EAC & title track naming

SteveAS

Established Member
Joined
Nov 3, 2006
Messages
98
Reaction score
13
Points
30
Location
Newbury
Hi,

Sorry for this dumb question, but I'm new to ripping music.

I'm trying to get to grips with all the software required to be able to rip my CD collection on to my PC in lossless format, i.e. .flac codec.

I've downloaded EAC and FLAC. When EAC reads a disc it doesn't recognise the track information such as the artist, song title, album name.

What is it I need to do in order to have this info on each track? Is this what 'tagging' is all about or am I getting my knicks in a twist? I understand you can download/buy tagging tools but I'm unsure as to what they achieve exectly.

Please help. I want to get organised and rip all my CDs to the PC (or a NAS but not at that wife acceptance stage yet ;)). Before I do all this (I tried a CD rip to test the EAC software) I need to know what else I require before all the ripping I do becomes a wasted effort down to missing some very important points.

I have read the stickys but am still lost. The useful links are just that, but me being me is just too thick for this at the moment.

Anyway, the wife is getting impatient and isn't convinced that what I am trying to do is going to benefit her (I've told her there wont be any need for huge cd storage racks in the living room, the great touch of a button access to music, etc etc).

TIA, Steve
 
In eac options..

%A\%C\%N - %T

in flac options

-8 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s

with that it'll rip to \album\artist
if the sonos supports replaygain don't forget to do that in foobar.
 
Alt + G will make EAC get the CD details from freedb.

Are you ripping in secure mode? I use secure mode with offset and test and copy each track. Takes time but it is worth it to ensure an accurate rip.
 
>I've told her there wont be any need for huge cd storage racks in the living room<

Tell her that her concern begins and end in the kitchen!:devil:
 
Steve, tags are bit of information that are stored in the files themselves that tell you about the files ('metadata' or 'data about data') - . These basically 'labels', which are essential for sorting tracks out and organising your collection. Tags contain info such the album name the track is from, track name, artist name, track number, genre, year etc etc. MP3 players use this info to sort the music, for example when browse by Artist, the play will display all tracks which have a matching ARTIST tag. Another very basic example is that the MP3 player will order the tracks based on the TRACKNUMBER tag --- getddit?

Ok, when you ripp you tracks, one of the things the ripper will do is send a query for the CD you are ripping to an online database which contains info on that CD. When they have worked out which CD it is, the ripper automatically adds the relevent info from the database (freeDB for example) to the tags for each file.

Occasionally, there might be a CD's that extremely rare or very new thats not been added to the online database yet. But i have never experienced this in all my years of ripping, even with obscure stuff. I might just be lucky, but if you are not getting your tags added, EAC is not setup properly.
 
a short while back i found a guide on the net for EAC, can't remember the address but a google search should sort you out with some help and hints. I found it really useful and would have struggled without it.
 
Thanks peeps. When I place a disc in the pc and open up EAC it auto reads the drive and displays teh tracks in the eac interface. What it doesn't do is show any info about the cd such as artist, album name, year, genre.

I get something like:

Track 01 - Unknown Artist - Unknown Album
Track 02 - etc...

Is this down to not having EAC setup correctly?, i.e. In eac options..

&#37;A\%C\%N - %T

in flac options

-8 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s

Btw, I'm using SB3, not Sonos if thats any use.

I will continue reading and goggling for eac info on the net. Thanks, I'll have a play tonight - I'll check what my tags are setup as in both eac and flac before posting again! Thanks.
 
As mentioned, you need to press alt g for every disc, bit annoying as audiograbber automatically retreives CDDB info. But you need to enter those parameters in though. Install flac 1.1.4, in external compessor link to flac.exe, in extension enter .flac, then add that long parameter line in compressor options.

The short parameter is for eac directory structure options.

I'm using Squeezebox V3 too, if you want to use replygain you need to load up foorbar, add all files to playlist, select all, right click, replaygain, scan all by albums (by tags) wait a while then update. Then enable replaygain in slimserver.
 
SLOW DOWN PEOPLE!!!!!

In eac options..

&#37;A\%C\%N - %T

Badbob, i think you are confusing things here - i think the problem is that the tag info is not being retrieved from the net. The above info you have supplied is the file/folder naming string, thats not what he needs - and it would not work anyway without the tag data which is used to name the files/folders etc.

badbob said:
in flac options

-8 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s

Yes, you do need that bit, but it wont work fully unless the tag data is downloaded by EAC and available - from what the OP is saying, it's not.

To most people, that command looks confusing - just remember FLAC is command line driven encoder. EAC makes a WAV file and collects the tag data from the internet - then hands it over to the encoder with a set of instructions (the line above). The "artist=%a" bits are what the FLAC encoder adds to the tags. %a is the artist name, trouble is EAC has not been able to get it for some reason.


badbob said:
As mentioned, you need to press alt g for every disc

:confused: I never have to with EAC, it automatically retrieves the tags when i put a disk in.

I have tried to go back to basics with my previous post because the OP said...

SteveAS said:
Is this what 'tagging' is all about or am I getting my knicks in a twist? I understand you can download/buy tagging tools but I'm unsure as to what they achieve exectly.

The OP does not even realise exactly what tags are and how they help you, i think throwing in replaygain extra is just confusing him!
 
I never have to with EAC, it automatically retrieves the tags when i put a disk in.

hmm do you have auto insert notification enabled?

Badbob, i think you are confusing things here - i think the problem is that the tag info is not being retrieved from the net. The above info you have supplied is the file/folder naming string, thats not what he needs - and it would not work anyway without the tag data which is used to name the files/folders etc.

True, but you need the strings above otherwise the tags won't be saved in the tag comments, and filename/structure will be wrong. Setting up CDDB info should be working, with alt-g
 
True, but you need the strings above otherwise the tags won't be saved in the tag comments, and filename/structure will be wrong. Setting up CDDB info should be working, with alt-g

Yes you do, but thats not the problem here. The problem is he is not getting the tag data in the first place. I think its just going to confuse matters if we provide a solution to a problem that he may not even have yet :)

Hopefully its a simple case of him having to tell EAC to query FreeDB. ALT+G as you suggest might just do it, simple as that. But you can get EAC to do it on insertion, i cant remember off the top of my head how though.

The real problem here though is that Steve does not understand what tags are all about, which none of us do when we start out, so i will try and write that guide i also say i will soon :)...
 
He could try using another CDDB server.
 
Blimey folks!

Yes, EAC isnt automatically getting the tag information from the internet. Now badbob has mentioned that alt-g keystroke I will try it when I get home. If that works and refreshes the information in the interface then I will pursue how to get it to do it automatically when disc is loaded.

Autopilot, a tag user info guide would be very useful, but I understand that the good things take time...I'm glad we've got people like you on here.

I understand that the tag strings are required as a format for displaying your music info e.g.
01 - EveryDay I Have The Blues - B.B.King - Live At The Regal
02 - Next track etc....

I havent got to the foobar thing yet as I understand you dont need it to do the ripping side of the task. I just need to be able to rip one CD correctly for now. After that I will then check out interfaces for viewing my music collection, e.g. Media Monkey. Once I get this to work I will then start to rip a few more CDs.

I think I am going in the right direction, but by all means correct me if I'm wrong.

From the posts, it seems that you dont need tagging tools for the ripping process then? Just EAC & FLAC needs to be installed and EAC pointing to the FLAC exe file and setting up the tag format for both EAC & FLAC in the configuration settings. Thats how I see it so far.

Thanks.
 
Correct, with the above parameters EAC will write correct tags in the flac files.

The -8 command is best compression, so it'll save space. It'll help if your PC is dual/quad core too.
 
Thats right, you dont need any extra tools for tagging, all decent rippers should add the tags for you (which they get from a database(s) the net).

However, as you will enventually find out, the system is not perfect and you may way need to 'tweak' your tags with something like MP3tag, Monkey Media, Foobar etc. The info in the online databases is not always consistant, and often stuff like GENTRE is way out.
 
The -8 command is best compression, so it'll save space. It'll help if your PC is dual/quad core too.

I would recommend -5 myself, the difference in file size between -5 and -8 is virtually nominal (unless you are ripping hundreds of CD's), but the extra compression takes a lot longer to do - so it can take quite a long time from putting CD in PC to FLAC file ready to play. But as bob says, it depends on how fast your PC is so experiment.
 
Whilst we're on the topic:

When using EAC and FLAC I find that when I ask EAC to Test and Copy > Compressed, no FLAC files are being created. I do have EAC pointed to flac.exe and .FLAC as the extension, and EAC tells me that it is handing over to the external compression programme.

I then have to manully load the files into FLACfrontend to get it to compress.

Any thoughts?

dpstjp
 
I assume -5 makes a larger file than -8 then? I think the default setting is -6?

Anyway, I'll try both, do a timing on each with the same CD, do a listening test on a track and judge for myself.

I dont have NAS and the PC isnt a dedicated music server so I do need to think about file sizing. Having said that I only want to rip my favorite collection, not some of the embarrasing cds that I bought during my teenage years (which I still have somewhere :rolleyes:) so there won't be more than a couple of hundred Cds to rip.
 
Anyway, I'll try both, do a timing on each with the same CD, do a listening test on a track and judge for myself.

There is no sound difference between 1 and 8, it's lossless after all. However file sizes will be bigger on the lower compression settings (1) and it's quicker to compress.
 
Just a thanks - Alt - G and it gets the info from freedb. Got my tags set up in EAC, but cant seem to find where you set up tags in FLAC front end.

Overall, :thumbsup:
 
Out of interest, whats the difference in file size between .wav and .flac assuming a track length of 1 minute?
 
>but the extra compression takes a lot longer to do <

FLAC 1.1.4 hugely improved the -8 compression speed.
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom