Part Six
Holy crap, this CD ripping guide is going on forever! It seems like a while ago I started this guide and were getting to the actual ripping part! We’ve gone over setting everything up in the settings to rip your disk to FLAC files and form this point we’re going to let you know how to save those settings to a profile and the starting steps in ripping the files. So let’s get to it!
Here is your method on how you will save the settings:
- Click on the New button along the bottom bar of EAC .
- A window will pop up, go ahead and type in the name you want to use for your profile, something like “Farty Pants FLAC”.
- Select All EAC Options – this means all of the settings that you’ve selected creating your profile will be saved, you want all of them, right?
- Then select OK. EAC will then create your profile name to make sure that it is complete, it will contain your FreeDB Options, EAC Options, Compression Options, and Drive Options.
If you need to make changes to a profile, incase you find that you’ve saved an incorrect setting, load the incorrect profile profile (this is done by clicking on the Load button at the bottom bar of EAC ), make your correction, then click the Save button.
You are now ready to start ripping your CD and saving those FLAC files!
Now we are on to ripping, first up, loading the profile.
- If there is more than one profile that you have saved, load the profile you would like to use by clicking on the drop down menu and selecting your desired profile from the list, then click load. EAC will choose the drive associated to your profile.
Next we move to gathering the right info on your disk
- In nearly every situation, EAC will download the proper information from Freedb when you place the disk in your drive. Track names, CD name, disk artist, all will show up on the EAC main window.
But, if you do not supply Freedb with an email address, connecting to the server will not work. Also, if you do not check “On unknown CDs: automatically access online freedb database” in the EAC options, general tab, the correct disk information will not appear automatically.
- Once you do give an e-mail address, you can force EAC to manually gather the information about your disk by clicking “Get CD Information From…Remote freedb” in the Database menu .
If there is not any information due to EAC failing to contact freedb severs, click “freedb/Database Options” in the menu. In the popup window, click “Get active freedb server list”:
Now it you are really unlucky and there is no information because your CD is not in the Freedb database, add that information manually, see below.
- If you are about to rip a CD with various artists, check the “Various Artists” checkbox.
A special setup is used for the track titles on various artist disks: first is the artist name, then a space, then a forward slash and then another space, and then the title of the track. When you check the “Various Artists” box, EAC will interpret this as you have intended: the first section, before the forward slash, that is used as the “Artist” in the file name fields according to the various artist file naming scheme you set up in EAC.
Check your CD information against the artwork. If your artwork and the CD information shown in EAC are not the same, you will need to edit the CD information in EAC.
Some Information On Manually Editing CD Information
If you can’t get CD information from the database or the CD text, or if the information you got from freedb does not match the album artwork, you have to edit the CD information.
- Type the correct information into the boxes for Title, Artist, Year, and Genre. If you rip an album covering multiple CD’s, be sure and label CD’s #1 and #2 but keep the rest of the information the same. If you want to edit the Title of the track left click and hit the F2 key:
Please do not put the track numbers in the title fields. The track numbers will be added in proper fashion if you have set up EAC to do so in the file name tab.
- If all the titles are missing in EAC, you can type out the entire track list, one song title per line, in notepad or really any text editing program, then just select all and copy, then paste it into EAC. This is a much easier method and saves you from clicking F2 for each track, you will still need to add Artist and Album Title, Year, and Genre manually. You can copy a track list found online. Be sure that the list correct for the right release, so you do not end up with incorrect track titles. Also, the track titles in the list must be in the correct order and not contain track numbers.
- Select your track list and right click and copy, or select all and hit Ctrl+C to copy the track list to the clipboard. Go to the main EAC window and click Get CD Information From Clipboard in the Database menu:
- “Various Artists” song titles are sometimes submitted to Freedb in a format common for file names (Artist – Title) instead of the Artist / Title format that EAC needs in proper order to be able to tell the difference in artists from track titles. EAC contains a tool that saves you the trouble of having to type correct titles in such cases.
3. Detect Gaps
Once you load your profile and correct CD information is stored, you are finally ready to actually freaking rip something!
- The first step of that process is to hit F4 or click on Detect Gaps in the Action menu.
This makes EAC figure out the length of the (normally silent) gaps between the tracks. This normally does take a minute or two, depending on the number of tracks. You need to detect gaps this way before ripping the CD, or else the gaps will not show in the log file.
If it goes very slow, or if EAC freezes, cancel the operation and hit F10 (or click “Drive Options” in the EAC menu), then choose the Gap Detection tab and change the detection method. If neither A, B nor C works, try changing the accuracy (too). Also, if you have more than one drive, changing to another drive may do the trick. If you do not have another drive, and the problem persists, changing the ASPI layer might help..
- Check that the gap lengths look reasonable before proceeding with the rip. If there is a problem, change detection method.
That is it for part seven of the ongoing guide to ripping CD’s like a pro. In the next guide we will finish up the ripping process and hopefully move onto configuring EAC for MP3 ripping.