Questions on EAC

[Chris V]

This is the first time I have used EAC with a vengence, so a couple of questions by way of a reality check.

Firstly on my old XP desktop it is burning at a speed of about 3 times - this seems a bit slow?

On the report at the end of each album rip the quality of most tracks is defined as 100.0%. One or two tracks fall short - one track for instance was 98.8%.  Is this normal?

Cheers
Chris

[Gerner]

This is the first time I have used EAC with a vengence, so a couple of questions by way of a reality check.

Firstly on my old XP desktop it is burning at a speed of about 3 times - this seems a bit slow?

On the report at the end of each album rip the quality of most tracks is defined as 100.0%. One or two tracks fall short - one track for instance was 98.8%.  Is this normal?

Cheers
Chris

Chris

Peter told me once to unfly "cache" while ripping with XP/EAC.

That speeded my 3-4 times up to 10-12 times.

No idea why.

Peter?

Gerner

[SeVeReD]

Doesn't EAC warn against unchecking this if your drive supports cache; EAC needs to know to work around it and check your data being ripped me thinks.
I get some 99.9 rips, but 98.8 might be worrisome... try cleaning the disc?  Also, drives go bad fast it seems.  My (expensive :/ ) plextor 760A drive only lasted a year... but many many movies and even more cds (~+1500) were ripped on it in that time.  I just picked up a pioneer dvr-2810 sata dvd/cd writer... seems to work well.  I slow it down to 8X when ripping or it would rip faster... which I don't trust (vibrating discs and such whirring at high speeds.. idk)

[PeterSt]

Doesn't EAC warn against unchecking this if your drive supports cache;

Of course ...

OF COURSE THE CACHE MUST BE OFF hence not active.

Gerner, your speeding was related to calibrating the drive, so it would know the beginning of a track instead of having to search for it. That may differ 10 seconds per track. Remember ?

[SeVeReD]

Doesn't EAC warn against unchecking this if your drive supports cache;

Of course ...

OF COURSE THE CACHE MUST BE OFF hence not active.

Gerner, your speeding was related to calibrating the drive, so it would know the beginning of a track instead of having to search for it. That may differ 10 seconds per track. Remember ?

Wait.  I don't understand.  If EAC, (using detect read features) says Yes to my drive caches, then I need to checkmark "Drive caches audio data" in Drive Options > Extraction Methods tab... right???

From EAC help:
"If your drive caches the audio just read, it would be a problem to read this data again in order to compare both extractions to find out if they match.  In that case this option has to be enabled, so that EAC will clear the cache by overreading it.  If your drive support this feature could be tested using the fuction at the bottom".

[Chris V]

Wait.  I don't understand.  If EAC, (using detect read features) says Yes to my drive caches, then I need to checkmark "Drive caches audio data" in Drive Options > Extraction Methods tab... right???

I have 2 drives in my PC (CD and DVD). Initially I unchecked the cache boxes, but when using the detect read feature it put a check back in on both, so I left it like that.

My drives and EAC PC are about 8 years old, (highly specified and expensive at the time!) so may have to think again which PC I use for EAC.

[PeterSt]

Firstly on my old XP desktop it is burning at a speed of about 3 times - this seems a bit slow?

This won't help you, but might put things in some perspective :

Sidenote : when you see EAC at each next track looking for 5-10 secs to the beginning of the track, you must calibrate your drive. Also note that the 10 secs this scanning for the track might take, is much on 20 secs the rip takes. So this is one good reason why it can take long.

Then, to my findings, all further settings you change for the better of speed, must be wrong (!!). I mean, all would incur for less accurate reading, less rechecking, or whatever it it is that may make the result worse. This IOW : don't try to change settings for better speed. You'll loose on that in the end by (my) guarantee.

Another sidenote :
I have written a couple of "glitch detection" programs, just because now *I* spent a weekend at ripping with poor result. This program tells me what's wrong and where, anticipating on what I see in the files itself (as you know Chris, I dive into the files when my ears tell me something is wrong ... which usually happens when some of you come up with great sounding tracks ... hehe). So ...
So I can measure (afterwards) what EAC was actually doing and can compare it with what it told me.

First of all, the track quality as presented by EAC says nothing. Oh, maybe it does, but what it is must be known by the author only.
DO NOT listen to whatever is shouted around this on the net, because everybody copies words from others, and nobody knows it really. I can at least tell *that* because I can see what it does or does not tell ... just nothing with logic sense.

When the quality is presented as 98% my program may see nothing. Mind you, this says nothing again, because my program looks for some specifics only.
When the quality is presented as 100%, 100% sure this does not tell that the copy was good. I can show you, or you can look for yourselves when I built the program in XX (which I will).

I have the examples, emerged by pure accident, that a track can be full of glitches without EAC knowing it, or ever trying to reread or whatever it takes normally to detect and recheck for errors read. Looking at the data, I'm talking about 1000ths of subsequent samples, containing the same data (a glitch), again, EAC never having seen that. The scary thing is : *this* is an example which is audible (these glitches last a tenth of a second or so), but I can also show you over 1000 detected separate glitches which are not audible (oh they must be, but I don't notice it).
I can show you files with waayyyy too less resolution, which is similar to glitching, but then consistently. So, repeating a sample 10 times before the "voltage" is switched to the next.

Actually ... when I look at a file for whatever reason, there is always something going on. I would even be as ignorant that EAC s*cks so much, that it's time for a better one ...
Btw, do note I'm talking about anomalies you can get rid of. So, rip'm again, and the problem has gone. Or is somewhere else now.

All together you might take this for the next coming future :
There is so unbelieveably much wrong with this digital sh*t, that at least I don't know where it all ends and will lead to. There can be so much wrong without absolute notice, that I'm sure we all don't know what we are actually listening to.

Okay, back to the topic : Chris, my good old ripping drive wasn't faster either. My poorly (!!) rippers are faster, without reason. The one I use now (a 52x reader) also reads about 2-3 x. But it reads good ! So at least I actually don't know what is achieveable together with good reading.
And for those who obtain a clearly higher speed ... better watch it closely. 

Peter

[Gerner]

One more thing....

I noticed if the CD is dirty or greazy or even worse : SCRATCHED...then my typically 8 - 10 times ripping speed certainly slows down. Certainly.

My EAC is set up for 5 times overreadings.

Gerner

[PeterSt]

Wait.  I don't understand.  If EAC, (using detect read features) says Yes to my drive caches, then I need to checkmark "Drive caches audio data" in Drive Options > Extraction Methods tab... right???

From EAC help:
"If your drive caches the audio just read, it would be a problem to read this data again in order to compare both extractions to find out if they match.  In that case this option has to be enabled, so that EAC will clear the cache by overreading it.  If your drive support this feature could be tested using the fuction at the bottom".

That would be correct.
What got into the author of presenting logic like this, I don't know. It feels kind of upside down and unrelated.
I have that box checked as, indeed, per the selfdetections of the program.

The more I think of this, the more I realize that it doesn't say anything ...

Djeezz, I know the cache should not be used, but how is that setting then ?? 

I now, and only just now see this checkbox under the Paranoid Mode radio button. You know, this button we never choose because it's "not recommended".
But let's be fair, when you see *this*, what would be the conclusion ? ...

[SeVeReD]

Wait.  I don't understand.  If EAC, (using detect read features) says Yes to my drive caches, then I need to checkmark "Drive caches audio data" in Drive Options > Extraction Methods tab... right???

From EAC help:
"If your drive caches the audio just read, it would be a problem to read this data again in order to compare both extractions to find out if they match.  In that case this option has to be enabled, so that EAC will clear the cache by overreading it.  If your drive support this feature could be tested using the fuction at the bottom".

That would be correct.
What got into the author of presenting logic like this, I don't know. It feels kind of upside down and unrelated.
I have that box checked as, indeed, per the selfdetections of the program.

The more I think of this, the more I realize that it doesn't say anything ...

Djeezz, I know the cache should not be used, but how is that setting then ?? 

I now, and only just now see this checkbox under the Paranoid Mode radio button. You know, this button we never choose because it's "not recommended".
But let's be fair, when you see *this*, what would be the conclusion ? ...

Have you tested Secure vs Paranoid mode as to which is the better setting (less errors?)  .... you're not making me feel very good tonight hehe as I look into a future of reripping my discs... yet again :/ hehelol  (dangit, and I started selling some of my lesser liked discs off hehe) Paranoid mode always sounded like me, I just didn't use it cause they don't recommend it... but IT's paranoid mode... it has to be better hehe [sigh] better not sell off any more discs untill you finish your ripper/checker i guesses

[Chris V]

Hi Peter

Your explanations make it much, much clearer.

Interesting there are still many issues with EAC, perhaps one day we will see XXHighEnd with built in ripper??

Perhaps I will give paranoid mode a try and see how it sounds.

Cheers Chris

[PeterSt]

Perhaps I will give paranoid mode a try and see how it sounds.

That would be a difficult job, because you wouldn't know whether it changed the result.
Better compare the two files then (which is not so easy, for reasons).

[PeterSt]

.... you're not making me feel very good tonight hehe as I look into a future of reripping my discs...

Psychological drama ...

[Boggie]

Hi everybody,

I'm very glad someone else shares the troublesome way of somehow ripping music on hard drives...
What always troubled me was the feeling that I can't make audio files sound the same when reading them with two different drives, or even with the same drive using different speeds. Even foobar (again, sorry) playback wasn't the same two times in a row. This (and the situation in the hifi forums, where PC/Hifi was just perfect and no problem) disappointed and discouraged me many times and made me keep my CD Player and forget about PC/Hifi time and again. But I always loved the idea of a PC as a source a lot, so i'm back at work reripping my collection and trying to learn to tame the beast somehow. (Not simply getting eaten by it would be a great start, as i can see from here)
Some great deal of motivation came from your site, which i accidently discovered and immediately loved. Thanks from the heart for this dedicated act of love and labour and for the patience and friendliness around here.

Now, for hopefully being not completely off topic:
Even if the CD/DVD Drive supports C2 Error detection, i used to uncheck the option because i *want* EAC
to re-read the data and look for these errors.
I also use the slowest speed possible, and, though i'm just listening to the files like i listen to records and since i don't ABX or... whatever... i felt the slow readings were clearly superior to the faster ones.
The readings of my Plextor 716 in external FireWire housing (with all sorts of brakes i can find  , resulting in 1.0-1.5x Speed) sounded better to my ears than my internal LGs or my Laptop Combos.
Does anyone share similarly sad experiences  ?

As a "solution", i recently found that foobar 0.943 has the "bitcompare" utility downloadable, where foobar does *something* and then tells me if the files contain differing samples or not. I hoped i could avoid furthermore painfully listening and worrying and just continue the ripping of my collection. (Convenience, anyone?)
Now i read Peters words "Better compare the two files then (which is not so easy, for reasons)"
Did you try some bitcomparing tools (maybe the foobar one) and did the sound prove the tools wrong, or, even worse, is there a reason why what we look at when we compare just isn't enough or the wrong thing?
( I still hope it's a dream and tomorrow foobar knows who's good and who's bad)

Cheers,
Boggie

[Chris V]

Hi Boggie

Welcome to the club.

Regarding the cache issue. Let your EAC check your drive. If it wants to put a check in the box, then leave it there.

This is the text you get if you hover over the box.

"If your drive caches the audio just read, it would be a problem to read this data again in order to compare both extractions to find out if they match.  In that case this option has to be enabled, so that EAC will clear the cache by overreading it.  If your drive support this feature could be tested using the fuction at the bottom".

Its a terrible bit of English but I think it means - if your drive wants to use a cache then EAC cant do its job properly as it cant get at the data to monitor it. By checking the box this disables the cache and EAC works at its best.

Hope this helps.

Cheers Chris

[Boggie]

Hi Chris,

In case of Cache issue i completely agree. I have all the CD/DVD Devices checked and configured properly, and i use the EAC Profiles for reading. The only thing i used to change, was that i didn't leave it to my DVD device to report C2 Errors, i unchecked only that thing against EAC's proposition.
My problem is that I don't feel all files with so called "Track Quality 100%" read by different devices sound the same. One of the promising things of PC/Hifi seemed to be having my music bit-by-bit at least on the HDD.
Now even *that* seems to be compromised or at least reeeaaally difficult. Earlier on in this thread I also learned, that EAC saying "Track Quality 100%" doesn't necessarily mean i've got all my music absolutely right, running through the EAC-FAQ then confirmed that it's more of an "how easy was the reading process of this cd" than a real statement about having bitperfect copies. 
What is or who can give a statement on what we have on HDD then?
Very well possible that i misunderstood Peters post, but i thought he was even questioning the "simple" bitcomparation tools. At that point i would have to set up EAC best i can and simply live with the results instead of wearing an all-day smile because of my bitperfect copies...
That is acceptable at least, but in the beginning it all started with that "perfect" attitude...

So, do you feel that it's not a problem if you read your CDs with different devices and speeds?
Do you think bitcomparing is obsolete or does it tell everything about the track?
Really having to listen to the reading results of different devices is a thing i preferably wouldn't want to do.
One step ahead of fumbling with tonearms, vtas and cartridges - and back again...

Cheers,
Boggie

[PeterSt]

Boggie, no ...

Maybe I'm a bit short of time to respond to everything, but let's start with the comparing thing anyway ...

The reason I said it's not easy, was from my perspective of having a "raw" file comparer tool, that's not intelligent.
With the latter I mean that it should leave out the leading (and trailing) bytes, which already would be off because of the CDRom drive not being able to find the exact beginning of the track. Or better, you may have not calibrated it for that (which by itself is a feature of EAC, but which might fail because it needs reference CDs you might not have). So, if the first 100 bytes are off, and the comparer is not inteligent, all will be off.
If you compare the things yourself like with WaveLab, you'd have to find the common denominator of the start, and chop off the bytes from the track that has the additional bytes. For more complicated looking waves it can turn out to be undoable.
So that's what I meant. And I don't know about the bit comparer from Foobar. It might be "intelligent".

Btw Chris, thanks for pointing out the ToolTips. I was already wondering how I came to my choices myself (a few years ago), today not understanding the plain labels on the form. The means of arranging for it all looks still strange to me, but ok ...

Anyway, yes, it is ridiculous that we can't seem to read audio from a CD error free, but that's life for now. Btw, there was a thread on bd-design once where all this was worked out to some extend, and although this thread has been deleted by the owner, I still have it myself, and there sure are means to improve the reliability. I have to make something for it though, and somehow I can't do everything at the same time.
My conclusion for today in that thread was : If you have the opportunity to have two drives and both calibrate them properly, and they both always produce the same data, you're okay with either drive. BUT, you'd have to be very careful in watching the performance of the drive you use; Once the performance degrades (gerenally : it takes longer to rip), do the comparison with the other drive again. You *will* be behind things though, because you'll always decide to check when you ripped several CDs wrongly. But it's a means ...
Oh, and please note that with more poor CDs there's hardly a chance that both drives will read the same data. So on that matter ... have three drives.
Quite awkward ...

The least you will have relatively soon is a means from within XX to check the tracks on "realistic audio data" ... I could say, that if you just can hear the difference from two different rips, 100% sure my checking for realistic audio data will come up with something.
Generally spoken "that you can immediatly hear the difference" would be rare. Or maybe not, but don't make too much fuzz about it until yuo just have proven it (somehow) to yourself.

Oh, and to be clear on things : once the track is on the HDD, it can't be readout wrongly (better : differently) from there.

Even if the CD/DVD Drive supports C2 Error detection, i used to uncheck the option because i *want* EAC
to re-read the data and look for these errors.

Looking the way EAC is setup (or presented) this might not be a bad approach. I mean, look how the procedure goes (or how it comes to me) :
You can check the box for "drive supports CRC", and in some later stage you can upload the "findings" from your drive to whereever it is for the next person. So you judge or do wrong, and the next one is in trouble.

As a sidenote, I mention that the best means of ripping (which is not necessarily "insane" mode), often is undoable. I mean, the rip of one CD could take hours and hours, just because EAC wants to make something of something that will fail anyway. Never noticed it ? as soon as it takes 10 minutes to read 5 seconds, you will have a glitch, no matter what. Solution ? rip less secure, so you'd at least have ripped 30 CDs for the night ...

Actually it all IMHO s*cks. No matter how good intentions are.

Might it help somewhat for now : Plextors always have been the best.

Peter

[Boggie]

Phew, 

thanks for the reply Peter, a number of questions has been answered now...
Having comparable Wav Files on HDD which can't be readout wrongly is some good point to start from!

I don't know how "intelligent" the foo_bitcompare is, but i didn't have to alter or find anything in the music files manually and i still was able to produce some tons of files which seem to be identical, as the tool says, though i used all-brakes-on secure mode as well as e.g. burst mode test & copy.
Seems to work, another good thing then. 

So, for now I'll just keep an eye on my Plextor and give the guy something to do.

Thanks again,
Boggie

[Gerard]

Peter,

(If i remember correctly) there was a day that you wrote .. That there could be 100 things that can and will go wrong even ripping with EAC. (cannot find the post  at the moment)

Why than use EAC and not b.v. MediaMonkey... ?  Meaning that long reading in EAC wil result in glitches but when i do it in MM it wil not give these glitches.  And when i have a "bad" cd now i don't rip it further.

Grtzzz

[andy74]

 

[Ava12]

Or PlexTools Professional if you have a Plextor drive?

[Gerard]

Or PlexTools Professional if you have a Plextor drive?

 

[Ava12]

Öhm, ok
Thanx^^

that's clear now

[Gerard]

Öhm, ok
Thanx^^

that's clear now

Haha

Sorry had to leave and did the answer a bit quick.... 

I Have a Nec if am correct... Next will be a Plextor if that is one of the best for audio ripping?

grtz

[Ava12]

I hope so. I recently got a Plextor Premium 2 and I can say that it is good.
It burns CD with less Jitter. But I sadly can't proof if it is very good at ripping. I just ripped my CD collection again with it. But I've no tool to verify my wavs.
So can't answer it.
I mainly got it to burn nice CDs with MFSL Ultradiscs and AMQR and all those things this draive supports.

[Gerard]

I hope so. I recently got a Plextor Premium 2 and I can say that it is good.
It burns CD with less Jitter. But I sadly can't proof if it is very good at ripping. I just ripped my CD collection again with it. But I've no tool to verify my wavs.
So can't answer it.
I mainly got it to burn nice CDs with MFSL Ultradiscs and AMQR and all those things this draive supports.

Ok...

I will remember that.... And ask you again when i am ready for it....

Thanx...

[soundcheck]

Hi folks.

I'd recomend to use Acuraterip.(A feature within EAC)
You need to set the right drive-offset of course. You can rip at much higher speeds.
You'll get a checksum verification afterwards. This makes sure that the rip is OK.
80% of all my  discs do deliver 100% results. That saves hell lot of time.

A program I actually prefer over EAC is dbpoweramp.

Cheers
Klaus

[Gerard]

Hi folks.
A program I actually prefer over EAC is dbpoweramp.
Klaus

Hi Klaus,

Why do you prefer this? 

And i would like to say that the new Mediamonkey has a rip possibility with a Jitter correction function ( Whatever they mean by that? ).

Grtz....

[soundcheck]

They have much better integrated  security features. I also think they have a much nicer UI.

MediaMonkey:
What kind of jitter reduction is that supposed to be? The only time you'll get jitter on the CD is while
you record it or if you do realtime playback from CD.
There is no jitter involved while you write the data to a file.

Cheers

[Gerard]

They have much better integrated  security features. I also think they have a much nicer UI.

MediaMonkey:
What kind of jitter reduction is that supposed to be? The only time you'll get jitter on the CD is while
you record it or if you do realtime playback from CD.
There is no jitter involved while you write the data to a file.

Cheers

Well i think they mixed up a few things and named it wrong... When EAC found a bad spot on a cd they find it also but than they say that they found several Jitter mistakes and that probably the audio data is damaged.

Grtz

Gerard

[manisandher]

For those of you with a Plextor drive, I highly recommend trying the '-usefua' command. This will essentially by-pass your drive's cache and speed things up massively.
 
With this, I get rip speeds of up to 40x on perfect CDs... and full error correction on less-than-perfect ones.

Simply add -usefua to the end of 'Target' in your shortcut and uncheck the 'Drive caches audio date' box.

IMPORTANT:

Even with a Plextor drive, there is no guarantee that this will work correctly, so check to see if EAC is still performing error correction on scratched CDs.
This may work with non-Plextor drives also (it works with my Yamaha)... but don't get fooled into thinking that it is when it isn't.

Mani.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I'm using plextor for 8 years I think.
First I had the PX-716 but broke down within 2 years.
But i had waranty and they provided me with a PX-760 IMO best drive ever (gigarec, autostrategy)

And really great service (as it should be).
but please use TY (Taiyo Yuden) discs with a certain(dont have the data here) media code  for burning.
I would really recemmnd this drive especcialy combined with TY discs.
The sound  is more relaxing in higher ends of the music comparing to other discs
If you can get a hand on a PX-760/755 buy it!!!
They don't make them anymore.

Sinds 8 weeks usings vista ultimate and my ripping speed went from X4 to X1.2
What thats all about ?????????????

On XP I used Plextools most of the times.
Before plextools i used EAC.
I have to setup EAC again
I read this topic and a lot of other theads.
Its seems I get more questions then answers here.
About cache, C2, errors etc.


btw is this going to help

For those of you with a Plextor drive, I highly recommend trying the '-usefua' command. This will essentially by-pass your drive's cache and speed things up massively.
 
And need a little help to apply this - MANI

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