ok, a couple of questions. First of all, I'm using the latest version of EAC and lame 3.91. Could someone assume I'm an idiot (a safe assumption, BTW) and tell me exactly what settings I should use to get the best quality VBR files? Also, I have a Plextor 8/4/32 drive. Do I need to do anything to *it* to make extraction easier/better?

Finally, I'm running a Celeron 533 with 512 mb RAM. If I have it rip and encode a cd in the same session, it does it in about real time. i.e. if a cd is an hour long, it takes about that to do both steps. Is that normal? I'm upgrading to a 1 gig/133 next week. Should that make a big difference?

Uhhh, yeah. What Nikko said.

tanstaafl.

checkout r3mix.net

Yo!

The -r3mix setting is nowadays a bit 'outdated' (don't shoot me... it's what I've heard..)
Currently the -alt-preset settings are the most tuned one and also activily being observed.

So use lame with "-alt-preset standard"
There are more -alt-preset values, but mentioned one is comparable with -r3mix but slightly better. It produces VBR's with average 170kb, and LAME is OK what about VBR's. See for the other alt-preset values the readme provided by lame.

About the time you need: encoding to mp3 is a time consuming story. de-coding instead is fast.

Good luck,

EiSl

I'm trying to set-up EAC with LAME 3.91...

I'd like to use abr, 128 bit (the docs for LAME say that VBR is not a good idea...).

What do I need to use as the LAME command line options in EAC? It's currently set like this:

%l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s %d

Any help?

- Thanx
- Jon

Why is VBR not a good idea?

Calvin

From the LAME USAGE file that is in the zip file...

VBR is a true variable bitrate mode which bases the number of bits for
each frame on the measured quantization error relative to the
estimated allowed masking. VBR is currently under heavy development.
Right now it can often result in too much compression. I do not
recommend using VBR. But if you must, you should at least use a
minimum bitrate of 112 kbps.

When I currently convert a WAV file to an MP3 file in EAC (or with LAME), it doesn't seem to populate the tags at all. Wish there was an easy to follow guide to using EAC... This is a PITA.

- Jon

Thats some really old notes there. They arent true anymore. Feel free to use vbr with lame. There is a eac tutorial out on the web, but i don't have the link anymore. maybe its linked from r3mix?

Nikko,

On your Plextor the ripping part should be fairly quick. I use a SCSI 24x Plextor reader and that yields an average read speed of about 18x in EAC - what ave. speeds are you seeing?

As an example, on a PIII-600 I can encode 192k VBR at about 3mins for a (LAME) 9300 frame size file, since the 2nd part is very cpu intensive you will see a big boost in performance.

Hey, I've just noticed the date on your post, re. I'm upgrading to a 1 gig/133 next week - presumably you have the new PC now? How does it compare in EAC?

Cheers,
Rue

EAC doesn't populate the tags for me either.

I use a VBR min of 128.

I don't see by ABR would be better.

Calvin

Thanks, Rue. I did upgrade to the 1 gig cpu. I haven't noticed the dramatic improvement I was expecting. It definitely seems more brisk, but not by the leaps and bounds I was expecting. I guess I shouldn't complain, in effect, it seems like maybe it does the whole process at about 2x whereas before it was 1x. FWIW, I am running the -alt-preset extreme.

My bigger concern is the ripping part. As I noted in another post, I was extracting audio at a max of about 3x with my Plextor as a master on the secondary IDE. For other reasons, I needed to have it set as my slave temporarily on the same cable. At that point, the extraction rates jumped to 9x or more consistently. When I had to go back to having it be a master, the extraction speeds dropped down to what they had been previously. That strikes me as odd, and nobody has really been able to explain to me why that is.

Best setting I have found are :-
--alt-preset standard --add-id3v2 --vbr-new
that gives the best quality/size combination with IDV2 tags and the fastest vbr speed. Works great.
The --vbr-new doubles the throughput on my TBird1200 on W2K

Just my 2c

EAC will not populate the tags until you specify it to.

Click Database / Get CD information from / CDDB database. Then it will populate the tags. (Should, anyway)

Be aware that the --vbr-new option is still in a very beta phase !!
The --alt_preset standard is already be around for a while and has been tweaked severall times.
I would suggest that you encode a difficult music with both settings and then compare those two.

Cheers,

EiSl

Eac is what I use, 192 vbr, and I always get tagged info (after telling it to go fetch the info), I just wish I could find a way to make it create directory's for artist/album (one of the cool things about xing). Any one know if thats possible in EAC without manually creating the folders?

Go to EAC options, Filename tab, and use something like this:

%A\%C\%N - %T

the \'s denote a folder.

Cool man! Thanks

Thanks for the tip, that really helps me too. But naturally I have a follow up question. I tend to extract a bunch of cds and then encode them all at the same time overnight. When I tried doing that using string you provided it didn't put them in their own folders (even though it did do that when I just rip/encoded in "one" step). Is there a different setting I have to change to make that happen?

Hrmm... good question. Might be one to ask on an EAC forum if there are any. I would think it would extract to the correct directories... but i've never done it that way so i don't know. Sorry. =]