Author: Andre2

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.

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.

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

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.

In the field “Additional command line options” you could use replacements for the selectable options :

For versions before 1.0 beta 2

%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
%j…%j – Text “…” only when storing cd cover is enabled
%i – Filename of CD cover image
%r – Bitrate (“32”..”320″)
%e – Comment
%a – Track artist
%t – Track title
%v – CD artist
%g – CD title
%y – Year
%n – Track number
%x – Number of tracks on album
%m – MP3 music genre
%o – Original filename (without temporary renaming)
%e – Comment (as selected in EAC)
%b – CRC of extracted track
%f – freedb ID

So a command line would look like (for l3enc)

%s %d -br %r000 %h-hq%h %c-crc%c

For versions from 1.0 beta 2 on (some placeholders might only be available in the latest version!)

%source% – Source filename
%dest% – Destination filename
%original% – Original filename (without temporary renaming)

%ishigh%…%ishigh% – Text “…” only when “High quality” selected
%islow%…%islow% -Text “…” only when “Low quality” selected
%haslyrics%…%haslyrics% – Text “…” only when lyrics exist
%hascover%…%hascover% – Text “…” only when storing cd cover is enabled and cover exists
%crcenabled%…%crcenabled% – Text “…” only when “CRC checksum” selected

%title% – Track title
%genre% – MP3 music genre
%year% – Year
%cddbid% – freedb ID
%artist% – Track artist
%lyrics% – Lyrics
%lyricsfile% – Filename of lyrics text file (ANSI)
%bitrate% – Bitrate (“32”..”320″)
%comment% – Comment (as selected in EAC)
%tracknr% – Track number (same as %tracknr2%)
%tracknr1% – Track number (at least 1 digit)
%tracknr2% – Track number (at least 2 digits)
%tracknr3% – Track number (at least 3 digits)
%totalcds% – Total number of CDs in the given CD set
%cdnumber% – Number of the CD
%composer% – Track performer
%trackcrc% – CRC of extracted track
%coverfile% – Filename of CD cover image
%numtracks% – Number of tracks on album
%albumtitle% – CD title
%albumartist% – CD artist
%albumcomposer% – CD composer
%albuminterpret% – CD performer

%% – The ‘%’ character

So a command line would look like (for l3enc)

%source% %dest% -br %bitrate%000 %ishigh%-hq%ishigh% %crcenabled%-crc%crcenabled%

The extension can also be selected within these settings.

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.

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.

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.

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”).

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.