete the key
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AWSoftware\EAC .
-
- Q:Where is the official homepage for EAC? Where can I download new
- versions?
- A:It is at http://www.ExactAudioCopy.de/ There you will find a download
- page and a forum for persons who dislike the mailing list, but is not
- as good supported as the mailing list.
-
- Q:I downloaded the file EAC.ZIP from your homepage. Whenever I
- doubleclick on the file a text editor opens and shows garbage. How can
- I start EAC?
- A:A ZIP file contains compressed files. This is easier for the
- transmission of several files. For decompression you need an UnZIP
- program like WinZIP.
-
- Q:I only own a very bad soundcard, or no soundcard at all... Does this
- matters?
- A:No, your soundcard has nothing to do with ripping or burning cds. If
- you use digital extraction (which EAC does), you are not using the
- soundcard to create the wav, it's read directly from the cd.
-
- Q:What is meant by "on-the-fly" ?
- A:This means that one action is performed while (or intermixed with)
- another action. So e.g. if you extract and compress at once (and not
- extract first and compress afterwards), you could call it on-the-fly
- compression.
-
- Q:What are gaps (pre-track gaps)?
- A:When playing an audio CD in a standalone player, often the time display
- will show up negative values before actually starting a track. This gap
- is usually used for seperate two different tracks. If jumping to a
- specific track, it will start with the actual music, only when running
- into a track the gap occurs.
-
- Q:Is it possible to extract audio digitally from a (Video) DVD?
- A:Yes, but not using EAC and though it's more manual work. The only
- hardware you will need is a DVD drive and special software for removing
- the CSS (on commercial DVDs) and demultiplex the VOB files into the
- audio streams (usually compressed in AC3 or DTS). Then you need a
- programm to decompress these compressed files (a AC3 decompressor or a
- DTS decompressor).
- "Real" Audio DVDs are planned, but are not released yet, as the copy
- protection scheme will be improved first.
-
- Q:Do you plan to release a Linux or MAC version of EAC?
- A:Sorry, no Linux nor MAC version is planned at all. But it is reported
- that EAC runs in an emulation layer (WINE for Linux and Virtual PC Win
- 98 for MAC), so if you own this software have a try.
-
- Q:I use Windows NT/2000, but EAC seems to have problems to store the
- options or get any SCSI response.
- A:Make sure you start EAC from an admin account, as some functions need a
- to access low level system routines, which are not accessable from user
- accounts. If you use the "Native SCSI Interface", try the "ASPI
- Interface" instead, perhaps it will already help.
-
- Q:When trying to install EAC in Windows NT or Windows 2000, I get the
- following error message: "The DLL WNASPI32.DLL could not be found in
- the specified path" then a list of paths. I searched my hard drives and
- the named DLL does not exist on my machine. I found the DLL on the web
- and installed it into windows\system32\. Then I tried to re-install EAC
- and got the following error message: "The ASPI interface could not be
- initialized correctly! (Error E4h) (ASPI for Windows failed init)".
- What now?
- A:EAC needs a driver called "ASPI", it is an SCSI driver, but works also
- with IDE CD-ROM drives (not a single file, but a complete package, so
- installing just the DLL won't help). It is included in Win95/98, but
- not in Windows NT/2000. The newer versions of EAC should not absolute
- need ASPI anymore, but ASPI would be nevertheless the most stable. ASPI
- is available from different manufacturers (of SCSI interface cards),
- but it seems that the only working one with EAC is coming from Adaptec.
- First of all you should upgrade to a newer version of EAC, as ASPI is
- not absolutely necessary any more.
-
- Q:What is the difference between ASPI, ASAPI and Native drivers?
- A:EAC communicates directly with the CD-ROM drives. For this EAC make use
- of several interfaces which do the low level work. You can choose the
- interface by your own in the EAC options (depending which interfaces
- are installed in your computer).
- ASPI is from Adaptec, it comes preinstalled in Win95/98. In all other
- Windows it needs to be installed, but in these OS the installer tests
- if any Adaptec hardware is in your computer. Nevertheless you can try
- to install it, download here.
- VOB produced a replacement called ASAPI. It is freely available from
- here.
- In WinNT/2000/XP EAC is able to use a native interface in that OS. This
- is still buggy and only recommended when you don't want to install 3rd
- party software. Nevertheless, this will only work if you are logged in
- with admin rights. If you encounter problems, it is strongly
- recommended to download ASAPI and to change the interface to that.
-
- 2. Extraction Questions
-
- Q:In the column "Copy Protection" is always "Yes" denoted. What does it
- mean, will it not be possible to extract the tracks?
- A:It is possible also to extract copy protected tracks, as the copy
- protection is only a flag on the CD, and all CD-ROM drives will ignore
- it on reading. Some month ago there are now also real copy protections
- for audio CDs, but this information is not given in the table. If there
- is such a CD, it will show garbage, not extract tracks or probably
- insert errors in the extraction.
-
- Q:I extracted all tracks of an audio CD and tried to write them back to
- CD, but the writing application tells me that the CD is not big enough,
- even when using 700 MB CD-Rs. When I look on the harddisk I see that
- the files are more than 800 MB in size. Why?
- A:700 MB is the storage space for data CDs. Data has a third layer of
- error correction which need more storage space. So sector size is 2048
- bytes for data and 2352 bytes for audio. There are around 360000
- sectors on a 700 MB CD-R, that is 737280000 bytes = 703 MB for data
- sectors. On audio CDs this is 846720000 bytes = 807 MB. This is why the
- files are too big to write them as data files, but it should be
- possible to write them as audio CD instead.
-
- Q:I get a message stating that it could not detect my CD-ROM read
- settings or that it can't find a matching read mode. What can I do?
- A:Sometimes EAC will autodetect a wrong read command. Try to manually
- select a read command. In the Drive Options, go to Read Commands page
- and select the Read Command MMC1 manually (or any other that works).
- Test it with burst mode. If you tested all of them, but none of them
- worked, try to extract with another program like WinDAC or CDEx. If
- both also fails, make sure that your drive is capable of extracting
- digital audio at all.
-
- Q:When I extract, the extraction proceed very fast, but when I listen to
- the resulting files, they are all silent. What did I do wrong?
- A:Sometimes EAC will autodetect a wrong read command. In this case it is
- possible that only silence is returned. Try to manually select a read
- command. In the Drive Options, go to Read Commands page and select the
- Read Command MMC1 manually (or any other that works). Test it with
- burst mode. If you tested all of them, but none of them worked, try to
- extract with another program like WinDAC or CDEx. If both also fails,
- make sure that your drive is capable of extracting digital audio at
- all.
-
- Q:When I try to start EAC, I immedately get an Access Violation. Why does
- this happen?
- A:Usually this error occurs when not using the ASPI interface of Adaptec.
- So try at first to install it on your computer. When you use Windows
- NT/2000, the native SCSI interface could also make some problems, so
- also install the Adaptec interface in that case.
- Second, it has also happened that an illegal audio codec let EAC crash
- on enumerating all audio codecs. In that case try to disable (not
- deinstall) each codec and try again, you could enable the codecs then
- again piece for piece to find out which one causes the problem.
-
- Q:Since I installed a new CD-ROM drive, EAC does not work at all or not
- correct anymore. What can I do to make it work again?
- A:In this case it is always a good idea to delete the EAC entry in the
- registry. So start regedit.exe and delete the key at
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AWSoftware\EAC
-
- Q:What is "Paranoid Mode" and why is it not recommended?
- A:This mode is the oldest read mode in EAC, it exists from version 0.1b
- on. It will read every sector twice, but in very small blocks. This
- will slow down extraction, no drive features are used. If the drive
- does caching the option below should be activated, but this could
- create problems on some drives. This mode is stressing the drive very
- much and should not be used, if one of the other secure modes works ok.
- The "disable CD-ROM drive cache" will disable the drive cache when
- using Paranoid mode, by resetting the drive after a read command. On
- some drives this will take several seconds and should not be used in
- that case.
-
- Q:Why should I use Test & Copy? How to read the CRC codes?
- A:If you don't like to use the secure modes, and the burst mode does not
- have error correction, the best possibility to check if an error
- occured is to copy and test the track. For each read and each track,
- the appropriate CRC column is filled with the actual CRC code. One CRC
- code is unique for a set of data. So by comparing the CRC values you
- could be quite sure that both reads resulted in the same file.
-
- Q:What is C2?
- A:On all CD-ROM media are at least two levels of error correction, called
- C1 and C2. If both fail, the output is probably not correct anymore.
- Most drives are not able to report if audio reads failed or not, so
- each block had to be read twice and be compared to make sure that
- everything is fine. But some newer drives are able to report if C1/C2
- failed on specific samples on a read, making it possible to read only
- once and see if a read error occured. But there is still a problem, as
- some drives do not report these errors correctly, so you should test it
- thoroughly before trusting the results.
-
- Q:Then how does it come that a CD that plays on my standalone CD player
- without any pop or any other error, makes that difficulties on
- extraction?
- A:Standalone CD players perform oversampling and some more error
- correction. Further, if the error is too big to be corrected, it will
- perform "error hiding". That means that the player will hide the error
- in a way that it is not audible to the common listener. These
- additional techniques are not implemented in the CD-ROM drives, thus
- the uncorrected data is given back.
-
- Q:I had ripped other records, they extracted fine. But there was one CD,
- where the ripping was desperately slow and the peak level of what I got
- was always 0%. Sometimes I got "Sync Errors". I tried several times
- without success. What can I do then?
- A:Have a look on the CD if it is dirty. Try to clean it (from the inner
- ring to the outer bound), perhaps it works better then. If not, try to
- lower speed or even to extract in burst mode, sometimes this will give
- better results (but no error reporting though).
-
- Q:When using burst mode, EAC also shows up timing problems, are these
- really errors or what?
- A:No, burst mode has no error detection nor error correction. If burst
- mode brings up a timing problem, the read command needed a lot of time,
- which could have several reasons, like loosing sync or trying to fix an
- read error. Of course this is a really poor "error detection" and
- should not be taken as serious indication.
-
- Q:I didn't configure EAC at the first time and EAC extracted the audio
- really fast, somewhere between 8x and 14x. This seems too fast for an
- exact extraction?
- A:In default configuration EAC uses the burst mode. I recommend to use
- the appropriate secure mode for your drive. To know what the
- appropriate read mode is, there is an automatic feature test in the
- drive options, just below the read mode switches.
-
- Q:I only get many pops and clicks when extracting a very badly scratched
- CD in secure mode, what can I do?
- A:It could possible to revive them by copying them in burst mode to hard
- disk. The high readout speed keeps the optical system of the drive from
- following the scratches instead of the audio track. After copying check
- the copies out, perhaps there were still errors left.
-
- Q:I sometimes get a sync error when I extract a track. The thing is it's
- not always with the same disc that I'm burning from BUT it is always in
- the same spot. Is there an explanation for this?
- A:Some Toshiba drives have a firmware bug returning wrong data on special
- positions of every CD. As the error really occured, you should listen
- to these suspicious position allways and decide if the error is audible
- or not.
-
- Q:What does the Track Quality really mean? A few times I get 99.7% or
- 97.5%. But there are no suspicious position reported.
- A:When you get 99.7% and so on, that means that a bad sector was found,
- but the secure mode has corrected it - from 16 times of grabbing the
- sector, there were 8 or more identical results. So it only indicates
- read problems. It is the ratio between the number of minimum reads
- needed to perform the extraction and the number of reads that were
- actually performed. 100% will only occur when the CD was extracted
- without any rereads on errors. ONLY when there are suspicious positions
- reported, there are really uncorrectable read errors in the resulting
- audio file.
-
- Q:I often get files with a Peak Level below 90%. What is this Peak Level
- for?
- A:The Peak Level of a song the maximum volume within the song. So 100%
- will have the maximum volume possible in a file. A file with Peak Level
- 50% will have only at its loudest point half of the maximum possible
- volume. So this is no quality information, it is useful for creating a
- CD mixed of tracks from different CDs and for normalizing.
-
- Q:I would like to let EAC automatically create directories named from
- artist or album name. Is this possible somehow?
- A:You can set this in the filename option. If you use the '\' character,
- EAC will create all these subdirectories. For example %a\%n - %t
- But you may not specify an absolute path like c:\%a\%n nor \%a\%t
- For more information read the tooltip of this option.
-
- Q:EAC grabs only at speed 4x in secure mode, surely. Is it normal?
- A:That is because in secure mode EAC reads every sector at least twice.
- This is normal. Try setting the speed to maximum, for some Teac drives
- a firmware update will improve speed settings.
-
- Q:On extraction EAC reports "Can't Open Selected Codec". Why?
- A:Go To Compression Options, and check if all compression options are
- correct. If you don't want to compress your files, make sure that there
- is "Internal Wav Routines" selected.
-
- Q:When doing my very first CD rip, I got quite different size files. EAC
- produced a 867 KB Wav file, while Cdex produced a 21,806 KB Wav file on
- my hard drive. These two Wav files both played back fine using Winamp.
- So I have no idea as to why the two file sizes are so different?
- A:If both files played the complete track, it looks like you produced a
- compressed WAV with EAC. In EAC, enter F11 and make sure the Waveform
- tab shows "Internal WAV routines" for Wave format. This will produce a
- WAV file that is about 176kB for every second of music.
-
- Q:When I extract tracks with EAC and write them to a CD-R with a burn
- program, I get 2 second gaps between each track. Why does EAC insert
- them?
- A:EAC does not insert the gaps. These gaps are inserted by the writing
- program. There are two possibilities how these gaps could occur. Once
- if you write in TAO (Track At Once), there have to be a gap between
- tracks, so use DAO (Disc At Once) instead. Second, if you already use
- DAO, you should examine that program options, somewhere will be a flag
- where the standard 2 second gap could be deactivated.
-
- Q:If EAC encounters problems with an extraction, it slows down, which is
- fine. The problem is, it continues to read slowly on subsequent tracks,
- even if those tracks would not otherwise cause problems. I have
- verified this by stopping the process and restarting on another track
- that was extracting slowly; after restarting, it extracts full speed
- with no problems. What can I do?
- A:If you have selected "Allow Speed Reduction" and the speed box also
- shows different possible speeds, then the problem lies within the
- reader. It could help to use the cool down feature (let it cool down
- every 15-30 min for several minutes, perhaps this already solves it).
- Otherwise don't use the flag "Allow Speed Reduction", but of course
- then it won't read anymore that accurate on bad sectors.
-
- Q:I have clicked on the "Possible Errors" after extraction, and then I
- have to "Select A Track". I do that and then I have 2 choices: Glitch
- Removal and Play. If I do any of these both, the whole track will be
- processed, I'm not sure where to find the position of the flaws.
- A:When finished extracting, EAC will tell you if there were errors in the
- extraction. If there were, when you click the "Possible Errors" button,
- it will give you a time range that the error occured in. If it doesn't
- report errors, it will not have a range, you will be able only to
- choose the whole track and not the specific positions (as there are
- none).
-
- Q:If I have some glitches in a WAV after extraction, and I didn't hit the
- glitch removal button before I got out of that menu, is there a way to
- access glitch removal after this point?
- A:On the top select Tools, then Process WAV. Select song from wherever
- it's saved. Anything can be done to this file or any uncompressed WAV
- file. When you want to removing glitches, you have to select that
- faulty range of the WAV for doing glitch removal (of course, you are
- able to select the whole waveform by double clicking it).
-
- Q:I burned a continous CD in TAO by accident... Is it possible to remove
- the standard 2 second gap automatically?
- A:Best possibility would be to extract all tracks with a read offset of
- -5000 and then load each track into the EAC WAV editor and use "Remove
- leading and trailing silence". Then you should be able again to write
- them without gaps. It would be possible to remove them also by offset
- correction and gap detection, but for that you would need and use the
- exact combined offset of the writer.
-
- Q:I read that it is possible to leave out the pre-gap of a track.
- Unfortunately, I could not find where these options could be set.
- A:In the Action menu, you could choose what to do with the gaps. For a
- new extraction, try to detect gaps, then choose "Leave Out Gaps" and
- copy the tracks. Usually the gaps are not copied to the (single) WAV
- files anymore.
-
- Q:What is the difference between Gap Detection Methods A, B, & C ?
- A:These are all different methods for retrieving the index markers (gaps,
- etc.). Some methods will work with some drives, the others won't, you
- should test all of them which works best for you. None of them is by
- used method better or worse than the other, but by used method the A is
- the fastest one and C the slowest (if it works correctly!).
-
- Q:Should I be selecting Accurate, Inaccurate, or Secure in the "Gap
- Detection Accuracy" box?
- A:Accurate Accuracy should be quite good for any CD. If there is a
- problem CD, where the gap detection hangs, try inaccurate, as it will
- go on, when no information could be gathered in a time. If you got gap
- length that are wrong only by some blocks, you could try to do gap
- detection again with secure settings.
-
- Q:When using "Copy Image And Create CUE sheet" (or just creating a CUE
- sheet), EAC says it is getting pre-gap info on Track 1, the CD is
- spinning furiously, but nothing is getting written to the HD. I've left
- it as long as 2 hours, nothing changes in the GUI, no progress bar, no
- file gets created, nothing. (But I can cancel the operation.) What's
- up?
- A:Try to select another "Gap Detection Mode" in the drive options. If the
- selected mode does not work like that one, one of the other two should
- work at least.
-
- Q:The last few audio CD's I've copied using EAC all have the track
- position wrong by about 1 second. If I go to a particular track with my
- CD player, it will start the track about 1 second INTO the audio track.
- I have been using the "Copy Image And Create CUE Sheet" option for
- copying the CD's. How can I avoid this problem in the future?
- A:One of the biggest mistakes that could be made in 0.85beta (from
- 0.9beta3 on I prevented it automatically) is to have selected "Remove
- Leading And Trailing Silence". If the image file contains silence at
- the beginning (e.g. 1 second) it will be removed and everything get
- moved by one second. So you should deactivate this option for 0.85b4.
- If this is not the problem, try a different gap detection mode and
- compare the generated CUE sheets manually.
-
- Q:When using a CUE sheet generated by EAC in CDRWin, it tells, that the
- CUE sheet is not valid. When I have a look at the CUE sheet myself, I
- see that there are sometimes dozens of indecies that all have the same
- position. What can I do?
- A:Try a different gap detection mode and if none removed that problem,
- you would have to edit these CUE sheets manually, removing all indecies
- bigger then 01 and indecies that have impossible possitions.
-
- Q:Ripping cd is saved as *.cgf and I don't know why. I have used eac
- before and it worked perfect. Now it stuck saving as *.cgf.
- A:Go to compression options and have a look if you selected "Do not write
- WAV header" and specified "cgf" below.
-
- Q:I am getting Sync and Read errors occasionally, but EAC will still
- finish ripping, though with some "suspicious" positions. What to do
- now?
- A:Clean the CD carefully and try again. If the errors don't go away,
- listen to the suspicious positions and decide whether they are audible
- or not. You could also try to rip these tracks in burst mode, sometimes
- the reader could get better results on these bad sectors.
-
- Q:If I rip a track in secure mode (Hitachi GD 2500, accurate stream, no
- cache, c2 correction) and during the rip process the correction
- indicator gets higlighted and then continues ripping. The EAC report
- indicates "No error" but when I hear the resulting wav file there is an
- error in it (a blank at the position where the correction indicator got
- highlighted)! The rest of the track is perfect of course. There is only
- this small blank.
- A:It seems that C2 is not correctly implemented in some drives. To be on
- the safe side, you should turn off the C2 error correction.
-
- Q:I have TEAC 532E-B and EAC says that the drive is capable of retreaving
- C2 error information. But EAC doesn't report all errors in that mode!
- A:It seems that C2 is not correctly implemented in some drives. To be on
- the safe side, you should turn off the C2 error correction.
-
- Q:I have an Afreey drive and during extraction EAC sometimes hangs. What
- can I do?
- A:It is still not known what causes this problem, there are Afreey users
- without any problems and some others have this problem. It is possible
- to continue the extraction by pressing the eject button on the drive.
- Try to play around a little bit with your options (DMA or deinstall
- busmaster drivers), probably it won't help, but perhaps it does.
-
- 3. Compression Questions
-
- Q:I want to compress audio tracks to MP3s, what do I need besides from
- EAC?
- A:Remember that EAC does not supply a MP3 codec; you may use the LAME,
- Gogo or the BladeEnc DLL's (or FAAC Dll for AAC compression) by copying
- them into the same directory where you copied EAC. Then you will be
- able to choose the installed DLLs in the compression option dialog box.
- Of course the quality of MP3 is based on the encoder and the bitrate
- you use. Beside the DLLs you could also specify external command line
- compressors that will be executed after an entire track was read (and
- not on-the-fly).
-
- Q:I'm trying to decode mp3 to wav's but it keeps telling it can't find
- codec. I know about the encoding dll issue, but this one has me
- stumped.
- A:For decompression of MP3s the Fraunhofer MP3 Codec needed to be
- installed. It is sufficient to use the "advanced" Codec (not the
- "professional"). The advanced codec is part of windows. On older
- windows it could be installed by updating the media player... (Should
- be updated with the other codecs). The installed codec should then be
- listed in EACs codec list.
-
- Q:What is a compressed Wav file and how does it differ in quality from a
- regular wav file or from a MP3 file?
- A:There are two groups of audio data, compressed and uncompressed data.
- The compressed group could also be splitted to lossless and lossy
- compression. Lossless compression is like having uncompressed data,
- only that the file is only around 70% of the uncompressed size
- (Comparable to compression with WinZIP). To the group of lossy
- compression also belongs MP3, it is not possible to recreate the
- original audio file 100%, there are frequencies missing, etc. Now, MP3
- is ONE lossy compression format, there are others like AAC, MP2, TAC,
- etc. The nice side on WAVs is that it could be wrapped on any
- compression for which an audio codec exists in Windows. So if you own
- the Fraunhofer Codec (or the LAME/Blade/Gogo DLL) you could produce
- MP3-WAVs. These are standard MP3 files, but having a small header
- preceeding the actual data telling the player what codec to use for
- playing/decompression. So these files could be played with any media
- player or any other sound tool. As the header does not matter on MP3
- compression, you could even rename the MP3-WAVs from .wav to .mp3
- without loosing playability by a MP3 player.
-
- Q:What is VBR?
- A:It is short for "Variable Bitrate". Some MP3 encoder support this. When
- enabled the compressor will use a bitrate that would fit the actual
- passage. If it is a very complex part it will use a quite high bitrate
- and e.g. on silence or easy parts it will use a lower bitrate. So
- usually the average bitrate will be not as high as a MP3 of same
- quality with constant bitrate.
-
- Q:I use the Fraunhofer Codec or an encoder DLL to compress to MP3, but
- the resulting File has the file extension ".wav". What is wrong?
- A:EAC will write WAVs when using codecs (EAC emulates a codec for the MP3
- DLLs). This has the advantage that it will play with any media player,
- when any version of the Fraunhofer codec is installed (even the free
- one, called "advanced"). If you want "pure" MP3 files (without the WAV
- header in front of it), just select the option "Do not write WAV
- header" and specify the appropriate file extension below (".mp3").
-
- Q:I tried to compress with the Fraunhofer MP3 codec, but I am only able
- to compress audio with only very low bitrates. How am I able to
- compress with higher bitrates?
- A:Make sure that you do not use the Fraunhofer advanced codec, as that is
- the free version, that will only allow specific compression rates. To
- compress with higher bitrates, use the professional version of the
- codec, or use any of the supported encoder DLL or any of the supported
- external command line encoders.
-
- Q:Why can't I use WMA at 160 kbits?
- A:Microsoft only allows encoding with 160 and more if a copy protection
- scheme is activated. This makes some more work, and I don't like to add
- copy protection to directly ripped songs. I heard that Microsoft
- already put aside that policy, so perhaps it will be possible in future
- versions.
-
- Q:I am using an IBM laptop, and the BladeEnc.dll, EAC says that I got a
- 100% rip, but when I play the file, it sounds like the singer is under
- water.
- A:Blade is poor at bit rates below 160, maybe 192. So user higher
- bitrates, or use a different encoder that works better with lower
- bitrates like Fraunhofer or LAME.
-
- Q:Which flags can I use in the external compression scheme "User Defined
- MP3 Encoder"?
- A:In the field "Additional command line options" you could use
- replacements for the selectable options :
- %s Source filename
- %d Destination filename
- %h...%h Text "..." only when "High quality" selected
- %l...%l Text "..." only when "Low quality" selected
- %c...%c Text "..." only when "CRC checksum" selected
- %r Bitrate ("32".."320")
- %a CD artist
- %g CD title
- %t Track title
- %y Year
- %n Track number
- %m MP3 music genre
- So a command line would look like (for l3enc)
-
- %s %d -br %r000 %h-hq%h %c-crc%c
-
- The extension can also be selected for this setting.
-
- 4. Offset Questions
-
- Q:Is the read offset (or the write) offset drive model dependent, or is
- it possible that the same drive has a different offset in a different
- system?
- A:The offsets should be the same for all drives of that specific model.
- Though, it is possible (but not probable) that the offset varies with
- different firmwares.
-
- Q:What is the difference between read offset, write offset and the
- combined read/write offset?
- A:Read offsets occur on reading (extracting). Write offsets happen on
- writing (burning) a CD-R. Most CD record programs do not support write
- offsets (as EAC perhaps do not support your writer for burning). So, to
- create an exact (offset corrected) copy of your CD, you would have to
- compensate the write offset already on reading. So instead of specifing
- the read offset as sample offset for extraction, you would rather use
- the combined read/write offset. This is easily calculated by the
- formula: Read Offset + Write Offset = Combined Read/Write Offset
-
- Q:What is an read or write offset? When do they occur?
- A:During extraction or writing of the audio data, nearly all CD-ROM/CD-R
- drives will add an offset to the position. This is usually around
- 500-700 audio samples (ca. 1/75 second) on reading and around 0-18
- samples on writing (ca. 1/1000 second). So if a program queries a
- specific sector, it will not receive exactly that sector, but shifted
- with the number of samples of the offset.
-
- Q:How do you find your CD-ROM's read offset?
- A:There is a test routine included in EAC that will determine the offset
- for a drive using a library of predefined commercial CDs. It is
- important that you use exactly the same pressing as the creator,
- otherwise another offset could be occured on remastering. So you should
- at least receive twice the same offset on two individual CDs. If you
- have a Plextor 40X CD-ROM drive (or know somebody who owns one), you
- could even help to extend that database of included offset CDs to help
- others to determine the offsets. If this does not bring a good result,
- the last option is to ask the other persons in the mailing list if
- anybody already determined the offset for the specific CD-ROM drive
- model.
-
- Q:How do I determine the combined read/write offset?
- A:The combined read/write offset is only valid for the special
- combination of exactly one reading drive and exactly one writing drive.
- If you use another reading, you would most probably need a different
- combined offset. To determine this offset, you would need to write a
- CD-R/CD-RW. At first prepare WAV files you want to write to the CD.
- Then write it to a CD (either with any burning program, or with EAC
- using write offset 0). Do not delete the written WAV files. Afterwards
- you have to extract one or more tracks from the freshly burned CD,
- using the specific reader and using read offset 0. Of course you should
- not overwrite the original WAV files. Now you have to use the WAV
- Compare feature in EAC to compare the first WAV (original) with the
- second (reextracted one). Usually EAC will report either missing
- samples or extreneous samples. The number that is reported by that will
- be your combined offset, only be changed to positive or negative. If
- your original file has extreneous (repeated) samples or the copied file
- has missing samples the offset should be positive, otherwise it should
- be negative. (I hope this is correct) To double check the found offset,
- use that offset as sample offset for reading. Now The reextracted file
- and the original should be the same without missing or extreneous
- samples.
-
- Q:How do I determine the CD-Rs write offset?
- A:At first determine your read offset, then determine the combined
- read/write offset. By using this formula, you will get the write
- offset. Write Offset = Combined Read/Write Offset - Read Offset
-
- Q:I try to determine the offset for my CD reader using a CD from the list
- given on EACs homepage, but it tells "CD not found in offset database".
- Why?
- A:It has to be the same pressing like I used, as different pressings
- usually uses a different offset. This specific error occurs, when the
- track layout is different than the correct CD, e.g. one track is
- slightly longer (1 sector would be enough).
-
- Q:I used several CDs to determine the sample offset for my CD reader, but
- the results of the offsets are not consistant (all the same). What now?
- A:Probably you use different pressings of some (or all of) the CDs you
- tested. If you get at least twice exactly the same offset, you could be
- pretty sure to have found the correct one (and only then!).
-
- 5. Write Questions
-
- Q:I have experienced the following problem after making some audio-cd
- copies : several tracks on the disk cannot be accessed directly on my
- audio cd-player although when the cd is played continuously it works
- fine. If I am using for playing the cd my cd-rom or my writer
- everything is OK and I can directly access all the tracks.
- A:This happen sometimes, when the writer starts loosing the ability to
- find the correct positions for writing and the actual gaps are not 100%
- on the correct positions. Usually this happens to Yamaha writers sooner
- or later. So try to lower the writing speed and try different CD-R
- media. But it is also possible that a writer is not able to write very
- short gaps, so make sure that in the CUE sheet each gap is bigger than
- at least 100 sectors (1 1/3 second).
-
- Q:I was wondering if I could copy a CD on the fly with EAC. I could not
- find any menu or option for that function. It would be useful if it
- worked because I could have offset corrected copies without having to
- copy the files/image first on the hard disk. Will it be supported in
- the future?
- A:"On-the-fly" copies will never be supported in EAC. This tool is used
- for secure copies, and secure copies can't be burned "on-the-fly" (OK,
- with the new burnproof feature it would be possible, but not
- recommended anyway).
-
- Q:I want to make copies of my CDs and add CD-TEXT because my car cd
- player can read that. How do I do it?
- A:It is done with the cue sheet, you (or EAC) can add TITLE and PERFORMER
- tags (enable it in EAC options). If you want to burn with EAC, you will
- also find some CD-Text options in EAC options and don't forget to
- activate it in the Drive options. In the Layout Editor, you could also
- still change title and artists.
-
- Q:I have an audio CD which includes a CD-Extra segment. There are 11
- audio tracks, the extra track 12 is indicated in EAC by a "file icon"
- instead of "music icon". I can't seem to determine how to produce a cue
- sheet which will allow the CD-Extra to be written via CDRWin. What is
- the recommended procedure for extracting the cue sheet from an audio CD
- which includes a CD-Extra segment?
- A:As the data track has to be written in a second session(!) it is not
- possible to reproduce the complete CD with ONE cuesheet. Therefore you
- should burn at first the audio tracks, close the session (and leave the
- disk open). Then you could write the data track. I suggest writing the
- data files individually instead of writing an data image.
-
- Q:When trying to write a CD using EAC, I get a Write Error - Send CUE
- Sheet or Write Parameter Page error, what does that mean?
- A:EAC does not support all writers yet. At the moment only MMC writer
- that are able to write CDs using CUE sheets (not in RAW mode). So if a
- write error occur, the drive is most probably not supported.
-
- Q:When I begin writing, EAC stops suddenly with an error, sometimes with
- no additional informations, what can I do?
- A:EAC does not support all writers yet, so it is possible that EAC just
- do not work correctly with that drive. Further it would be possible
- that something in your system will break the stream to the writer,
- resulting in a buffer underrun. Make sure that there are no other
- applications are running while writing.
- If could try to switch the sync data transfer on for the writer, you
- could find that option in the Windows Device Manager (System
- Properties), there select the writer and show up and edit the
- properties of that drive.
-
- 6. WAV Editor Questions
-
- Q:What is Normalization?
- A:Normalization is used to bring up the sound level on songs that were
- not recorded very loud. It is use full when making a compilation disc
- as the songs that you use may have been recorded at all different
- levels. But be aware that on some discs the volume was choosen to
- create a special effect, on these CDs normalization would destroy that
- effect.
-
- Q:What is DC Offset?
- A:DC offset occurs when the average/mean of the signal is a value other
- than 0 which means on average DC current flows through a circuit and
- which means the signal will clip earlier on one side (top or bottom)
- and your maximum signal strength before clipping occurs is smaller. To
- get rid of DC offset the average of the signal is subtracted form every
- sample of the signal.
-
- Q:I have recorded and saved a noise wav (named nrp). I appear able to
- open it but am unable to subtract the noise profile from my subject wav
- (the "Reduce Noise" option is inoperable.) Any ideas om what I am doing
- wrong?
- A:After created the noise profile (selecting a range, create noise
- profile, save noise profile) you are able to load the wav to denoise
- (or keep the actual one). There you have to load a noise profile first
- (noise profile/load), or keep the noise profile you created from that
- audio file, then you are able to remove the noise of it. You have to
- select first a range of the audio data that should be denoised before
- the menu option will be activated.
-
- Q:Can you use EAC to take pops/clicks out?
- A:I assume that you are recording the CD to WAV and then using the WAV to
- burn a rw-cd. There's an extra step in the middle to edit the clicks
- out of the WAV file. More complex pops that occur on analog recording
- (tapes, etc.) should be found by listening to the WAV roughly to find
- the positions with +/- 3 seconds accuracy. Then select such a range and
- choose "Pop Detection". Usually EAC will find them automatically. If
- not, switch to "Spectral View" and look for any anormalities. Then you
- have different options to remove the pop.
-
- 7. Utilities Questions
-
- Q:How to perform CDDB queries in batch mode?
- A:Just insert all CDs you want to query into the actual drive EAC uses
- (do not edit any data!), afterwards press Alt-P.
-
- Q:What are "Alternate CD Play Routines"?
- A:These routines will playback audio tracks by extracting the data and
- directly playing them through the soundcard. It is not necessary that
- the drive is connected to the soundcard by a cable.
-
- Q:I tried to select several files at once, but afterwards, the first and
- last file changed place. What can I do?
- A:In windows kernel is a bug, that occurs when selecting multiple files
- at once (e.g. in write dialog or in ID3Tag dialog). The first and last
- file name will be exchanged. This could result in some problems, so
- with the option "Correct bug of wrong filename order in Windows
- multiple file dialog" EAC will again exchange the first and last
- filename to the correct order.
-
-
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