Question Using EAC + RAzORLAME for MP3

[leeland]

trying to rip with EAC and not really having any problems....only one i am running into is i am trying to get ID3 1 tags on all the MP3's so they will read on my Car MP3 player.....and can't find the setting for that....if anyone could please point me in the direction i would really appciate it


thanks in advance

leeland

 

[YoullMispronounceIt]

At the EAC main screen,

EAC > Compression Options > ID3 Tag tab

Hope this helps.

 

[leeland]

well i have gone into compression options and looked at the settings...there are three check boxes i am looking for one that will work so i can get the song name. i have checked and tried all the boxes in hope of geting it to work and to no avail...when i go into the mp3 and look at it with Win amp there is no data on the file info for ID3 tags

anyone ???

hope i am not being to vague

leeland

 

[leeland]

bump for anything ???

 

[Maetryx]

Well, I don't have the answer for you, but I'd like to add my own question about EAC: Is it supposed to be this slow? It's reading my CD at 0.7X :|

 

[YoullMispronounceIt]

Ahh Jeez, I had the same problem using RazorLame - get regular Lame. RL wouldn't do any kind of ID tags/renaming of files for me. I can't believe I didn't remember this earlier... whoosh...

 

[leeland]

well this is going to sounds like a silly question, but how do you use regular lame ?? i guess the reason i got razorlame is for the GUI control...to what i am assuming regular lame is kinda like dos with commands to encode your ripped wav file and for some reason i can not get it to work....if anyone could shed some lite on this i would greatly appreciate it....i am relatively new to ripping and encoding MP3's

thanks in advance
leeland

 

[Nefrodite]

razorlame is a gui. r3mix.net for more info on lame and stuff newest eac might have lame gui included.. i dunno

Well, I don't have the answer for you, but I'd like to add my own question about EAC: Is it supposed to be this slow? It's reading my CD at 0.7X

it rereads parts until there are no errors your drive must be especially slow or the disc is really scratched.

 

[Workin']

If you are using EAC you don't need any other front-end like Razor or whatever. Download the .exe version of LAME 3.90, and tell EAC to use an external program to compress the files. Put the path to the LAME .exe in there, set the command line options to --r3mix, and don't worry about any of the other settings for compression.

<< Well, I don't have the answer for you, but I'd like to add my own question about EAC: Is it supposed to be this slow? It's reading my CD at 0.7X >>

If the CD you are trying to read isn't dirty or scratched then I'm guessing you didn't set EAC up correctly to work with your drive.

 

[extro]

The latest recommendation from the MP3 cognoscenti is to use Lame 3.91 and to shun --r3mix in favor of the new presets, with "--alt-preset standard" being the most popular.

Hydrogenaudio is where many of the r3mix.net regulars have gone.

 

[Workin']

I wouldn't say you should "shun" the --r3mix setting.

The files created using the --r3mix setting tend to be 15-20% smaller than those created with --alt-preset standard, and on 99% of music they sound the same (or maybe not the same but neither sounds "better").

--alt-preset standard is a good option if you don't mind slightly larger files.

And if you are already using LAME 3.90 you probably don't need to worry about getting 3.91 right away - the changes are very minor and don't affect music encoding. Man, it's a pain keeping up with the latest version, 3.91 was released 8 days after 3.90!

 

[Maetryx]

<<

<< Well, I don't have the answer for you, but I'd like to add my own question about EAC: Is it supposed to be this slow? It's reading my CD at 0.7X >>

If the CD you are trying to read isn't dirty or scratched then I'm guessing you didn't set EAC up correctly to work with your drive. >>



I'm guessing I didn't set it up right. I don't seem to have C2 (whatever that is). My drive is a Lite-On 16x10x40 CD-RW. I use it as my only drive at the moment. I wonder if a Toshiba DVD-ROM would do better, as I'm planning on getting one some day.

 

[extro]

Set it for Secure mode with Drive has accurate stream. Leave caches audio data and C2 unchecked.

Also, if you have Normalization enabled that's going to slow down the extraction a bit.

 

[Workin']

<< I wonder if a Toshiba DVD-ROM would do better, as I'm planning on getting one some day. >>

My Toshiba DVD-ROM isn't too great at DAE. But it's an older 2nd generation drive, maybe they are better with the newer models.

 

[Maetryx]

Well, I extracted that same CD again after going through and starting from scratch on the settings. Much faster, but still starts off at like 1.5X and gets up to maybe 4X at the ned. Kind of slow, but I understand that the .wav created is "perfect".

Then I used RazorLAME to encode to MP3 using VBR CD quality (I loaded it from the included presets) and the MP3's are kind of big. Like almost 2MB per minute, so 7MB for a 3-1/2 minute song. Is this overkill? Is this a good MP3 or just a big MP3? When I play it back in WinAMP, the kbps thingy jumps all up and down from 192 - 320. It can't be too common for someone to make an MP3 with those settings because I've *never* seen the kbps jump up and down before.

I want to make good MP3's but I want them to adhere to an audiophile standard of some kind.

 

[Workin']

<< Then I used RazorLAME to encode to MP3 using VBR CD quality (I loaded it from the included presets) and the MP3's are kind of big. Like almost 2MB per minute, so 7MB for a 3-1/2 minute song. Is this overkill? Is this a good MP3 or just a big MP3? When I play it back in WinAMP, the kbps thingy jumps all up and down from 192 - 320. It can't be too common for someone to make an MP3 with those settings because I've *never* seen the kbps jump up and down before. >>

You don't need to use RazorLAME, why make it a multi-step process when you can get the exact same results using just EAC. Follow the instructions I posted earlier in this thread and avoid unneccessary confusion and gain added flexibility. If you use the --r3mix setting your files will be quite a bit smaller and still sound really good. --alt-preset standard will make your files be a little smaller than what you are getting now.

As far as the bitrate jumping up and down that is because you used the variable bit rate encoding option. Which means the bitrate is always changing, instead of remaining fixed. This is a much more efficient way to encode. And you don't see it too often because most people are clueless (I mean the general public, not the Anandtech community) when it comes to making mp3's.

 

[Maetryx]

Okay, I took Workin' advice and setup EAC to use the lame.exe with --r3mix switch. I even read the FAQ link in Workin's signature. Everyone else with questions about what settings to use when encoding and what's the best encoder should read that link too. Good stuff.

But I'm *really* here because I'm trying to read a CD that was pressed in 1986. I'm getting
read error
sync error
It keeps reading, albeit *REAL* slow. Is there a setting wrong, or is this just an issue with a really old CD?

 

[Workin']

Thank you for the compliment. Do other CD's rip OK with your setup? Or is it just this one you are having problems with?

Does your "old" CD play OK on a CD player? Is it all scratched or dirty? I'm sure you probably cleaned it, but it never hurts to ask. If you need to clean it, you can just wash it off under the running water in your kitchen sink, then carefully dry it with a soft towel.

I had an old CD that wouldn't read, it was covered with goo - but that wasn't the problem. While I was cleaning it I happened to hold it up to the light and the damn thing's reflective layer was FULL of pinholes! Somehow the CD itself had deteriorated. Had to toss it in the trash and buy a new one.

 

[Maetryx]

Well, this is only the second CD I've ever used with EAC! The first one was real recent and it didn't have any read error or sync error. So I guess that sort of answers my own question. But I just wanted a second opinion to see if maybe the sync error was a hardware specific error i.e. a setting.

After I do this old CD, I'll do a newer one and see if it goes back to flawless (but sort of slow) reads.

 

[Workin']

Here's some numbers to compare. I get about 4-5x ripping speed in EAC using either my Toshiba SD-M1102 32x DVD drive or my Yamaha 2100S SCSI 16x12x40 CDRW drive. And the rips aren't always perfect - but at least EAC tells me where the possible errors are.

Either one of those drives get about 12-16x using CDEX or Audiograbber. And the rips aren't always perfect - and neither program tells me where the possible errors are.

 

[Maetryx]

Well, my computer was all hung on that CD, so it didn't process it at all. Don't know what was wrong. But now I've got a new dilemma. I use this command line:
lame --r3mix *.wav
And then it processes the first file in the directory and quits. It names the output like this
originalfilename.wav.mp3

Can't I process a whole directory at once and get .wav replaced with .mp3 instead of appending it?

 

[Workin']

Don't you just have the ripped audio tracks converted to mp3 as they are ripped?

Or are you trying to process some .wav files you already have?

Here's how I have it set up:

IN EAC, under EAC->Compression options->External Compression tab, I check the "Use external program for compression" checkbox, choose LAME MP3 Encoder in the "Parameter passing scheme" drop-down box, put in the path to the LAME .exe, put "--r3mix" (no quotes) in the "additional command line options" box, and uncheck "delete WAV after compression" (in case I want to edit the file). I leave the other settings in the other tabs at their default.

And if you want to compress a bunch of .wav files you already have, you can do that using EAC as a frontend. Use Tools->Compress WAVs... to pick the files and then compress them.

 

[Maetryx]

Yeah, I had some WAV files from a different extraction and I wanted to compress them. I ended up using Razor. I couldn't get the EAC Tools --> Compress WAVs to work. But it's okay, because I got the exact same product using Razor.

From now on, I'll have it all done in one action by EAC.

 

[Maetryx]

I'm going to bump this thread so I can say "Thanks" to Workin'. You're FAQ write-up and your patient answers are a huge credit to the Anandtech experience. I'm now happily and smoothly ripping my CD collection to high quality, VBR MP3 with informative ID3 tags and useful m3u playlists. I've named my MP3s in a logical way so as to maximize their utility.

Thank you, Workin'.

One of the reasons I had such a hard time getting started is because one of the first CDs I tried to use in EAC was that 1986 release that wouldn't sync up correctly. I thought I had a setting wrong. But now I've found that my other CDs don't have that same problem. So I used Easy CD DA Extractor on the errant CD and RazorLame to compress the .wav files created. Obviously I gave up error correction capabilities by going that route, but it got the job done when EAC couldn't.

 

[Workin']

Thanks for the compliments, Maetryx.

And as we found out it never hurts to have more than one tool to do a job. Happy ripping!