Exact Audio Copy - EAC - help, tips and tricks thread

Lots of threads on EAC, and this thread itself is fairly long. I'm not sure this aspect has been discussed before, but it probably has.

I only use EAC to burn CD-Rs for listening in my car. I've only got about 24 sleeves in my CD wallet/case, so I like as much material as possible on each CD-R.

I recently finished a Stevie Salas compilation. (this artist needs his own thread in the music forum . . . no more digression here). I chose 21 songs, from 3 CDs, renumbered them, and dumped them into the EAC Layout window. As I prepared to record, the message said:

Free space on CD: 79.57.77
Space needed for actual job: 82.14

And then something about, do you want to proceed . . . might result in an incomplete CD?

So I did proceed, because I have on occasion in the past exceeded the "free space limits". After burning the CD-R, I got the standard message: write successfully completed!

I tried this CD-R in my TEAC CD-P650 CD player, which indicated that the CD-R was 82.16 in length. All the songs played perfectly; last song was not truncated. Medium is Taiyo Yuden--the good ones.

I guess someone here has done experiments on how far you an exceed the "free space" of the CD-R, and possible consequences of this action?

 

I never overburn to ridiculous amounts. About 82 minutes is the maximum I've tried, and it worked. I haven't ever experienced any negative consequences, but I'm sure they'll surface if you keep pushing the limits. It's also medium, recorder and player dependent.

 

Yep but most burners and blank disc these days will work fine with a bit of overburning, so it's usually dependent on the player. I know my old car CD player didn't like overburnt discs.

 

Can someone clarify for me the two different ways that pre emphasis can be on a disc? I understand that EAC recognizes pre emphasis when it is present one way but not the other. Pre emphasis is not recognized by EAC for my 1986 Castle Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Vol. 4 discs but I understand that they do indeed have pre emphasis. I rip the disc with cue sheet using EAC, then edit the cue sheet adding Flag Pre before each track. I then burn a CD-R with EAC using the edited cue sheet. EAC now recognizes pre emphasis in my CD-R I have made. However, the CD-R and the original disc are now different somehow right? Does the payback change depending on which way the pre emphasis is on the disc?
Thanks ahead of time.

 

Pre-emphasis can be on a CD in 3 ways:
1. Pre flags in the TOC (Table of Contents). This is what is found on the cuesheet that EAC generates. All versions of EAC should detect this.
2. Data in the sub-code. Only the older versions of EAC can detect this. IIRC, it had to be dropped in EAC due to copy protection issues in EU.
3. EQ’d at the mastering stage with no indication on the disc.

 

Okay, interesting. I guess my Black Sabbath 86 Castles would be example 2 or 3 since it is not detected with EAC. Lets assume I have a disc with pre emphasis in the form of example 2 (Data in the sub-code) and I wanted to make a CD-R copy. I rip the disc via EAC along with the Cue sheet and then edit the cue sheet with flag pre before each track. I the burn the CD-R using the edited cue sheet. I have changed the disc from pre emphasis example 2 as it was originally to example 1. Does this make a difference from an audio playback standpoint?

 

Actually, you now have a disc with 1+2. Assuming that the CD player can read both (many CD players today don’t read pre-emph at all - i.e., DVD players), it shouldn’t make a difference. If it can only read #1, then yes, it should make a difference as de-emphasis is now being applied.

 

Okay, some of the more well known pre emphasis discs I can think of off the top of my head include the 2 track Wish You Were Here, Black Triangle Abbey Road, Japan 1st press of Born To Run, and the 1986 Castle Black Sabbath discs. Are these pre emphasis 1,2, or 3 or a mix of all of the above?

 

I don't think so. You will have a copy with 1 (subcode is not copied when you rip a cd). Sonically it will sound identical to the original cd, which was 2 (provided your player is able to decode it correctly, which should be the case for any standard cd-audio player, since it belongs to the cd audio standard specifications)

Type 3 is not pre-emph. You should be thinking in a different thing.

 

I have read is this forum that Black Triangle Abbey Road is type 2. But you should be able to put the pre-emph flag on when burning a copy, and that will sound identical to the original

 

One question on the detection of the subcode pre-emph flag by EAC. I have read that older versions of EAC were able to perform such a detection. Where can these older versions be found? (I once found one old copy, I installed it, but the program was not able to detect even the presence of the cd...)

 

Remember the old days when we needed an ASPI driver and Nero was king?
Find the Nero ASPI driver. Add it to the EAC folder. In the EAC Options dialog tell EAC to use the external ASPI interface instead of the native WIN32 interface. That should get the old version of EAC working.

I don't know where best to get an old version of EAC095pb3 or earlier. I'd be careful and not grab it from a warez site. Too easy to end up getting a trojan.

 

Thanks. I will try (and where the Nero ASPI driver can be found...? without trojans etc, I mean...)

 

Great! That answers my question. That is your CD-R you made from edited cue sheet putting flag pre before each track (pre emphasis 1) should sound identical to the original retail CD containing pre emphasis 2.
Thanks

 

you are welcome

 

SamS and I get deep into pre-emphasis in this thread:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=244533

but there are still unanswered questions.

 

Softpedia has a download. I assume that is safe. You can give it a scan at Virustotal just to be sure.

 

Older versions: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/older-versions-for-download/

 

I'm always partial to The Ham Sandwich guide to pre-emphasis.
But that only covers doing post-processing of a rip to apply a digital de-emphasis. It also only covers CDs that have the pre-emphasis flag in the TOC. I don't own any discs that only have the flag in the sub-code so I've never been able to test how to do the sub-code only detection. If you have a disc that you know has pre-emphasis only in the sub-code then manually add FLAGS PRE to each track in the CUE file and deal with it that way. Easier than trying to find an old version of EAC. Most (all?) of the discs that have pre-emphasis only in the sub-code are already known so no need to re-detect it.

The only weird disc I have is a classical CD that has some pre-emphasis tracks and some normal tracks. That was a fun one to process.

 

It's missing the holly grail 095pb3 version (pre-beta 3) which is the last version to do the sub-code detection.

 

http://forum.oldversion.com/showthread.php?1945-Exact-Audio-Copy&p=16934&viewfull=1#post16934 or http://web.archive.org/web/20061229125417/http://www.rjamorim.com/rrw/eac.html are great sources for locating the elusive 095pb3 version, but to be safe, I would rather have you use the archive.org link.

 

Yes, there is a 3rd type. It is a CD with pre-emphasis EQ, but it is missing the flags in both the TOC/subcode data. It is essentially a mastering error.

Lazlo’s site describes this 3rd type as “Suspected Missing PE Flag.”

 

How does the pre emphasis in the subcode data work? I can't wrap my brain around this one. What is the sub code data anyway. Sorry as this is probably a stupid question but I don't understand how this works.

 

from WikiP:

 

OK, but then the original disc will sound wrong. It is indeed a mastering error. One could correct it by burning a copy with the Pre-emph flags manually switched on.