Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

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Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #25 – 2008-10-07 00:14:01

First of all: thanks for your PM.

Well, the most important EAC config page (drive configuration) is not finished (or revised) yet. I'm currently working on it (but I don't have much time, sorry), mostly to give some more background info and to fit in the other config guides.

When I got you right, you possibly want to have an EAC config page where a quick setup is described. Might be a good idea, but...
I don't think that there is only one way to corretly setup EAC. That really depends on personal preferences (e.g. use secure ripping mode or T&C). And I think that there are thousands of guides out there telling you how to onfigure EAC, but no one explains all the options in detal. But that's my intention.

So I can only describe all the EAC options in detail, so that everyone can find our his optimal settings on his own.

Maybe there will be a quick setup EAC guide somtimes in our HA wiki, you never know...

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #26 – 2008-10-07 03:54:19

Drive feature descriptions in that article need no revision. You may want to gut the wizard section from the article if it's redundant.

Regarding Secure mode or T&C (I assume you mean T&C in conjunction with burst mode), it really shouldn't be an either/or situation. T&C in secure mode can sometimes reveal errors that would have otherwise gone undetected without T&C; not just for C2 rips, but non-C2 rips as well!

I think a quick setup guide is a great idea, so long as it is truly quick. It should do just as twostar is suggesting: run the wizard and list the settings which should be changed from the default. When it comes to what features your drive has and how it affects a ripping strategy, this might be a bit difficult. I suppose recommending people copy first (shift+F5), check for AR verification, and then perform a test pass (F8) if necessary. This is more efficient than T&C, though it does complicate the logging process. From there it only takes one sentence to tell people with a C2 rip where CRCs don't match to retry the rip without C2.

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #27 – 2008-10-11 11:42:28

Quote from: greynol on 2008-10-07 03:54:19

Drive feature descriptions in that article need no revision. You may want to gut the wizard section from the article if it's redundant.

Well, the drive options section is not completed. The current article only focuses on the most important options. I'll try to cover all the other settings as well. While doing this, I'll also make the drive options match the look and feel of the other settings pages.

But I'll keep that idea of an EAC quick guide in mind...

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #28 – 2008-10-11 11:58:13

Quote

I think a quick setup guide is a great idea

how about uploading a good/basic cfg file and doing a link, 'click here for cfg'? or a reg.

maybe this http://portableapps.com/node/5583 could be a start?

p.s. The guides could then focus on how to setup things for specific drive and on how to actually clicky around to get the desired results (like T&C mode secure vs T&C mode burst vs using my kitchen knife)

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #29 – 2008-10-11 21:34:14

You would still have detect drive features even with a .cfg file.

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #30 – 2008-10-12 13:06:57

I wrote up a quick setup guide. Most of it is copied and pasted from the existing wiki guides. Please feel free to add/edit and give feedback. Thanks.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The purpose of this guide is to quickly and easily setup EAC and still get the best rips possible.

Before you start, download and unzip LAME if you will be ripping to MP3.

Here are the steps of the install and configuration process:

1. Run the EAC V0.99 prebeta 4 installer available here. Just keep clicking next until you finish. (Optionally you can opt not to install FLAC, CDRDAO and the eBay icons.)

2. When you first run EAC, it will start with a configuration wizard. The first option to pick is I prefer to have accurate results.

3. On the next page, click I don't trust these values, detect the features for my drive.

4. Now, insert an Audio CD (Original, factory-pressed CD only. No CD-Rs, CD-RWs or bootlegs.) into your drive. EAC will now perform some tests in order to determine your drive's capabilities, and display the results within a few minutes. Do not run any other hardware intensive program during detection.

5. Next you will asked to pick a codec. Either LAME (MP3) or FLAC is recommended. If you pick LAME, you will be asked to locate the LAME.EXE you unzipped earlier. Whichever codec you choose, have EAC use the recommended settings.

6. Enter any email address (even fake email addresses are ok) in the freedb configuration screen.

7. Next part is to select a file naming scheme of your preference.

8. Last option to pick is I am an expert, let me use the full potential of EAC.

9. Look for the Accuraterip icon on the bottom right of the EAC screen. If it's there, Accuraterip is already configured. If not, replace the CD with others in your collection until Accuraterip recognizes one with a pop-up message. Just click configure.

10. After Accuraterip is configured, click EAC, Drive Options and make sure Drive is capable of retrieving C2 error information is unchecked.

11. Then click EAC, EAC Options. In the extraction tab, make sure No use of null samples for CRC calculations is unchecked.

12. Optionally, in the extraction tab enable Automatically write status report after extraction.

Additional Information:
- Learn how to use EAC with other codecs here.
- If your CDs are in excellent condition, you can get faster rips by ripping with burst mode. A burst mode rip is secure if verified by Accuraterip.
If the CD cannot be verified by Accuraterip, perform a test rip (F8). If the CRC column indicates ok then the rip was secure.

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #31 – 2008-10-12 13:57:11

Looks good to me. Only two thoughts:

In the first part, you generally describe the walkthrough of the wizard. In my opinion, this can be skipped and a link to the wizard page should be presented. OK, the single steps are covered a little bit more in detail there, but I think it's sufficient for a quick guide. Otherwise we create kind of redundant articles (again).

Quote from: twostar on 2008-10-12 13:06:57

- If your CDs are in excellent condition, you can get faster rips by ripping with burst mode. A burst mode rip is secure if verified by Accuraterip.
If the CD cannot be verified by Accuraterip, perform a test rip (F8). If the CRC column indicates ok then the rip was secure.

You also can get accurate rips with CDs which are not in exelent condition (as long as verified by AR). So, I wouldn't mention this in a quick guide, because this is already part of the burst T&C vs. secure mode "diskussion".

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #32 – 2008-10-12 17:28:10

>10. After Accuraterip is configured, click EAC, Drive Options and make sure Drive is capable of retrieving C2 error information is unchecked.

I advise against this. It will introduce the same problems as the Coaster Factory's quick start guide. People will take the suggestion as the be-all-end-all, when it is indeed possible to get accurate rips with the feature (sometimes even easier than not using the feature).

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #33 – 2008-10-13 23:43:24

Thanks for the feedback exec and greynol.

@exec
Rather than link to the wizard page, can we rename the wizard page to the quick start guide and add the other recommendations?

@greynol
I forgot to copy this recommendation instead from the Drive Options guide: "Unless you know that you can use this setting (C2) reliably, disable it. If you choose to enable it, make sure you also use Test & Copy."

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #34 – 2008-10-14 00:09:53

Quote from: greynol on 2008-01-14 17:11:59

Setting the option to "high" will increase the possibility for EAC to get consistent data, but consistent data doesn't always translate to accurate data.

This totally wrong & a newbie idea, HIGH will mean EAC will re-check the data more times than it would normally, the whole point of EAC's algorithms are based on re-reading data! (LOL) and that an error won't always occur at the same exact position, if you think more reads "doesn't translate into accurate data" then you shouldn't be using EAC at all

So the more re-reads the surer you can be EAC is right when it reports "No Errors Occurred"

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #35 – 2008-10-14 02:54:39

Quote from: westgroveg on 2008-10-14 00:09:53

HIGH will mean EAC will re-check the data more times than it would normally

Untrue. High means that EAC will attempt up to 5 sets of 16 re-reads before giving up. If EAC determines that it needs to perform re-reads and is able to get at least 8 out of 16 identical results on the first set it will move on without performing any additional re-reads on the questionable area. IOW, this particular situation would be no different than if the recovery were set to low.

Quote from: westgroveg on 2008-10-14 00:09:53

So the more re-reads the surer you can be EAC is right when it reports "No Errors Occurred"

Complete and utter nonsense. I'll trust the "No Errors Occurred" message from a rip that requires re-reads with the recovery set to low long before I will trust a rip that requires re-reads with the recovery set to high when more than three rows of "Error correction" illuminate.

You're a bit confused, westgroveg. Besides the fact that you don't really seem to understand the differences between error recovery quality levels, it would also appear that you are completely ignorant of the fact that errors can (and often do) repeat themselves. The more chances you give EAC to perform re-reads, the greater the chance that it will pass bad data off as good when an error has consistency.

For your edification:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=512047
...but don't just take my word when Spoon will tell you the same thing:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=532158

Quote from: westgroveg on 2008-10-14 00:09:53

if you think more reads "doesn't translate into accurate data" then you shouldn't be using EAC at all

...and there are plenty of people with drives capable of providing C2 pointers who don't for this very reason.

Restucturing/adding EAC related articles

Reply #36 – 2010-04-27 18:39:37

I thought I'd raise an issue with what seems to be inconsistent suggestions in the EAC Options wiki. My concern stemmed from a recommendation I gave in this post:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=703050

I don't see why we are so conservative with starting external compressors queued in the background and yet suggest that the compression priority be set to high.

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