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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…

I am sorry that it took that long to finish the bug fix, but on the one hand I wanted to remove all that really bigger bugs and on the other hand I got the flu and couldn’t concentrate on anything week before last week… Now I am almost ok again 😉
So here is the (new) version that should fix most of the bugs of 0.8beta. 0.8 beta will be removed completly from the server, as the new one has nearly the same features…
The new version includes

• Fix of error detection and correction that does not worked correctly in 0.8beta! Further I replaced the guessing routines with the ones from 0.7beta, as many mailed me that the newer ones worked not as good as them. When I find out how to improve them, they will be back again, but for now the older guessing routines should work ok for most users.
• Fix of not finding matching read modes for some Philips and Toshiba drives. On these drives it is also necessary to select the option ‘Check for density parameters’. Further, some drives need to change wordnibbles to get correct results (otherwise only noise is extracted). For that a new option is included.
• The obsolete part that slowed down burst copy is now removed. Now it will copy on my Plex 14/32 with max 16.5X (accesses to harddisk too slow, because I only use a cheap Fast-SCSI card) and test tracks with something around 23.0X.
• Added ‘intelligent’ WAV file comparison. It will detect missing and extraneous bytes everywhere in the files and also gather other differences of both files. This feature could also be used in the WAV editor to easily select ranges of differences.
  Furthermore it could be used to determine the combined reader/writer offset.
• The WAV editor now has another filter, smoothing. This is helpful for many kinds of defects beside clicks and pops.

It seems that the IDE versions of the Yamaha CD-R(W) drives will cause many problems, mainly crashing EAC on startup. Therefore I added command line options for these drives for the moment. I will soon debug this on such a drive. No other drives seem to cause such problems…

I have to say that the official release has still too many bugs. Thats why I plan to release a “0.81” beta somewhen this week or next week.
The main bugs that should be removed then are these :

• Error check works not correctly in 0.8beta! It will often not find errors even if there are some! Should already be removed by now. This bug occured after I rewrote many parts of the extraction methods and of the guessing routines. I just forgot to mark some kind of bad blocks as bad… 🙁 The new extraction methods should nevertheless work with the same speed as before on good CDs.
• Could not find matching read modes for some Philips and Toshiba drives.
• Already removed the obsolete part that slowed down burst copy. Now it will copy on my Plex 14/32 with max 16.5X (accesses to harddisk too slow) and test tracks with something around 23.0X.
• Some other smaller bugs, that will be removed as far as I now them…

Please note that the feature detection test is purely heuristical and does not always give back the correct results! So don’t trust them, if you know that your drive has other features!

Now here it is, the new official 0.8beta. 😉
It was really a long time without any updates, but I think it was worth the time. Even if it has no really big new features, but many improvements and bugfixes on nearly all functions.
The new version includes

• New fast secure read modes for accurate readers and also for drives that caches
• Complete improvement of read modes and Test read function, allowing to calculate CRC checksums without using disk space
• BladeEnc DLL support
• Remove leading and trailing silence
• Fill missing offset samples with silence
• Automatic detection of drive features
• Selection of extensions for headerless WAV files
• Test detected gaps on silence
• Save extraction log
• Selection of error recovery quality for faster extraction on bad CDs
• WAV editor with already some functions for editing, more to come…
• Many bugfixes, too many to mention

There are still many bugs, but I hope to remove them sooner or later. If EAC makes problems on your computer, please read the What’s New page.
I will do nothing on EAC the next week, but then work for 0.9beta will begin. Many people told me a lot of ideas of improvement. Because there were too much mail the last month, I would ask to tell me the not yet implemented ideas again, if not stated in the ‘Planned for next release’. But also experiences are appreciated!

I am sorry to say that the release date will be some days later. New expected release date will be the 22.1.98. The last weeks I had lot of work at the university and EAC also took much work to finish all features I planned for 0.8 beta. You will surely be surprised which features are now really in it… 🙂
I have to say the 0.8 beta will not have these announced features: Submission of CDDB entries, Support of other local CDDB databases and Proxy authentification. But I will try to include it in version 0.9 beta then.

I did not had as much time as I wanted the last two weeks. So I didn’t work on EAC very much. But now, I have christmas holidays and work will go on a little bit faster again.
From now on, I will not only send notifications on new versions to the people in my mailing list, but also everytime a news entry is added to the What’s New page. The mail will contain the newsentry… If you don’t want to be in the mailing list anymore, just send me a mail. Thanks.
Expected release date of EAC 0.8 beta will be 18.1.99, but I have to wait if there are still bigger problems with it, this release date could change.
By the way, today I visited the ‘Star Trek World Tour’, but was not as big as I thought… The ratio of fun/money could be much better, but Star Trek fans will nevertheless have a look at it 😉

So, I wish everybody merry christmas and a happy new year!