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How to rip CDs into FLAC files
along with artist and song title information
There are a few applications and methods to achieve this.
If you have a better way send me your instructions and I will
post them too.
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There are two steps or processes involved. 1) reading the data from the CD and 2)
storing the data to a file along with the song/album information.
A program named Exact Audio Copy
reads the data and FLAC stores the songs into lossless flac files along with the meta data (song information).
Both EAC and FLAC are free. This is the software the majority of PC users use. Because it is free :)
The following configuration of EAC does the following:
1) Automatically downloads information like track and artist information for the CD if unknown by EAC
2) Creates a folder for each CD ripped. Each folder is named using the format: [Artist]
- [CD Title]
3) Creates a flac file for each track and places it in the new folder. The files names
are in the format: [track num] - [track title].flac
Steps to follow:
Download and install FLAC. During the install agree to the defaults.
Download and install version V0.95 of EAC. During the install agree with the defaults, but don't
bother to install the LAME encoder it offers.
Run the EAC program and from its top menu bar select:
-
EAC...EAC Options... General Tab... Check
"on unknown CDs"... Check "automatically access online freedb database"... Check "eject CD after extraction"
Tools tab... Check "on extraction start external compressors queue in background...
Check "Do not open external compressor window"
Filename tab.... Naming Scheme... %A - %C\%N - %T
Directories tab.... Check "use this directory" and browse for directory you want EAC
to place all
your new ripped music.
Done... Click "Ok" on the bottom of the window.
Half done now.
One more time, from the top menu bar select:
-
EAC...Compression Options...External Compression Tab...Check "use external compression"
for "Parameter passing scheme" select "User Defined Encoder" (last one in the long
list)
for "Use File Extension" enter .Flac
for "Program, including path, used for compression" setting paste in C:\Program
Files\FLAC\flac.exe (or the location of where you installed FLAC).
for "Additional command line options" paste in -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g"
-T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s
Check "Delete wav file after compression"
the rest of the settings are not used for FLAC.
Done... Click "Ok" on the bottom of the window.
Place a CD in the drive... EAC should (after a minute) show all the tracks of the
CD with track names. If it just says Track1 to Track13 and not the actual file names then you need to configure the CD database. To configure the CD database press the F12 key and add your or a fake email address. Note if you don't have the actual names of the songs then the files will not be named correctly.
To Rip the CD click the "MP3" button on the left. If all goes well you will have
flac files of your CD in a few minutes and the CD will eject when done, ready for
the next CD. From what I read let your CDROM/DVDROM cool down for 15 minutes
after 1 hour of ripping or it may self destruct.
If you have lots of CDs to rip then just do a few and live with the files for a week.
Make sure you are happy with the results before doing the rest of the ripping, you
don't want to have to do them twice :)
Enjoy the music.
If you have trouble with my instructions then take a look at another set of instructions
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