I have installed eac and flac and configured it to rip to flac but apparently I did something wrong. I think my problem lies within using EAC itself. with the mp3 and wwav buttons on the left etc. . what do I do to actually execute to make eac to rip to flac? I tried the WAV button and that took 8.5 hours for one stinking CD. That is unacceptable.
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for all those flac junkies out there
- Thread starter greyghost
- Start date
Ice Czar
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If it took 8 hours to rip one CD, then obviously one of the following two things are wrong:
One, you're using EAC Secure Mode which most times is unnecessary since normal Burst Mode rips will pull the exact same bits off the CD and generate the exact same CRC checksums - meaning Secure Mode is a waste of time UNLESS you have a damaged CD to begin with because that's what it's for. Burst Mode and Secure Mode get the same data off an undamaged CD so stop wasting so much time with Secure Mode, it's pointless on undamaged CDs.
Two, the CD is damaged beyond even EAC's ability to do that Secure Rip in the first place. The other issue, not quite as big of a deal but meaningful in other ways, is that when you do have a damaged CD and you use EAC in Secure Mode you generate a LOT of wear and tear on the drive because it will read and re-read the sectors on the damaged CD over and over, possibly hundreds of times.
Imagine the wear and tear on your car if you stopped, put it in reverse, backed up 5 feet, stopped, put it in Drive, drove forward 5 feet, stop, repeat process several hundred times. While most current CD/DVD drive technology is pretty tough stuff, needlessly re-reading the same sector of data several hundred times is ridiculous.
EAC Secure Mode is overrated these days. The so called "Ubernet" is the cause of some of this: they put so much stress on getting "perfect rips" and they think EAC Secure Mode is the only way to do that.
And they're wrong.
EAC Burst Mode on an undamaged CD will rip the exact same bits from that CD as Secure Mode will as verified by the CRC checksum that's generated after the rip is complete, and you can even compare a WAV file from a Burst Mode rip and a Secure Mode rip in some sound editor and the two files will be perfect bit for bit duplicates of each other, hence Secure Mode for undamaged CDs really has no purpose except to slow down the ripping process needlessly.
As noted in the EAC documentation (and with my bolding for emphasis):
In secure mode, this program reads every audio sector at least twice. That
is one reason why the program is so slow.
The bolded part there means you're going to spend at least twice as much time ripping data as is typically required using Burst Mode, and it just gets worse because that's at least double the reads. On that CD that took 8 hours, I'll guarantee it was probably reading most sectors the max of 82 times each (this figure is noted in the documentation as the worst case scenario).
Burst Mode works just fine for pretty much any undamaged CD. The diehards that fell in love with the myth of "perfect rips" are simply wasting time and causing totally unnecessary wear and tear on their CD/DVD drives.
And just for the record: I have some CDs that have light scratches, deep scratches, blurs, blemishes, scuff marks on the surface, etc. I even have one CD from years ago (I keep it to show it to people) that has one single crack that goes from the center hole all the way out to the edge; the CD can actually be seperated with your fingers and the two sides of the crack will pull apart upwards of a 1/4" - but the CD still plays just fine on any CD player when I "snap" the two sides/edges back together flush.
Those damaged CDs I have get the same CRC checksums using EAC Burst Mode and EAC Secure Mode. Go figure.
bb
One, you're using EAC Secure Mode which most times is unnecessary since normal Burst Mode rips will pull the exact same bits off the CD and generate the exact same CRC checksums - meaning Secure Mode is a waste of time UNLESS you have a damaged CD to begin with because that's what it's for. Burst Mode and Secure Mode get the same data off an undamaged CD so stop wasting so much time with Secure Mode, it's pointless on undamaged CDs.
Two, the CD is damaged beyond even EAC's ability to do that Secure Rip in the first place. The other issue, not quite as big of a deal but meaningful in other ways, is that when you do have a damaged CD and you use EAC in Secure Mode you generate a LOT of wear and tear on the drive because it will read and re-read the sectors on the damaged CD over and over, possibly hundreds of times.
Imagine the wear and tear on your car if you stopped, put it in reverse, backed up 5 feet, stopped, put it in Drive, drove forward 5 feet, stop, repeat process several hundred times. While most current CD/DVD drive technology is pretty tough stuff, needlessly re-reading the same sector of data several hundred times is ridiculous.
EAC Secure Mode is overrated these days. The so called "Ubernet" is the cause of some of this: they put so much stress on getting "perfect rips" and they think EAC Secure Mode is the only way to do that.
And they're wrong.
EAC Burst Mode on an undamaged CD will rip the exact same bits from that CD as Secure Mode will as verified by the CRC checksum that's generated after the rip is complete, and you can even compare a WAV file from a Burst Mode rip and a Secure Mode rip in some sound editor and the two files will be perfect bit for bit duplicates of each other, hence Secure Mode for undamaged CDs really has no purpose except to slow down the ripping process needlessly.
As noted in the EAC documentation (and with my bolding for emphasis):
In secure mode, this program reads every audio sector at least twice. That
is one reason why the program is so slow.
The bolded part there means you're going to spend at least twice as much time ripping data as is typically required using Burst Mode, and it just gets worse because that's at least double the reads. On that CD that took 8 hours, I'll guarantee it was probably reading most sectors the max of 82 times each (this figure is noted in the documentation as the worst case scenario).
Burst Mode works just fine for pretty much any undamaged CD. The diehards that fell in love with the myth of "perfect rips" are simply wasting time and causing totally unnecessary wear and tear on their CD/DVD drives.
And just for the record: I have some CDs that have light scratches, deep scratches, blurs, blemishes, scuff marks on the surface, etc. I even have one CD from years ago (I keep it to show it to people) that has one single crack that goes from the center hole all the way out to the edge; the CD can actually be seperated with your fingers and the two sides of the crack will pull apart upwards of a 1/4" - but the CD still plays just fine on any CD player when I "snap" the two sides/edges back together flush.
Those damaged CDs I have get the same CRC checksums using EAC Burst Mode and EAC Secure Mode. Go figure.
bb
thanks for clearing that up. After trying EAC for the first time, all I could think about is 'forget this" attitude, I couldn't understand how people think this is acceptable. I recently lost 100+ cds worth of mp3's and now I have to re-rip them. I am not in a big hurry but I'll be damned if I start one before work and one before bed, getting only 2 done a day.
Postal Blowfish
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greyghost said:
I used a guide to set mine up, but I really only skimmed it. It was actually quite simple - mostly a matter of looking up the parameters I needed for the flac encoder, and pointing EAC's external compressor to flac.exe. Then I click "mp3s" when I rip, and it does everything for me. It rips faster than it encodes, but the encode jobs queue up so as long as EAC stays open your job will finish. I can get a CD encoded in about ten minutes or perhaps a little less.
That's on an Athlon XP 2200+ w/ 512m ram.
Postal Blowfish
n00b
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br0adband said:
Firstly, your post was constructive and excellent.
Second, I have to disagree with your suggestion here at least in the context of ripping lossless files unless you verify each rip personally. I myself don't, and so I go with Secure mode thinking it's the safest shot. However, it's worth trying the Burst mode to see if there is a drastic improvement in speed, and if there is then obviously Secure won't be acceptable. If there's no increase in speed (or not much), I'd stick with secure with lossless.
I say, if you're gonna try and preserve the sound as best as possible, you should rip it as best as possible. And if we're talking hundreds of CDs, personally checking each track is gonna get tiresome in a hurry.
You might also examine how EAC is setup to behave when it encounters problematic sectors. It may require some tweaking.
Out of curiosity, how does this compare to Secure ripping undamaged CDs? I don't rip enough to have much to worry about, but I'd like you know if you can answer.
Ridiculousness especially compounded by the fact that most of these perfect rips end up in a lossy format. I imagine on a perfect cd there is no difference, and on a somewhat damaged cd you might hear some very very slight differences... in the range and intensity that is likely to get distorted into irrelevance by encoding it to an mp3.
That's some good engineering. It's not the first I've heard, but my understanding is that players can miss a few bits in the track and sort of smooth it over with error correction so that it can play without issue. I think that CD won't last much longer though if you keep playing it.