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Topic: Use of EAC & Enquiry for best output sound (MP3 & FLAC) &  (Read 3409 times) previous topic - next topic
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Use of EAC & Enquiry for best output sound (MP3 & FLAC) &

Hi all

  I am not a technical person and can barely understand all the logic. Tried reading but got all the more confused. I read in headfi and here. 

        I intend to rip my whole CD collection to MP3 320kpbs and FLAC using EAC secure mode.
      I presume FLAC is good enough and safe for non-lossy as backup?

        For best output effects and sound fidelity, should I use VBR or CBR? Joint Stereo or Stereo?
        Understand EAC has Accurate Rip but I kept on reading add LAME.
How do I apply LAME after downloading? And presets? I get so confused because I only knew how to use EAC alone.

    For the CD internal drive for processing, can I use Lenovo or ASUS laptop? Which is confirm okay? I know Litheon doesnt work and I'm wondering if its in Lenovo.
    ASUS seems to have too limited selections (based on online website) ,expensive and specs aint as good in Singapore.
Other ASUS models are not shown in the website so I do not know how good they are.
  Lenovo is cheap and good for the price. But in terms of sound and graphic, I do not know which is better still.
By the way, I do not play games.

  Sorry for bombing all the questions here. Since Im a multimedia person, thought would be good to hear from you guys. 


Use of EAC & Enquiry for best output sound (MP3 & FLAC) &

Reply #2 –
Based on your post I recommend ripping to flac and then create mp3s from that using Lame -V0 using some other program like lamedropXPd or foobar2000.

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logic

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headfi

Use of EAC & Enquiry for best output sound (MP3 & FLAC) &

Reply #3 –
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I presume FLAC is good enough and safe for non-lossy as backup?
FLAC is fine.  But, it's not necessarily a "backup".  If you own the CDs, those can be your backup.


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For best output effects and sound fidelity, should I use VBR or CBR? Joint Stereo or Stereo?
VBR and Joint Stereo generally make the best use of the "bits".  You might say 320kbps is the "best" or "least lossy", but you CANNOT say 320kbps is "better" than V0 or 256kbps if it doesn't sound  better.

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For the CD internal drive for processing, can I use Lenovo or ASUS laptop? Which is confirm okay?
As long as you don't get errors (especially if you are getting AccurateRip confirmation) it's all digital and any drive & computer will work.   

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I know Litheon doesnt work and I'm wondering if its in Lenovo.
What?
 

Use of EAC & Enquiry for best output sound (MP3 & FLAC) &

Reply #4 –
Quote from: konseki on
Understand EAC has Accurate Rip but I kept on reading add LAME.

EAC having AccurateRip just means that EAC checks an external database to see if most of the audio extracted from your CD matches other people's rips of the same pressing. If your rip matches other people's, odds are in your favor that your drive extracted the audio without any errors... this has nothing to do with LAME.

If you choose to do a compressed rip (the "CMP" icon on the left side of the EAC window), EAC runs the extracted audio through whatever compressor you've configured EAC to use. LAME (lame.exe) is a popular external compressor for converting the audio to MP3 format (which is lossy), and flac.exe being a popular one for converting to FLAC format (which is lossless).


Quote from: konseki on
How do I apply LAME after downloading?

Minor nitpick: downloading generally refers to copying files over a network from one device to another which you control. I think you mean ripping CDs, more formally called digital audio extraction (DAE).

To answer the question, EAC doesn't allow you to rip to more than one format at a time. You just choose uncompressed (WAV) or compressed (MP3 or FLAC or whatever you configured). Since you want both FLACs and MP3s, greynol's advice is good: rather than configure EAC to rip to MP3, just configure EAC's compression options so that when you choose to do a compressed rip, you get FLAC files; later, use one of the free apps he recommended to make MP3s from the FLACs.

Even when using those apps, encoding with LAME usually means first you must obtain lame.exe (or, some software wants lame.dll). If you haven't done this yet, get a bundle from RareWares. (You may ask, "why not from the official LAME site", but they only distribute the source code due to patent issues, and even technical people don't want to get into the waking nightmare that is trying to build usable software from source code on Windows.)


Quote from: konseki on
And presets?

Don't worry about it. LAME's presets are names like "standard", "extreme", and "insane"... they are just aliases for actual settings like "-V 2", "-V 0" and "-b 320". The idea, I think, was to make it seem less technical, and to help people realize that they don't need to adjust and max out every possible setting in order to get the highest-quality sound.


Quote from: konseki on
By the way, I do not play games.

Noted.