e_dogg

I'm finally getting around to ripping my entire CD collection to mp3 for use on my Zune. My wife and I have a crap load of CDs so it's quite the project.

I've been using a really old program called Audiograbber with the LAME encoder to create 320kbps MP3 files. Even though development stopped on it close to 5 years ago, it's still a great app and the author made it freeware when he stopped building it.

Since I'm finally attacking my entire CD collection and not just CDs here and there, I figured I'd try EAC (Exact Audio Copy) since I've heard good things about it. I've ripped a few CDs with it and even though I set the bitrate to 320kbps and pointed it toward LAME 3.95, it only rips to 192kbps. Plus it's really really slow and takes about 30 minutes to rip a CD whereas Audiograbber takes about 10-15.

How can I make it actually rip at 320kbps? And why is my 5 year old, defunct application twice as fast as what's supposed to be a highly rated program?

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lozanoa11

I would reconfigure it. It should not be doing this.

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low strife

Use EAC, rip to wav, compress .wav into mp3 using dbpoweramp (keeps all the i3d tags perfectly intact).

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redalert

I had the same issues with EAC but I just ripped everything to .wav with EAC and then converted it to mp3 with LameXP

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e_dogg

I modified the setting in the Compression Options > External Compression tab. That's the right place right? Or should I just do the configuration wizard again?

But dbpoweramp costs money...after I'm done doing my massive CD rip, I won't be doing many more since I usually buy MP3s from Amazon rather than CDs these days.

Seems silly to use two programs where one should do the trick, no? Also, I have about 100 CDs left so speed and simplicity is a good thing.

Maybe I'll just stick with Audiograbber...it's old but seems to work better than EAC in terms of speed and bitrate.

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Coma

Dumping one program, which is supposed to be better, for the favor of another because it doesn't work as expected is never a good idea. Most of the time, it's not the program causing the problem, but the user.

I've never actually used it, so please post screenshots of the relevant config windows ;E (alt+prtscrn to take a screenshot of the active window)

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e_dogg

With how convoluted EAC is, it could very well be a PEBCAK problem. But I would expect the "bit rate" setting to determine what the output bit rate is of the MP3 file, though.

Edit: I'm also not thrilled with the speed...my sig rig shouldn't take 30 minutes to rip and encode a CD when all the other apps I've used take about 10-15 minutes.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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Coma

The problem is with the 'additional command line options' area... there's -V 5 and then -V 2. It's set to quality mode, at quality 2. So LAME decides the bitrate, not you. Since -V 2 is the last option, it overrides everything else. -V 2 on average, in stereo, ends up at about 192kbps VBR.

Do you have any idea what all those variables (%I, %s) refer to? Can you look for reference?

Also, what options are there in the Parameter passing scheme dropdown?

The speed issue will probably magically disappear when we solve the other issue. You're using the same executable to encode, so unless EAC has somehow managed to make copying files around twice as slow...

If you can, link to the guide you used to set it up like this.

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LiNERROR

ever tried CDEX? http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

i haven't bothered using a windows frontend for lame in ages, but i would suggest you check it out...

make sure you're using the latest LAME...

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e_dogg

Thanks for the explanation. All of those parameters were in there by default. I looked through the LAME documentation and could only find the description for -V.

Just to experiement, I cleared that box out which caused an error when LAME went to encode the .wav file.

Here's the list:

L3Enc MP3 encoder and compatible
Fraunhofer
Xing X3Enc
Xing ToMPG
LAME MP3
GOGO MP3
MPC
Ogg Vorbis
WMA9
FAAC AAC
Homeboy AAC
Quartex AAC
PsyTEL AAC
MBSoft AAC
Yamaha VQF
Real Audio
Monkey Lossless
Shorten Lossless
RKAU
LPAC
User-defined

To experiment, I selected the entry for LAME MP3 and it seems to be producing 320kbps files now. And it offered to clear the options for me, which I let it do.

I didn't use a guide. I downloaded, installed, walked through the configuration wizard, then poked around until I got CDs to rip.

EAC seems to be working now, but still a little slow. Thanks for your suggestions.

I'm not sure I'm thrilled with EAC, though. For its complication and difficulty to use, I can't really tell a difference in audio quality between the MP3s I've ripped with Audiograbber and the ones from EAC. Unless, maybe there's another setting I'm missing or something...or my ears just can't pick up the difference.

I just gave that one a whirl but I got an error about not being able to open a .dll when I started the program. I didn't write it down so I don't know exactly what the error was but it asked if I wanted to use a SCSI dll instead so I clicked "no".

It wouldn't play the CD I had in the drive. So I restarted the program and clicked "yes" and it still won't play the CD.

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