Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Some help needed with EAC (Read 3838 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Some help needed with EAC

Okay, sorry to post another series of questions on EAC, but I'm really a bit dazed on configuring it properly.. I've read the FAQs and followed the links, but some of the discussions, while informative, simply fail to come to a conclusion...


Here are my questions...

1. What interface should I use? Would an external interface ( either Nero or Adaptec's ASPI ) be better than the native Win32 interface (I'm using XP here .. )? If so, what are the advantages?

2. Should I or should I not use read/write offset correction? Having followed the links in the FAQ, it seems that Pio recommends NOT using offsets.. but the author of EAC does... so what's the conclusion? I understand the use of offsets, but what should the recommended setting be ?

3. Offset correction for encoding and decoding - disabled. Am I right?

4. Usage of ID3 Tags. Unless doing explicitly MP3 encoding (with Lame), the Add ID3 tag option should be disabled. Furthermore, any settings in the "construction of the ID3 tag comment field on extraction" (why on earth is it placed there??)  and "ID3 Tag" sections do not matter. Is this correct?

5. What the heck is the use of the Export pane under the FreeDB options?

6. Settings for my CDRW drive (Liteon LTR-24102B). Okay, not everyone might have this writer, but those that do, I would like to check the preferred settings for this drive. I understand that SatCP's page has a entry for this, but it's rather outdated...

LiteON LTR-24102B
- Accurate Stream : YES
- Caching : YES
- Drive C2 capable : YES
- Use C2 : NO
- Drive read command : Read command MMC1
- Speed selection : ACTUAL (what on earth is this for anyway?)
- CD-Text capable : YES
- Gap/Index method  : Detection method A
- Detection Accuracy : SECURE
- Drive can write UPC/ISRC : YES
- Drive can write CD-TEXT : YES

Are my settings correct? And what about read/write offset correction? ( See question 2 ) If the answer is yes, are the values given on The Coaster Factory's page ( +12 read offset, -6 write offset ) accurate ?

Some help needed with EAC

Reply #1 –
Since nobody´s answered so far and I have the same drive I will try to help:

Here are my questions...

1. What interface should I use? Would an external interface ( either Nero or Adaptec's ASPI ) be better than the native Win32 interface (I'm using XP here .. )? If so, what are the advantages?

  It depends, some people have not been able to rip or to burn with EAC without using an external ASPI. If it is your case, use the Nero ASPI. Just copy it to the same folder EAC is in an enable "external interface" in the EAC settings

2. Should I or should I not use read/write offset correction? Having followed the links in the FAQ, it seems that Pio recommends NOT using offsets.. but the author of EAC does... so what's the conclusion? I understand the use of offsets, but what should the recommended setting be ?

  I think you should, specially if you are making backups now of your CDs or plan to make them later. Audibly, there is no real difference, but it gives the warm fuzzy feeling. And besides, the offsets for 24102B are well known already, so why not?

3. Offset correction for encoding and decoding - disabled. Am I right?

  Absolutely

4. Usage of ID3 Tags. Unless doing explicitly MP3 encoding (with Lame), the Add ID3 tag option should be disabled. Furthermore, any settings in the "construction of the ID3 tag comment field on extraction" (why on earth is it placed there??)  and "ID3 Tag" sections do not matter. Is this correct?

  I don´t really understand, but let me try: if you are NOT making MP3´s it doesn´t matter (and of you are making vorbis files it MUST be disabled), but if you are encoding to MP3, I strongly advise to configure this, it will save you from a lot of work tagging the MP3´s later. For the comment you should use something like "EAC - Lame 3.90.2 aps" so you remember what you used later (or people know if you share)

5. What the heck is the use of the Export pane under the FreeDB options?

  I haven´t really used it myself, but it is meant for you to share CD information that is not available on freeDB (CD´s not found)

6. Settings for my CDRW drive (Liteon LTR-24102B). Okay, not everyone might have this writer, but those that do, I would like to check the preferred settings for this drive. I understand that SatCP's page has a entry for this, but it's rather outdated...

  On second thought, SatCP is only "outdated" if your CD writer is not really a 24102B, remeber, LiteOn has made some more 24x writers based on another chipset. But if it really is, here are the REAL settings (I do not remember where I got them from, but believe me, they are accurate)

LiteON LTR-24102B
- Accurate Stream : YES
- Caching : YES
- Drive C2 capable : YES*
- Use C2 : NO*
- Drive read command : Read command MMC1
- Speed selection : ACTUAL (what on earth is this for anyway?)**
- CD-Text capable : YES
- Gap/Index method  : Detection method A
- Detection Accuracy : SECURE***
- Drive can write UPC/ISRC : YES
- Drive can write CD-TEXT : YES
- READ OFFSET: +12
- WRITE OFFSET: -6

* According to LiteON, this drive is capable of reporting C2 errors accurately. Just let me tell you, this drive is a year and a half old and not even current drives support this feature correctly. Even Andre Whiethoff, creator of EAC has stated that this "feature" is going to dissapear on the next release. Guess a lot of people got confused...
** A setting from times past (EAC is been around for more than 4 years now, and you know how drives have changed). Pay no attention, just set to ACTUAL.
*** It can do SECURE gap detection for sure, but you should use ACCURATE because sometimes secure freezes the drive on some older cds/cdrs. Don´t worry, accurate is good enough for this drive.

  The combined offsets, as I told you, have more to do with CD copying than encoding. It depends on your purpose. I recommend you to configure them
  Hope this helps.
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

Some help needed with EAC

Reply #2 –
[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'][EDIT][/span] I see AtaqueET beat me too it (I had loaded the thread and read/replied to it offline which took me a little longer), oh well... [span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'][/EDIT][/span]

Daybreak:

Quote
2. Should I or should I not use read/write offset correction? Having followed the links in the FAQ, it seems that Pio recommends NOT using offsets.. but the author of EAC does... so what's the conclusion? I understand the use of offsets, but what should the recommended setting be ?


There is no "recommended setting", because the amount of offset correction necessary depends entirely on your drive.

Offset correction is a good thing (even though it doesn't provide any audible advantages), but it is, at least in my experience, damn hard to configure correctly because you have to be quite lucky to find reliable test material (i.e., two or, preferably, more CDs which *exactly* match the ones listed in the EAC documentation). I was surprised at how many of the supported test CDs I could get my hands on, but some won't be recognized by EAC, and all that do work return different offset values.

So, unless you're lucky enough to own enough of the supported test CDs  to get a reliable result, you might as well stuff those few samples and do without offset correction.


Quote
3. Offset correction for encoding and decoding - disabled. Am I right?


Yep.


Quote
4. Usage of ID3 Tags. Unless doing explicitly MP3 encoding (with Lame), the Add ID3 tag option should be disabled. Furthermore, any settings in the "construction of the ID3 tag comment field on extraction" (why on earth is it placed there??) and "ID3 Tag" sections do not matter. Is this correct?


Yes, you can let the encoders of other formats handle the tagging. For example, for MPC, you'd add this command line string before the "%s %d":

--artist "%a" --title "%t" --album "%g" --track "%n" --genre "%m" --year "%y"

And for Vorbis:

-c "TITLE=%t" -c "ARTIST=%a" -c "ALBUM=%g" -c "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -c "DATE=%y" -c "GENRE=%m"

And, finally, for FLAC:

-T "TITLE=%t" -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "DATE=%y" -T "GENRE=%m"


I can't say anything about your CD writer except that you might want to disable "Drive is capable of retrieving C2 information" alltogether, if you want to be on the safe side. (I don't know how well the C2 implementation works though, so if it does the job, someone please correct me.)

Hope this helps,

Dominic

Some help needed with EAC

Reply #3 –
Quote
1. What interface should I use? Would an external interface ( either Nero or Adaptec's ASPI ) be better than the native Win32 interface (I'm using XP here .. )? If so, what are the advantages?


I didn't follow closely the ASPI discussions, but I understood that the only difference was EAC woring or not working. So use what you have if EAC rips.

Quote
2. Should I or should I not use read/write offset correction? Having followed the links in the FAQ, it seems that Pio recommends NOT using offsets.. but the author of EAC does... so what's the conclusion?


In fact, I recommend not pulling your hair out in order to find it. My bigger problem being people using other rippers than EAC because "they can't find their offset and therefore can't get EAC to work properly". Utter nonsense.
I see that your offsets are +12 and -6, right ? Then don't hesitate, turn them on. I've got about -500 read offset correction on my Teac e540, and I can run into problems because of it sometimes (cutting the beginning of track 1 on CDRs where I didn't insert a blank sector, burning analog recordings).

Quote
Even Andre Whiethoff, creator of EAC has stated that this "feature" is going to dissapear on the next release. Guess a lot of people got confused...


Not at all. It is the experimental glitch removal on C2 detection (second checkbox) that will be removed. The C2 secure mode (first checkbox) will stay. http://www.digital-inn.de/showthread.php?t...16565#post52886

Some help needed with EAC

Reply #4 –
Thanks for the help guys! So my configuration is 98% accurate..  Now the only problem I have is ripping my old classical CDs.. some of them are REALLY badly scratched, one track took over 4 hours to rip and was around 70% .. then I gave up...

Some help needed with EAC

Reply #5 –
Quote
some of them are REALLY badly scratched, one track took over 4 hours to rip and was around 70% .. then I gave up...

Do they sell SkipDoctors in Singapore?

Hey, Pio2001, looks like you made my same mistake! 

[/I]Quote from the link above:

Andre Wiethoff: We are talking of the new function "Use C2 information to correct errors"... The standard C2 mode will not be removed!

Pio2001: Oops, I also didn't read carefully enough.
OK for removing the use of C2 for glitch removal... I won't miss it.

Well, I wont´t miss it anyway, it has screwed me up in more than one ocassion. 
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

Some help needed with EAC

Reply #6 –
Quote
Thanks for the help guys! So my configuration is 98% accurate..  :) Now the only problem I have is ripping my old classical CDs.. some of them are REALLY badly scratched, one track took over 4 hours to rip and was around 70% .. then I gave up...

Try resurfacing or repairing the cd. Its easy.

There is a link in the faq dedicated to the topic.
 

Some help needed with EAC

Reply #7 –
SkipDoctors? No, I doubt it.. But anyway that CD isn't all that too much important, so I'll pass ( too darn lazy to drag myself out to hunt for the required equipment ) 

Again, thanks for the help guys!