Exact Audio Copy

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Exact Audio Copy

Exact Audio Copy v0.95 beta 1 running under Windows 2000
Developer: Andre Wiethoff
Latest release: 0.95 beta 4 / February 21, 2006
OS: Windows
Use: CD ripper
License: proprietary
Website: www.exactaudiocopy.de

Exact Audio Copy, or often simply EAC, is a CD ripping program for Microsoft Windows. (It is also known to work with later versions of WINE under Linux.) It is used to convert the files on standard audio CDs to other file formats, such as MP3.

This program was created by Andre Wiethoff, a student at the University of Dortmund in Germany. In 1998 he became "fed up with other audio grabbers" and decided to try his own.

EAC is proprietary freeware, for non-commercial use, where registration is completed via postcardware.

It is the CD ripper of choice for many enthusiasts [1], due to its superior feature list and thorough, careful extraction quality compared to most other digital audio extraction programs.

[edit] Features

As of the latest version, Exact Audio Copy, has a number of features, including: usage of the Windows 95 and Windows NT ASPI, so both SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported, hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction), secure, fast and burst extraction methods, read error and complete loss of sync detection and correction, and a number of other features to maximize the possibility of getting an exact copy of the original source audio.

Here is the list of features:

  • Usage of the Windows 95 and Windows NT ASPI Interface, so both SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported
  • Hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction)
  • Secure, fast and burst extraction methods selectable. Fast extraction should run at the same speed as other grabbers, but is probably not exact anymore. Burst mode just grabs the audio data without any synchronization.
  • Read error and complete loss of sync detection and correction in secure modes, as far as possible
  • Output of time positions of all non-exact corrections and listen to these positions
  • Copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks
  • Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards
  • Normalization of extracted audio
  • Usage of the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct compression e.g. to MP3 waves
  • Support for the BladeEnc DLL that is usable like an ACM Codec for online MP3 compression
  • Support of external MP3, VQF, RA and AAC encoders for automatic compression after extraction
  • Batch compression and decompression of/to WAV files
  • Compression offset support for exact compression/decompression
  • Detection of pre-track gaps
  • Detection of silence in pre-track gaps
  • Automatic creation of CUE sheets for CDRWin, including all gaps, indices, track attributes, UPC and ISRC
  • CD player functionality and prelistening to selected ranges
  • Automatic detection of drive features, whether a drive has an accurate stream and/or does caching
  • Sample Offsets for drives with no accurate streams, including the option of filling up missing samples with silence
  • Option for synchronizing tracks for non-accurate stream drives
  • Filename editing with local and remote CDDB database and cdplayer.ini support and more features like ID3 tagging
  • Browse and edit local database
  • Certified Escient ® CDDB(TM) Compatible
  • Local CDDB support
  • Record and Loop Record functions for recording from LP, radio, etc.
  • Automatic rename of MP3 files according to their ID3 tag
  • Catalog extraction function
  • Multisession (CD-Extra) support
  • CD-Text support
  • CD-Write support for some drives
  • ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop possibility from track listing and database
  • Glitch removal after extraction
  • Small WAV editor with the following functionality: delete, trim, normalize, pad, glitch removal, pop detection, interpolation of ranges, noise reduction, fade in/out, undo (and more)
  • Program is Cardware, so feel free to copy

[edit] External links

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