Just thought I'd let you guys know that my favorite ripping tool Audiograbber just got released as freeware about a week ago.

I bought the shareware version a couple years ago and have been totally impressed with it. I know some people swear by EAC, but for some reason I just really like the way Audiograbber works, and I've never had any trouble with bad rips. Also, the people in the forums there are just as polite and knowledgeable as the ones here on the empeg board, which is extremely rare.

It's definitely worth checkin out.

With all the problems of XP not letting EAC see an audio disc in the drive, I think I'll have to check audiograbber out.
I've gone back and fixed that problem so many times, but now it won't work at all.

With all the problems of XP not letting EAC see an audio disc in the drive,

What problems are those? I hadn't heard about that.

I have not had any problems, at least, not yet. Should I be worried?

tanstaafl.

Dave - can you post some links that discuss this? I had an issue like that with my W2k machine the other day (since resolved).

-Zeke

The only issues I know of are Microsoft not including ASPI drivers with windows anymore in Win2K and WinXP. You need to install the manually either via ASPI's site or via ForceASPI (google).

So do I get my money back for paying for Audiograbber before I switched to EAC? ;P

Somehow the settings under EAC->EAC Options Interface tab do weird things. Set it to "Installed External ASAPI from VOB" restart and things will work fine for awhile, then one day it no longer sees the CD. I go into the Interface settings and they will be on Native Win32 with the other two grayed out.

Just now I looked in the EAC directory, where strangely, there was a much larger size WNASPI32.DLL with a date of Jan/12/04 vs the latest in the SYSTEM32 directory which was Jul/17/02. I haven't messed with EAC for awhile and I have no idea how that file got there. I copied the DLL from the SYSTEM32 directory into the EAC directory and I was able to go back in and set the Interface to ASAPI and restart and it works again.

Someone on the forum here sent me a PM about this one time, but I don't have it anymore, so it always escapes me of what to do to fix it when it freaks out.

That really is bizarre... what version of EAC are you running? I wonder if a beta had some odd bug.

A download/reinstall is what cleared things up for me. It was nice, it didn't delete my drive profiles or LAME preference settings.

-Zeke

I love it...

I make a post about Audiograbber being released as freeware, and the thread turns into a discussion about all the problems people have had with EAC.

I'm sorry, I just find that really amusing.

Waay back I bought AG, then lost my license email and never bothered with Xing (at the time it had a crappy encoder). I'll be ineterested to play with it again. I've got a scratched copy of a 5 song maxi-single by Concrete Blonde that was a radio promo piece (ie you can't get it) that EAC did wonders with. I'll throw it at AG and see how it goes.

-Zeke

If you'd like i could turn it into a thread about why i switched from audio grabber to EAC because of the problems i was having.

If you'd like i could turn it into a thread about why i switched from audio grabber to EAC because of the problems i was having.

Yeah, I'm sure you could... Just like I could turn this into a thread about how you're a bastard because you still owe me for that tuner module, and the sled you traded me is jacked! (Just kidding)

Seriously though, I'm not trying to start a "coke vs. pepsi" type war or anything like that. I just noticed that the tool I use is now free, so I thought I'd mention it here. Thought some other people might be interested. If nobody is, no big deal.

Maybe I'm just lucky or something. Been using AG for about 3 years now, and never had any problems. But then again, none of my CDs are scratched either, so maybe I'm not a good example.

I'm interested. Downloading now.

And I could turn into a thread about what a pile of crap EAC is and why the only reaon people use it is because it's free and because it has this mystical hype around it that leads some people to believe it provides better rips than any other software. And I suppose to some extent it does - if you have poor hardware. But the program itself is the perfect example of lack-luster user interface coupled with just the right amount of "feature-lack" where it counts.


AG's ability to create perfect tag data attached to a WAV and to act a batch encoding front end almost make it worth it alone. Of course it also provides perfect rips when using decent hardware at fast speeds. No need to (no time to) go out to the mall while ripping a single disc.


I just hope Jackie, the author, continues to develop the program now that he's not charging for it. It hasn't received too much attention in the past two years. Of course it doesn't have any significant bugs at this point, but a couple of promised features are still waiting in the wings.


Bruno

how do you set it up to rip at the highest bit rate.and do you rip straight to mp3.

WoW! AG is much faster than EAC! I like it!

Any suggested settings for the external LAME encoder, like the alt -preset hocus pocus that EAC uses?

You will want to use the same LAME switches a you do with EAC. Probably "--alt-preset standard" or "--alt-preset extreme". The hocus pocus of that part is down to LAME not EAC.

I've used AG for years and have been very happy with it and thought it was well worth the price. It could be both good and bad that it has become freeware, I would hate to see it become forgotten.

I suppose to some extent it does - if you have poor hardware.

If you include the CD itself within the realm of hardware, then, yeah.

Personally, I'd rather be sure that I'm getting a correct rip the first time than try to go back and rerip when I discover that it's wrong somehow. Since ripping is a one-time time expenditure, I'm willing for it to take longer to assure that it's correct.

On the other hand, EAC does have an awful UI. But it does have the ability to encode WAVs at a later date. Perhaps not as good as AG's, but it's there.

Jees... just a joke folks. I used AG forever and a day. It's good stuff.

Coke.

Any suggested settings for the external LAME encoder

Hmmm... Dunno.

I actually just used their internal version of the LAME encoder back when I used to rip to mp3. I used to set that to VBR-1, joint stereo, and somthin else that's prolly obvious, but I forget what exactly it is. =P

I’ve been rippin to OGG ever since the first 3.0 Alpha came out.

I actually just used their internal version of the LAME encoder back when I used to rip to mp3. I used to set that to VBR-1, joint stereo, and somthin else that's prolly obvious, but I forget what exactly it is. =P

Those settings are very out of date. Better to use a recent version of LAME as an external encoder and use "--alt-preset standard" or "--alt-preset extreme" if you have goldenish ears.

I am extremly new to ripping cds to mp3s considering ive only had my empeg for a week or so. I started out with EAC and it seemed good, but EXTREMLY slow. I then got AG and it was SOOO much faster and they have what appears to me the Same quality. I keep them both tho incase I end up having a pretty badly scratched cd cause I like EACs lil error checking bit..

EAC and it seemed good, but EXTREMLY slow. I then got AG and it was SOOO much faster and they have what appears to me the Same quality

The reason EAC seemed so slow was that it was spending extra time fixing errors that AG just ignores. The more EAC has to fix, the longer it takes. If you want you can configure EAC to ignore errors, and it will run nearly as fast as AG, but why bother in that case, because the AG user interface is much friendlier (though vastly less powerful) than EACs.

As far as the errors go -- the great majority of errors that EAC finds and fixes are probably so minor that the only way you could dectect them would be with instrumentation; you'd never actually hear the difference in an A/B listening test.

EAC is great for compulsive perfectionists like myself. (I just spent about 250 man-hours re-ripping, tagging, and encoding my entire 10,000 track collection, mostly to make all the tags perfect.) Otherwise AG is just fine.

tanstaafl.

Hmmm, I did some totally unscientific, but interesting to me, tests with EAC and AG once. I used new (ie no scratches at all) CDs as that is what I typically rip - along with the occasional CDs from the library (that frequently are quite scratched). With 3 different new CDs, AG was in average almost 5 times faster than EAC and the extracted wavs were identical, bit by bit. On a couple of scratched CDs the time difference was even larger, but in the AG rips there were some clicks and pops that didn't happen in the EAC rips...

So I use EAC for scratched disks and AG for clean/new CDs.

/Michael