Author: Andre2

Here comes a official released 0.9pb3. This is because many users complaint about the information(!) dialog. I just don’t want to read these mails anymore… I don’t think that that warning message was so important, if I had knew what troubles it would cause, I probably never implemented it, making lots of users work with older versions.
Enough for that, this version should remove many problems with older EAC versions like the Win2000 file dialog box bug. Please remark that this is only a prerelease without any documentation and no support. Everybody who tested 0.9pb1 and pb2 should test this version on new/old bugs and report me about it. I hope everything will work, as I implemented many features “last-minute”. Don’t ask me about features that don’t work, as not everything is implemented yet. There are many additions like LAME support (EXE and DLL), index based extraction, cool down feature, etc.
The next prebeta version will be unofficial again, the 0.9b final is planned for march 2000.
If you have a question, please use either my mailing list or my forum, but do not bother me directly. If there you found a real(!) bug, then please contact me.
Now I wish all of you merry chrismas and a happy new year! Peace to the world!

I’m sorry that again a time-out message pop up so early… I hope there are no severe problems, as EAC crashes Windows on some systems when displaying this message. If there are such problems, contact me…
I finished the second prebeta version of EAC 0.9, now more CD writer should work. It will now be tested by my beta testers. There was a severe bug in ALL secure extraction routines, I found it because it was occuring more often in the new C2 extraction mode… Further there are many bugfixes and some additions, hope you will like them.
I already announced a utility to gather CD informations for EAC offset detection routines. If you own a Plextor PX32 then please help me and send me as many cd infos from common(!), well-known CDs using this program. It will create a file in the current directory for every CD catalogized. Please send me as many CD infos as possible (you should compress them with WinZIP into an archive before sending it), and please fill all information fields you will be asked by the program!
There will be most probably a third prebeta version before the release of the official 0.9 beta, so I don’t expect that version before the new year!
I will soon get the opportunity to test EAC on Win 2000 RC2, to find that annoying file dialog bug… Further my Forum pages are down, I already mailed my provider, but didn’t received a response so far.
There is now an offical EAC banner, have a look on my links page.

I will be on holiday from 14.11 up to 21.11, so I won’t respond to any mails. If you have a question, please subscribe to my mailing list and ask your question there…

In tradition of the Hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkiens “Lord Of The Rings”, today I will give you my birthday present 🙂
I compiled 0.9 prebeta 1 and made it available to prebeta testers. The suprise in this version I announced are two new features :

• C1/C2 Error Correction Secure Read Modes for Plextor CD-ROM drives and MMC-complient drives that support this feature. Using this mode, the drives will use nearly burst speed for secure extraction. The Plextor CD-ROM drives 8x up to 40x , some MMC-complient drives like Teac 56S/58S and some other drives support this feature. In this mode, my Plextor PX32 extracts up to 16.7 X in test mode…
• CD Writing Routines for writing audio tracks. This will work at the moment only for MMC compliant writers. The burn stream could also be offset corrected, so that having an absolute CD-ROM drive offset and an absolute CD-R write offset. The write offset is easily calculated by this formula : Absolute Reader Offset + Absolute Writer Offset = Combined Reader Writer Offset

There is a bug in EAC causing the crash of Win 2000 RC2 when pressing OK or CANCEL in every file dialog box. I already try to fix it, but didn’t found the bug yet.
In the next official release or perhaps already in 0.9 prebeta 2 will most probably again CDDB proxy support included, but CDDB access will be then HTTP only…
Don’t expect the official 0.9 beta before mid of december, there is still many work to do until then. Over my birthday I will be at home, so I will read you again sunday…
By the way, my pages now also features a Forum…

So, here comes EAC 0.85 beta 4. I added the beta version number in order to prevent disinformations in the mailing list, to identify the version correctly. All main remaining bugs from beta 3 should be removed now and I will start work on version 0.9 beta.
Mainly the bugs with NT are removed now, further the wrong ending times of some CDs on some drives should now be corrected, although it is still possible that very few CDs will still not work (mainly CDs with only few tracks). If you have such a CD you should start EAC (for that CD) with the command line option -nomultisession then. Also it is now possible to create CUE sheets with CD-Text additions (but I heard, that sometimes CDRWin does not create CD-Text CDs on such CUE sheets even if it does accept the CUE sheet).
I have now two domains that will be ready somewhen next week, so I will move… The new address for EAC will be http://www.ExactAudioCopy.de and my private homepage will be at http://www.Andre-Wiethoff.de. I will keep up this site a month or so and then all users will be redirected to the new pages automatically…

Again sorry, I just found another possible bug, that I just removed. It has to do again with some WAV files in the wave editor making EAC stop. It only happened when having selected “No use of null samples for CRC calculations”.
Further I corrected the bug with the CDDB batch function. It should now work also. So please download again that version… Sorry!
I think this is still not the “final” 0.85 beta version, as I want to fix the Toshiba/etc “Can’t find matching read mode” bug first… So keep updated 😉

I am terribly sorry, but I could test as much as I want, it would never be enough 😉
I just returned from my weekend, so I hadn’t the possibility to do anything on it until now…
So users already reported my three severe bugs. I just removed these bugs and already put up an updated version (same version number though)

• If no WM Audio Codec was installed, EAC would produce WMA files instead of WAV files when using Internal WAV Routines
• Some WAVs loading in the audio editor make EAC stop at FFTWnd.2338
• If no system TEMP directory was specified EAC started up with an error message at WndProcs.1093

Thanks for all reports on these bugs, but I will not answer the mails that only reporting one of these bugs, there were much too many of them 😉
It is possible that some drives will now make problems with 0.85beta when inserting a CD. If so, try the commandline options -nomultisession and -nocdtext when starting EAC (as explained on my Tips & Specs page)!
Further, several persons asked me not to use such a mailing list. They thought that Onelist.com will spread their email addresses and that they will be mail bombed with SPAM. On the homepage of Onelist.com is declared that they will not distribute any email address and that they will not send any unsolicited email. The only bad thing is that a small advertisment is added below each mail.

Finally, EAC 0.85 beta is out! I hope you like it, there were really many changes to 0.81 beta, but I think you will see for yourself.

New features that in 0.85 beta adding to the features listed in the previous news

• Certified Escient ® CDDB(TM) Compatible
• Absolute sample offset detection
• Overreading capability for extracting correctly with non-zero offsets
• Preliminary WMA (MS Audio) support
• Sorry to say that interpolation in the audio editor is still not really improved, I will do it for the next version…

There are still some more informations…
I started a new CD-ROM drive database, please help me to fill it out as good as possible. Have a look at the table and send me the information for your drives. Please make sure for the sample offset to test it with at least two different CDs and to use at least 0.85 beta!
I don’t have the time anymore to give email support for EAC or similar problems. From now I started two mailing lists at www.onelist.com. The first list is for users asking other users for help. I hope that many experienced users will help the other… The second mailing list is, like the mailing list I maintained so far, only a announcement mailing list. If you are not interested in tips and help from other users you probably want only subscribe to eac-announce. In the announcement list all news about EAC are spread.
For all persons already in my mailing list : The current database will be lost, so please subscribe again at eac-announce. I try to answer to problems in the mailing list, if no one else find a solution to a problem, but do not mail me to my email address for help. I will not answer on such mails. The only exception would be if you encountered an unknown bug and I want you to help me debugging the problem.
Thanks for your understanding!

As I still have no confirmation of CDDB that EAC complies to the license agreement, I have to move the release date by a week. On the other hand I have some more time to do some additional features for the audio editor 😉 It took some time, because there were always some terms of license not correctly implemented. The last thing I had to change was the proxy and the proxy authentification… Sorry, but complying to the license agreement I had to remove them for 0.85 beta! If there are any complaints, please mail to them directly… So, new release date will be 30.7.99.. Hope you are not disappointed too much 😉

Other new features that will be in 0.85 beta

• Nearly complete change of the audio editor, now it becomes usable 😉
• Loop record mode for always having an amount of time in memory buffers, making it possible to start recording that amount later (for records from radio, etc. )
• Automatic rename of MP3 files according to their ID3 Tag
• Catalog of audio CDs, allowing to extract a specified time from the start of each track with optional fade out
• Copy with gap prepend at the beginning of the correct track (with matching CUE sheet generation)
• Some more bugfixing and some more new features…

Sorry to say that version 0.85beta is still not completed, but following a list of new features already implemented. A prebeta version is tested at the moment, meanwhile I will work on improvements of the audio editor. I expect that the official 0.85beta will be released somewhen around 23. July 99…

Already implemented

• Secure mode for accurate stream drives that caches
• Proxy authentification for CDDB and lyrics accesses
• Multisession CD support
• CD playing digitally possible (without cable)
• Position slider for CD playing
• Automatic creation of directories by filename specification
• Power down computer after extraction
• Priority selection for extraction and compression
• More drive options (e.g. swap channels, spin up, etc.)
• 3 different gap detection methods, so at least one should work with each drive
• Better support for external compressors
• Support for 10 types of external compressors (MP3, VBR, AAC, VQF, RA)
• Batch compression feature with selected compression scheme
• Batch decompression feature with automatically choosen decompressor (only .WAVs and .MP3s)
• Compression and decompression could make an offset correction, as some compression schemes do not compress correctly. Also including autodetection for offset value
• Local CDDB support
• Saving options to registry
• Creating and loading user profiles
• Automatic changes to track names (e.g. upper all first characters)
• CD-Text support
• Submission of CD data to the official CDDB database
• Export of CD data to text files, etc.
• WAV recorder with dB level meter and peak level search (in dB) for checking on overamplified recordings
• ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop from track list or CD database browser
• Some more smaller features…
• Really many bugfixes, e.g. IDE Yamaha crash on startup, Sync Error at the end of the last track, etc.

Moreover, I am sorry to say that version 0.81beta will pop up a dialog telling the version is rather old, without having a new public version out. I will try to patch that version and put a “new” 0.81beta version again on my page…

Work for 0.85 beta is in still progress and will most probably take two more month… I nearly finished CDDB submission and also implemented some other features like three different methods for gap detection to support now nearly any drive out. Therefore I already removed a bug that caused EAC to hang in index retrieval (not gap detection). It could happen that EAC will not leaving a loop 🙁 But it is fixed already. A faster gap/index detection mode will work for Plextor/Yamaha/etc.
Further there is a bug that occurs sometimes when a track has been extracted, causing EAC to stop around Utils.5707. Hope that it will be fixed soon…

Because I will buy a new computer tomorrow, I won’t be able to read or answer mails until my system is build up and installed all software again. I think it will be completed something around sunday or monday. So please be patient…