Wow I had no idea EAC still existed. Back when I used it, hard drive space was scarce and I thought I was being extravagent ripping my collection at 160kb/s mp3 files.
Does EAC today offer any advantage over cdparanoia?
Does EAC today offer any advantage over cdparanoia?
- 192 kbps CBR mp3 - this was supposed to be good enough (it is) and I had an iPod with only 20 GB so I went with it
- V0 VBR mp3 - I told myself I could hear the difference on my now slightly fancier headphones, and this would not kill my OiNK and later What.cd ratio as fast as lossless
- FLAC, if possible 192 KHz and 24 bit - now I got into really expensive headphones and I only downloaded the most verified of torrents (if possible vinyl rips) or I ripped using all the EAC/Paranoia guides out there. Played music via Foobar2000 with some plugins to minimize “interference” in the audio path. Had a full DAC + Amp setup
- Got a job and kids
- 256 kbps VBR AAC, via Bluetooth to my AirPods Pro - I don’t have time anymore to fret about audio quality, streaming is so super convenient and let’s be honest, above a certain baseline no one hears the difference anyway…
It's a pretty easy workflow. EAC to rip. FlacSquisher to convert to MP3 and OPUS. Then copy the files where they need to go and delete them from my laptop. CD then goes into a bin in the garage until I need it again or want to admire the artwork.
Ages ago I made custom cdrom drivers that would purposefully randomize data returned from reads (cd copy protection). EAC would rip right through it without skipping a beat and reconstruct the correct audio. The only way to defeat it was to never return all of data, randomized or not.