Archiving Audio CDs

[ErikJan]

I'm thinking about archiving my audio CD collection. Obviously (?) I'd want that backup to be in the best possible quality. After some searching, I think the best way would be EAC (Exact Audio Copy) in combination with a FLAC external lossless compression.
I've installed this on my (fast) Win7-64 system and it works. However my BD-drive reduces the read speed of EAC (seems to be a bug as more have that problem); worse is that for each CD I rip, I need to do several steps manually. I'd rather have a system where I could just insert the CD and then EAC automatically "Detects Gaps" and then rips and compresses the contents to a fixed folder, then it should save the CUE there as well (I think).

Is there anyone who has experience with this? Are there tools that automate these steps or can I e.g. create a script that does this? Maybe there are other (good!) tools?

Any tip or hint is welcome!

[CLiNT]

EAC & LAME
It's been a few years since I've used EAC & LAME and that was with Windows XP.

Downloading And Installing EAC And LAME
List of recommended LAME settings - Hydrogenaudio Forums

[cafed00d]

I have EAC set up to always record to a certain directory. I also have it set up to create my preferred music directory structure and file names (artist/album/track_song.mp3). All I have to do is insert a CD and hit the record button on EAC and the songs go where i want. (Of course, then I have a whole process beyond that to even out the sound level, tweak the song tags, and obtain the CD cover image, after which I make two backup copies.)

I have also noticed that BluRay players/writers are not the best for ripping audio CDs (EAC gave mine a very poor score); I have a separate DVD/CD writer for that and it works like a charm - full audio CD rip in about 5-10 minutes.

[ErikJan]

Not LAME.. FLAC

[ErikJan]

I have EAC set up to always record to a certain directory. I also have it set up to create my preferred music directory structure and file names (artist/album/track_song.mp3). All I have to do is insert a CD and hit the record button on EAC and the songs go where i want. (Of course, then I have a whole process beyond that to even out the sound level, tweak the song tags, and obtain the CD cover image, after which I make two backup copies.)

I have also noticed that BluRay players/writers are not the best for ripping audio CDs (EAC gave mine a very poor score); I have a separate DVD/CD writer for that and it works like a charm - full audio CD rip in about 5-10 minutes.

With my BD I have "Accurate Stream", isn't that something good?

How did you preset your output folder in EAC? It continues to ask me. I also understood it's good to preread the gaps... what about the CUE file? I understand this is required to reproduce the CD...

[Paul T]

I use MediaMonkey (it's free, although I paid 'cause I like it so much) to rip all my CDs to FLAC. This reduces the size to 60-70% of original and I then either stream from the PC or burn to other media for use in the car etc. The original CDs are neatly ordered on my shelving just in case I fancy reading the sleeve notes once in a blue moon.

cheers, Paul

[Doc Brown]

Any reason you don't consider simply copying them to blank CDs?

[ErikJan]

With my BD I have "Accurate Stream", isn't that something good?

How did you preset your output folder in EAC? It continues to ask me. I also understood it's good to preread the gaps... what about the CUE file? I understand this is required to reproduce the CD...

I'd appreciate if someone could help me

[cafed00d]

I recently bought some new CDs I wanted to rip and just now installed the latest version of EAC (the one I was using was over a year old, I now have V1.0 beta 1 ) so I had to go through the whole configuration thing again. Here is what I did:

a) In EAC Option, on the Filename dialog, I set up this Naming Scheme: %D\%C\%N_%T
This means to create a directory for the CD artist, a subdirectory for the CD title, and name each file using the track number and song name.

b) In the Directories tab, I selected "Use this directory" and picked the directory where I want the music placed. I picked a temporary working directory because I run new music through a process (MP3Gain to even out the volume level, MP3tag to clean up the tags, grab the cover art as folder.jpg, etc.) and after that I copy the music to another location (not My Music!!!) and also make a backup on a second hard drive. I eventually also copy the files to an eternal hard drive as a backup.

With these setting, EAC creates the WAV file in the directories I specified and when it runs lame it converts the files in that same directory, I also installed Flac and it did the same thing - converted the WAV to flac in the same directory retaining the naming scheme.

BTW, EAC crashes each time I click on a Browse button! I don't know when this broke, it has been a while since I set up EAC so it's been a while since I clicked on Browse. And my old version crashed on browse, which is one of the reasons I upgrade to the latest version, which also crashes on browse. So I had to copy&paste the directory names from Explorer (yeah I could have typed them but I'm lazy).

Also, regarding CD drives. EAC evaluated my two DVD writers and BluRay writer. It liked my HP DVD Writer the best and the BluRay the least. The BluRay gave it some problems - it took about 10 times as long to evaluate that drive as to evaluate the others - I seriously though that EAC was hung but decided to wait it out.

[CLiNT]

EAC & FLAC Guides:

EAC and FLAC
-T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -5 %s
Eli's Suggested EAC settings for FLAC, See wiki for official EAC guides
-6 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -T comment="%e" -T "comment=EAC (Secure Mode)" %s
Beginners guide to EAC
Exact Audio Copy configuration for FLAC encoding
AutoFLAC