Exact Audio Copy

Exact Audio Copy
Developer(s) Andre Wiethoff
Initial release 25 June 1998 (1998-06-25) [1]
Stable release 1.1 / 2 July 2015 (2015-07-02) [1]
Development status Active
Operating system Windows XP, Vista, 7
Size 5.0 MB
Type CD ripper
License Proprietary, Freeware
Website exactaudiocopy.de

Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a CD ripping program for Microsoft Windows. It has also been tested to work under newer versions of Wine on Linux.[2] This program was created by Andre Wiethoff in 1998, while he was a student at the University of Dortmund in Germany, stating he became "fed up with other audio grabbers",[3] and decided to develop his own.

Exact Audio Copy is proprietary freeware, free for non-commercial use,[4] and popular among audiophiles for its accuracy and ability to rip slightly damaged audio compact discs.

Overview

EAC is used to convert the tracks on standard audio CDs to WAV files, which can then be transcoded into other formats. These include lossy ones such as MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, or lossless ones such as ALAC, FLAC, or WavPack using external encoders. It also has the option of using the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct compression. It supports AccurateRip (automatically comparing the copy with those rips made by others)[5] and can automatically create Cue Sheets, with all gaps, track attributes, ISRC, and CD-Text included. EAC also supports automatic ID3 tagging using Internet-based databases such as freedb, GD3 (see below), or a local database.

If there are any errors that can't be corrected, the software tells the user which time position the (possible) distortion occurred, so they could easily control it with, for example, the media player.

History

In release 1.0b1, EAC supported the downloading of CD cover art, and in b2, an option was added to have the ID3 information, such as artist, CD title, track names, and cover art downloaded automatically from the GD3 database. The GD3 option allowed a user who set up an account to make 10 free initial queries, but afterwards, required them to pay a one-time fee of $7.99, after which they were allowed to make an unlimited number of queries. Release 1.0b1 removed support for Windows 2000 and older versions of Windows.

In release 1.0b3 (September 22, 2011), a bug fix release, of which the author states "The released beta 3 of EAC is probably the first really stable 1.0 version."

The current release is 1.1 (July 2, 2015); recent releases have focused on bug fixes and updates to plugins/external components as opposed to major new features.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "What's new – Exact Audio Copy"
  2. ↑ Wine Application DB entry for EAC
  3. ↑ "AudioMastermind Weblog". audiomastermind.us. Archived from the original on 2008-06-26. Retrieved 2011-03-26.
  4. ↑ Registration Information
  5. ↑ AccurateRip

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, November 30, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.