I always took the albums missing in freedb as my way of paying back the guys who had to type in all the original data... I mean someone has to be the first one on every album don't they?

Yes, I agree, although in many cases that data has been entered twice to make up for the blatently dishonest piracy of the original cddb data by Gracenote.

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Now I just need to find a CD scratched enough to return C2 errors, given the scratch free state of my CDs I might actually have to manufacture one...

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I don't recommend going with C2 error correction, even with a Plextor drives. I've found a few rips that are falsely reported as error free on Plextor drives when using C2 that in fact are not. It seems many drives falsely state that they are C2 compliant but are not.

The best bet is to use EAC in Secure Mode, with Accurate Stream. Also, be sure to check the "Drive caches audio data" box to be safe. Checking this box clears the cache. Even if your "auto detect drive features" process says your drive doesn't cache data (most do) the author of EAC professes that it is usually a false detection. I guess that feature is hard to detect for EAC.

Well, it's supposed to be getting the same data every time, even, potentially, on a flawed disc (in which case the data would be incorrect, but the same every time). So in order to detect it, he'd have to figure out a way to provide a disc that he knew would confuse the drive enough for it to read different data for the same sector at different times. And a disc that did that on one drive isn't necessarily going to do it on another.

So I'd say that it is definitely difficult to detect. Safest, once again, to have it clear the cache as needed, to assume there is one, even though it's slower.

There is some irony in the fact that we'd be searching for a damaged CD in order to ensure proper rips...

...a deep, rich irony indeed...

What is the reason you do not want to rip to WMA? I pretty much converted my entire CD collection that way and saved loads of hard drive space. Do you see any big difference in sound quality between the two formats?

Ed

When MS decides to change the format of WMA and no longer support the old format, you'll probably have no recourse other than to reencode your entire collection. Since there are any number of open source mp3 implementations, not to mention that the mp3 spec is open (in the old 1980s sense of the word), you're not going to have that problem.

Not to mention the political objective related to Microsoft's kowtowing to the recording industry with their asinine Palladium scheme and the whole concept that I would ever want to restrict the playability of audio files I've made myself.

Yup, I've been using audiograbber for years and my rips are perfect. Usually do a CD in just a couple of minutes and I've get to get a bad mp3. My CDs, like yours are well looked after though.

I have to say I am now a complete EAC convert. Despite my pristine CDs EAC still does find some of them that take lots of retries to get a perfect copy.

Oddly it is often CDs without a single visible mark that EAC ends up working hardest on.

I've been using audiograbber for years and my rips are perfect

same here. for bulk rips, AG seems the fastest. then do a batch LAME encode overnight.

now i only rip when the odd single cds is purchased / acquired. For these times, EAC is the easiest,securest single button solution (just hit 'MP3' button and come back in half an hour!)

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for bulk rips, AG seems the fastest. then do a batch LAME encode overnight

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Isn't this possible in EAC. Your post made me want to try it but I can't find the option...

yes it can,
but with EAC you still have to do the tagging, AG takes care of that

Maybe you're using an older version, but EAC tags just fine.

Can I rip 100 CDs to WAV and come back two days later to batch encode with LAME (through EAC) with tags?

Don't know what version of EAC was being commented on, nor what new support it has, but it definitely did NOT support this feature in the past. I don't know of anything other than AG that did.

Bruno

Can I rip 100 CDs to WAV and come back two days later to batch encode with LAME (through EAC) with tags?

Yes, if you display a little ingenuity. When I rip (with EAC), I get it to put all of the tags that I care about in the filename (so I end up with album - track - artist - title.wav or whatever). Then I use a Python script to encode them all using LAME. Then, when that's done (several hours/days later), I have another Python script which uses a regex to figure out the tags from the filename, and which runs id3tag (from id3lib) to apply the tags.

I'm currently hacking on a Ruby script to generate/tag FLAC files from the WAV files, so that I don't have to re-rip anything in future.

OH! Batch encoding. Sorry, I read that too fast. Don't mind me.

For batch encoding in Windows I used RazorLame. Haven't had a Windows machine in quite a while, so I can't say for sure if it is still the best option.

Then, of course, you'd have to go back and create the tags from the file name, unless they've added that option to RazorLame lately.

This is possible (Tools menu, 'Compress WAVs Alt+V'), but the .wav files have to have all the tag info in their name, as mentioned. The only thing I'd mention is that EAC must be left open during the entire encoding process. If you quit EAC while LAME processes are still running, they will quit also, leaving incomplete .mp3's with no warnings. If you've set EAC to run the LAME threads minimized, this is not immediately obvious. You can also choose how many concurrent LAME sessions to run.

-Zeke

If you're into Linux, and batch ripping/encoding/tagging is important to you,
consider to use Jack

Jack is written in Python and acts as a frontend for various rippers
(like cdparanoia) and various encoders (like Lame and oggenc).



There are lots of cdparanoia/lame frontends, but Jack
has some really cool features, like

• Jack will continue an interrupted session and only redo what is necessary
• it will find the results of a previous rip even if it is badly filed
• it supports both cddb and freedb (officialy only freedb)
• editing a saved freedb query result will let you automatically rename and retag the affected tunes
• using shell scripting, you can rip and encode multiple CD's after each other, in parallel, or both
• it will save a history of every rip, including cdparanoia output
• if you've got the space, you can keep the wav's and re-encode later
• It uses curses to show its progress (ie does not require X)
  

Using two Nakamichi SCSI 5-CD changers and a tower with five old Toshiba
SCSI CD-ROM drives, I have ripped hundreds of CD's with very few intervention.

The only drawback with Jack was the lack of id3v2 support, but this is
finally coming now, it's in the CVS for testing. And it should be said that
Jack isn't easy to set up; it is dependent on lots of other stuff. But once
it runs, it rocks.

Pim

If you're into Linux, and batch ripping/encoding/tagging is important to you, consider to use Jack

Hey, he stole my name.

(Jack was the name I used for a Fraunhofer/LAME front-end program I wrote a long time ago. Not very many features and isn't all that great, but at the time it was the only tagger/encoder front end that formatted the data the way I wanted it and used the Enter key properly to move to the next field.)

So what you're telling me is that I'm already using the best ripper available, AudioGrabber. That's what I thought. Still going strong after two years. The only reason I'd have to use EAC (yes, it's free), is for its secure ripping. However I've only had a problem with a handful of tracks that received some errors I didn't catch while ripping. Re-ripping solved that of course. AG2.0 is long overdue, but I no longer need to rip 500 CDs at a time (unless someone wants to donate a large crate of discs - I'm always open to that )

Bruno
(Just bought a house (today) - I'll take a donation of anything at this point)

Congrats on the house purchase.
Glad to see you've gotten AG working finally

No need for ingenuity. EAC will do this for you.

If you rip a whole stack of CDs EAC will queue them up and start encoding one by one (or two by two if you have dual CPUs like me). If you then simply quit the main EAC application (not the 1 or 2 encoding windows - let them finish), it will remember where it was up to and all the tags it had to use.

If you simply run EAC when you are ready to encode, it will start encoding from the next track automagically.

All ID3 tags are filled in as if you hadn't quit EAC. On normal single artist albums (i.e. not various artist ones) I don't even need to fix up tags with EAC.

BTW: I use command line LAME encoding (i.e. not the inbuilt .DLL) so I don't know whether this works with the .DLL encoding method.

I am trying to set up AG and Lame to encode some of my wav files that were ripped using EAC. I am having a problem getting the file to encode. I checked external encoder in MP3 options, using user arguments --alt-preset standard. I pointed AG to the folder where LAME.exe is located. I then drag a wav file from Windows Explorer onto AG. It asks me what I want to do and I click create MP3. The dos screen blinks up on the screen for a second and disappears. Then nothing happens or shows up in the directory I specified. Any ideas on what to do to fix this? Would it be easier to use the Lame.dll file in AG as an internal encoder? The only problem is that if I do this it does not seem to let you create user arguments like the external encoder dialogue box does. Any insight into this sure would be appreciated.

It sounds to me like lame is starting and immediately exiting. Do you have to specify something in the command-line options to tell it what filename to encode? It might be something like ``%s''. (I know nothing about AG; just taking a guess.)

Seems it may be a problem with my user arguments string. I am not too privy as how to write the argument I need. Maybe one of you might be able to help.
1. Wave file is named Artist - Album - Track # - Title
2. I want to use the external Lame.exe to encode from a Ripped directory.
3. I want the encoded file to be placed in Encoded\Artist \Album parent -child directories after encoding.
4. I also want to tag the files from the file name.
5. I want to use --alt-preset standard as my switch.

Any AG users have any idea how to enter this?

After I made the original post I went back and found that to be the case. I just don't know how to interpret what I want to do so AG gets the job done for me.

sounds like it does not like what you have in the external encoder dialogue box
what do you have in there?
remember it should start with %S %D and then have the lame encoding parameters