Ripped from
http://www.musicdonkey.com
Thanks:- Thaspian
http://www.varkoume.com/donkey/viewtopic.php?t=11375
1. The first step is to rip the CD to MP3(you should know what this is) or FLAC(lossless copy of the original CD).
Exact Audio Copy is by far, one of the best rippers, and for
quality , hands down the best ripper.
Configuring Exact Audio Copy
During the beginning wizard when you first start it(if it doesn't start or you hit cancel, just go file - configuration wizard), it asks which drive to configure. Select the drives you'll be using for CD ripping only. Then hit next, choose I prefer to have accurate results . Hit next, choose I don't trust these values, detect the features for my drive . Hit next, put an unscratched in good condition CD in, and hit next to let it test. When it's done, hit next, then hit next again when it says it configured your best drive. Uncheck the install and configure the LAME.exe compressor. You'll want to do this manually. Then, when it asks you for an email for freedb, put an email in. This will allow it to use FreeDB to put filenames and ID3 tags on the files.Then it asks wheather you want expert or beginner settings, hit expert.
Then, go File - Drive Settings. Make sure it is on Secure Mode, with anything related to C2 unchecked , if it is, it overrides EAC's secure mode in detecting errors and this can cause a lot of errors.
Then, go file - EAC options. The extraction tab has a few basic options, and someplace where it should have adjustable settings. Change the two options at the bottom, extraction and compression priority, and error recovery quality to high so you get the best quality and no skips/pops in the release. Go to the tools tab, check create M3U playlist on extraction . Then to go the filename tab. Under naming scheme on the left, put this in %A - %C - %N - %T . This makes a filename consisting of all the info needed for every song when it's ripped. The first screen, which is the most important, should look like this.
When you rip the CD, it may look like it froze or is just stuck, but it isn't, it's just ripping. This is a common misconception, it's just slow. When EAC is done ripping, if you can, save the extraction log and put it in with your release.
Now you must decide what format to rip to. Here is a little information to help you judge.
FLAC is lossless. So you get a bit for bit copy of the original CD. The files are big, but still a lot smaller than WAVs. APE, also known as Monkey's Audio is a more popular one, yet it takes more CPU to encode, decode, and play, and it doesn't work as well with other OSes, and they both produce very similar filesizes, so we'll go with the open source FLAC codec. The
Rio Karma digital audio player is one of the popular players that supports this format. Check it out.
MP3, well you know what this is already. Except, there are many different encoders for MP3. We're going to use the best of the best, which is LAME.
So, FLAC is a perfect copy of the original CD, while MP3 is a smaller, compressed copy of the original CD, yet with things taken out. In a quick switchback, telling MP3s from the original in 99% of the cases is impossible, yet after two weeks of listening to MP3s, when you hear the original, the difference is there in a way.
Ogg Vorbis is like MP3, a lossy format, just much newer, and improved quality. It works with quality levels, instead of bitrates. For optimal quality, the developers have always recommend -q 6.
iRiver's latest players along with the
Rio Karma can play Ogg Vorbis files. Check them out. I will be using the GT3b1 encoder version which is best for bitrates -q 4.5 and above, since we will be using -q 6.
How To Rip To MP3.
In EAC, hit F11 to go into the compression options. Check use external program for compression. Where it says Parameter Passing Scheme, select user defined encoder. For use file extension put .mp3 Then point it to the LAME.exe file you have. The
best version of LAME right now is 3.90.3. Get it
here .
To rip to a high quality VBR MP3, use the command line in the command line box,
--alt-preset standard %s %d . The %s and %d are needed so it will actually see an input and output file to encode. The --alt presets for worked on for years by the developers of LAME and --alt preset standard is the VBR one(the standard, as it says).
Now all that's left to do is hit ok, select all the tracks, and hit shift F5 or right click the files and hit copy selected tracks compressed and you're done!
VBR makes for better quality since the bitrate changes when it's needed to be higher, yet while still conserving filesize when the music is simple enough for it to be lower. 192k CBR is not acceptable in my good headphones for a lot of rock songs to me, and I have bad hearing as it is.
*Notice on --alt preset extreme * This was
said by the developer of LAME and of the --alt presets, Dibrom;
| Quote: |
Originally, I had planned to modify --alt-preset extreme to use noise shaping 1 but stopped working on LAME before I got around to it. At the time 3.90.2 was released, most of these samples weren't known about and so I believed that I'd finally fixed the artifacts related to noise shaping 2. Most of the problems were solved, but a few remained which were discovered later in the samples you've pointed out.
So, yes, in place of --alt-preset extreme, one should probably use --alt-preset standard -Z instead. FWIW, --alt-preset extreme never really did provide much of an improvement over --alt-preset standard, if any improvement at all. I've never recommended that people use this over --alt-preset standard, and have instead recommended --alt-preset insane if they find --alt-preset standard to be insufficient for some reason. I guess the main reason that I even included an --alt-preset extreme option is because I knew that people would tweak beyond --alt-preset standard even if they couldn't hear the difference anyway, so I figured it'd be best to give them a theoretical improvement rather then have them use some external switches which would negatively impact the --alt-preset behavior. |
So extreme is a waste of space compared to --alt preset standard -Z.
Ripping to Ogg Vorbis.
In EAC, hit F11 to go into the compression options. Check use external program for compression. Where it says Parameter Passing Scheme, select User Defined Encoder, and put .ogg as the file extension. Then set the path to the oggenc23d.exe file, which is the encoder. Get it
here zipped with some other stuff. Then type into the little command line box,
-q 6 -a "%a" -t "%t" -l "%g" -d "%y" -N "%n" -G "%m" %s .
It should look like this
Now all that's left to do is hit ok, select all the tracks, and hit shift F5 or right click the files and hit copy selected tracks compressed and you're done!
Ripping To Lossless FLAC.
In EAC, hit F11 to go into the compression options. Check use external program for compression. Where it says Parameter Passing Scheme, select User Defined Encoder, and put .flac as the file extension. Then set the path to the flac.exe file, which is the encoder. Get it
here zipped with some other stuff. Then type into the little command line box,
-8 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s . This will make a FLAC file at max compression, which verifies itself so it doesn't have errors. It should look like this;
In EAC's Options, in the tools tab, for this type of release, turn off the M3U playlist option,
and on the extraction tab uncheck the delete trailing and silent blocks thing. This DOES NOT apply to FLAC+CUE!!!
Then go Action - Copy Image and Create CUE sheet, and hit compressed, it'll now rip to an FLAC with a CUE. Once it's done ripping, rename the .flac file so it only has .flac - usually EAC rips and makes the filename filename.flac.flac, which isn't right. So when it's done ripping, just rename it to filename.flac, with filename of course being the artist and album.
The CUE sheet is important for a lossless release, as burning seperate tracks is different from burning with a CD image(it won't make an exact copy of the original). If you want to decode it back to a WAV, keep all the compression settings like they are to rip to FLAC, then go action - tools - decompress and choose the FLAC file to decompress.
2. Get WinRAR(use eMule for this *hint*) and install it.
3. Ok, now put all the files into one folder by themselves, and name the folder with the Artist and Album, info on it(such as EAC LAME VBR or EAC APE CUE so people know what the ripper/format of the file is), and if you want to support musicdonkey, add the tag [musicdonkey.org] to the folder name(for example, Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP(EAC, APE, CUE) [musicdonkey.org]). Then hit add to archive on the foldder, and RAR it at store, and set it to delete the original folder when done.
4. Put it in the eMule shared folder. Go to eMule's shared files tab, and hit reload. Wait for your file to show up there. When it does, right click it and hit copy ED2K lino to clipboard . Then go to the music release forum here, and put it there. To make a nice neat release post, use
TidyPost.
Why does this guide point to an older version of LAME for MP3 encoding?
LAME 3.90.3 is the best version, not the newest. Actually, LAME 3.93.1 was developed in December 2002, I wasn't even a member here yet.
3.93.1 doesn't work as well with the --alt-presets, and hasn't been tested with them at all.
The creator of the --alt-presets stopped developing LAME at 3.90.2. 3.90.3, is 3.90.2, just with a -Z switch added to some presets so it'd have less screw ups. Any LAME after 3.90.* wasn't developed by Dibrom and co(people that made and tested the --alt-presets), so they don't go recommended. LAME has only gotten worse with each new release since MP3 has pretty much hit the best it can be.
3.92 and 3.93.1 actually give a lower average bitrate with the same VBR presets as LAME 3.90.2(--alt-preset standard/extreme -Z), so I wouldn't say it's safe to use them.
That thread I linked to over at hydrogenaudio for LAME, will always show the best version of LAME out right now.
so I installed CDex, no probs at all with this one 
