I am setting up Exact Audio Copy on my computer, and before I begin ripping my collection I am curious to see if anyone has any suggestions for improving the command-line arguments that EAC will be passing to FLAC for encoding.
I have ripped to FLAC in the past but I didn't really study FLAC or EAC beforehand, and probably just used the default arguments that came with EAC.
I know this is a matter of personal preference, but I am just wondering if anyone has some good encoding or tagging ideas I didn't think of. Also, I am not very familiar with the technical side of FLAC, encoding, or tagging in general, and want to make sure I am doing things correctly and not causing any unforeseen problems with my output FLAC files.
To begin with, I found an old recommendation at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=30959 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=30959)
(Forum post titled "Eli's Suggested EAC settings for FLAC, See wiki for official EAC guides"):
-6 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -T comment="%e" -T "comment=EAC (Secure Mode)" %s
I read some of the FLAC documentation and mostly figured out what those arguments do (except for a couple of things I will explain below).
I decided I wanted to compress at level 8 instead of level 6 because I don't mind a longer encoding time and I don't have many albums to rip, so I changed -6 to -8. I also learned that the placeholders in EAC have changed since that recommendation was posted, so I updated those.
Lastly, I decided to eliminate -T comment="%e" (or -T comment="%comment%" with the updated placeholder) for a few reasons: I wasn't planning on entering another comment on the "Comment" tab in the EAC Compression Options; it isn't clear to me what would happen if I gave FLAC two comment arguments, even if I left the Comment field blank in EAC; and I don't know why the quotation marks are only around the placeholder instead of the entire argument in Eli's recommendation. I wondered if there was a reason why he put comment="%e" instead of "comment=%e%", similar to how he wrote the other arguments, or if it was just a typo. (It would be great if anyone could explain either of those questions!)
So I arrived at:
-8 -V -T "artist=%artist%" -T "title=%title%" -T "album=%albumtitle%" -T "date=%year%" -T "tracknumber=%tracknr%" -T "genre=%genre%" -T "comment=Ripped Using EAC (Secure Mode)" %source%
Then when I went to actually paste this into the box in the EAC Compression Options, I saw that the default arguments in EAC covered all of those fields and more. So I thought to myself, "Why not fill in those other fields too?" and arrived at the following arguments:
-8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "COMMENT=Ripped Using EAC (Secure Mode)" -T "BAND=%albuminterpret%" -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%--tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" %hascover%--picture="%coverfile%"%hascover% %source% -o %dest%
Perhaps -o %dest% is required for the output files to follow the naming scheme I specified in the EAC options, but then I'm not sure why it wasn't included in Eli's recommendation. I also don't know what the %lyricsfile% or %coverfile% would be, but I assume it is safe to include those in the output FLAC files.
So I am just wondering if anyone has any comments on my FLAC arguments, any improvements I can make, anything I might want to add or remove for any reason, and if anyone can clarify some of the things I don't understand. Is there any unofficial (or official) standards for FLAC tagging or tagging in general that I should know about? Will the above arguments transfer all of the CD-Text from the CD to my FLAC files? Is there any reason I wouldn't want to do that? Can these arguments cause any unforeseen problems with my output FLAC files? What happens if I provide two comments to FLAC, as recommended by Eli? Why did Eli use the quotation marks differently in -T comment="%e"? Why didn't Eli include -o %dest% in his recommendation? What is the meaning of life?
Sorry if that last question is off-topic.
Thanks everyone!
You could desire to add -T "ALBUM ARTIST=%albuminterpret%". Foobar 2000 reads "Album Artist" tag, not "Albumartist".
Is there any unofficial (or official) standards for FLAC tagging or tagging in general that I should know about?
Start here (http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisComment).