I've noticed this since I installed a newer version of EAC--after it copies a track, the external FLAC compressor starts and extraction pauses. It can be quite awhile when ripping classical cds with long tracks. Is this normal, or is there a setting somewhere that I missed? It's increasing my rip time by quite a bit.
I find that FLAC compression is quite quick compared to ripping. What compression setting are you using?
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...C_Options#Tools (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_Options#Tools)
On extraction, start external compressors queued in the background
(Default: disabled, Recommended: disabled)
With this setting enabled, EAC starts an external compressor as soon as the first track was extracted and therefore the extraction and compressing processes are running simultaneously. Of course, this could lead to a time saving, but also can lead to some problems: it is more likely that errors during extraction/compressing occur on older PCs. So in general, you should leave this option disabled unless you have a dual/multi-core CPU.
(http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/images/9/97/EAC_options_Tools.png)
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...C_Options#Tools (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_Options#Tools)
On extraction, start external compressors queued in the background
(Default: disabled, Recommended: disabled)
With this setting enabled, EAC starts an external compressor as soon as the first track was extracted and therefore the extraction and compressing processes are running simultaneously. Of course, this could lead to a time saving, but also can lead to some problems: it is more likely that errors during extraction/compressing occur on older PCs. So in general, you should leave this option disabled unless you have a dual/multi-core CPU.
(http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/images/9/97/EAC_options_Tools.png)
Although I use dual and quad core machines at home and at work and rip with EAC following best practices for 100% verified rips, I still encode separately. Whilst I fire in metadata into EAC (or use freedb/musicbrainz then append with my own info) I use FLAC standalone with the Frontah frontend, tagging manually with Mp3Tag. EAC just extracts the PCM bitstreams.
This has the added advantage of removing any potential for extraction errors by ensuring EAC has 100% of my CPU available in a linear fashion without excessive interrupts from other apps. When things start to tie up a CPU towards 100% of its utilisation, 'strange things' happen even when it's not 100% kernel time. Once you get into a rhythm, especially if you're doing multiple discs, I think it's more efficient.