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

Thanks!

 

Regarding the process of de-emph of a cd with pre-emph...
It is true that itunes does the de-emph automatically, and that you can do that with sox or other plugins, but I prefer not doing so and instead burning a copy straight from EAC and with the correct flags on. This way you get a copy which will sound exactly equal than the original CD, in which the de-emph will be done by a dedicated analog circuit of your cd player. If you do the de-emph digitally by any of those pieces of software, you will get some artifacts, and the fact will be that the sound will be not the same. If your cd is any those sonic 'holy grails' with pre-emph, such as the black triangles Abbey Road or DSOTM, it is nosense to compromise the sound doing so, IMHO.

 

The problem I have is that I have gone to computer as source for digital. None of my DACs or sound cards or audio interfaces do de-emphasis. I no longer even have a CD player hooked up. The only way for me to get de-emphasis done is to do it as a digital filter.

 

Yes, I could have guessed that. Sorry.

 

I think that such a blanket statement is nonsense, as the quality of the pre-emph EQ circuitry in many CD players (if it even has one) is rudimentary at best. The SoX solution is pretty true to the common spec and there are EQ curves available in this forum and/or the web for some wav editing programs that have even gentler slopes than the common specs.

And what are these “artifacts” that you claim? If there is concern for modifying a file at 16bit, most wav editors can perform these modifications in 24bit or 32bit float.

 

I would expect there to be some phase artifacts or differences between the analog and digital deemph methods. I doubt any of the digital deemph filters exactly match the phase characteristics of the analog deemph circuit.

 

My point is that I would make a backup of a cd by burning a copy sonically identical to the original, rather than rely on a software to get an 'equivalent' de-emphed version. Software can always upgrade, but too late for your copy. But you can always upgrade your cd player, and hence have a better analog de-emph. But it is only my opinion, of course.

What I am against of is: if someone ask me what to do for copying a cd with pre-emph, telling him/her 'use itunes and thats all' or something similar as the first or only option. I would say it is more honest to give the other solution as the first option, and the digital de-emph as an alternate option for music servers or so.

BTW, when I found a cd with pre-emph when ripping for my squeezebox touch, what I did was to plug the out of my cd player to the AD converter and get a 24/96 rip. I didn't mess with digital conversions. OK I know it is overkill, but I got an analog de-emph!

 

That's as may be, but it's unlikely that there's a single monolithic "perfect" analog deemph circuit that's shared across all CD players either, or even a single monolithic emphasis circuit that was used across all CD masters to apply the pre-emphasis in the first place. They would all vary somewhat from model to model in their characteristics.

 

Point of fact, there is absolutely no reason to do it any other way if you have a version of EAC with AccurateRip. All you're doing at that point is wasting time and adding wear and tear to your drive.

 

I do keep an unprocessed EAC CUE file rip of my preemph CDs. So I'll be able to burn a proper CDR version with the PRE flags if I ever need to. I'll also be able to use that archived rip to reprocess the digital deemph if I find an option that does a better job than SoX.

One of these days I should make a test CD that has a track with pre-emphasis and a track with a digitally processed deemph. Then try that CD in a high end CD player on a good system and see if I hear a difference.

 

I use Matlab for digital deemphasis (FFT => multiply with deemphasis curve => IFFT). If I store the resulting waveform at 24 bits of resolution, I can perform the inverse operation to get a bit-perfect representation of the original file. However, I'm not performing any dithering in this case, so this process will theoretically add a slight amount of distortion. I should check if the process is still lossless with dither added.

 

Putting the signal through another AD capture/DA conversion is just about the worst thing you could do IMHO.


You seem to have an unfounded prejudice against performing any modifications in the digital domain. You’re welcome to slam iTunes and the like, but there are excellent solutions available to those who are concerned about sound quality.

 

OK, THAT was crazy (my AD converter is not so good, but it sound OK for my not so good setup). I did it only once, and I doubt I would do it again. I was not proposing that as a solution for everyone (sorry if that could be understood this way).

But yes I think a straight EAC rip with the correct settings of the PE flags is the best option if you want a physical copy. I don't think a digital EQ could sound better than an analog one, at least for not very expensive software. One thing I have read again and again in this forum is that you need very specialized software to do transparent manipulations in the digital domain. Even the simple conversion to 16 bit (needed as a final step in any manipulation if you want redbook) seems to need not-free ad-ons (such as the MBIT+) to be transparent.

Anyway, someone should do a test. If sox is better than the analog de-emph, we all could substitute our original PEed cds with digitally de-emphed cd-r copies, why not?

 

I have a question for the EAC experts on the forum. I have a whole album on a single WAVE file but no separate cue sheet for it. I think all the cue sheet info is somehow encoded into the wave file though. The reason I think this is that when I run my cursor over the wave file, a box pops up with all the cue sheet information listed. How can I generate a cue sheet for this single wave file that holds the entire CD?

 

foobar
cuetools

 

Can someone provide an example of a cue sheet with flags set for pre-emphasis, please?

 

I have only one such CD, but here it is:

Code:

PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
TITLE "Blauwe Plekken"
FILE "Blauwe Plekken.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Blauwe Plekken"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:33
FILE "Rijp.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Rijp"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
FILE "Wolf & Vampier.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Wolf & Vampier"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
FILE "Melk En Honing.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "Melk En Honing"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Zonder Pardon.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "Zonder Pardon"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
FILE "Wat De Oude Vrouw Bad.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "Wat De Oude Vrouw Bad"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
FILE "Chanson De Malheur.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Chanson De Malheur"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Het Vlot.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    TITLE "Het Vlot"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:30
FILE "De Koekoek In De Klok.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 09 AUDIO
    TITLE "De Koekoek In De Klok"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
FILE "Kusje.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 10 AUDIO
    TITLE "Kusje"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Tango Met De Dood.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 11 AUDIO
    TITLE "Tango Met De Dood"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
FILE "Wie Vertelt Het Mij.WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 12 AUDIO
    TITLE "Wie Vertelt Het Mij"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
FILE "Blauwe Plekken (Instrumentaal).WAV" WAVE
  TRACK 13 AUDIO
    TITLE "Blauwe Plekken (Instrumentaal)"
    PERFORMER "Herman Van Veen"
    FLAGS PRE
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25

 

In case anyone wonders: "Blauwe plekken" means "Bruises"
Didn't know that one had pre-emphasis.

 

Many thanks! That's exactly what I needed.

Follow-up question: is this an example of flags in the subcode, or flags in the TOC? Still trying to get that straight so I can be sure my OPPO 83 will decode correctly.

 

The PE status should be the same in both places. SamS and I get as deeply into it as we can in this thread about PE support in Oppo players:

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

 

There's no way to specify one or the other in a cue sheet. I would expect consumer-level burning software to set the flag correctly across the entire disk if it's requested at all.

 

A CUE sheet represents the TOC of a redbook CD and not the subcode data.

 

Thanks--that clears things up for me. Much obliged!

 

But the TOC is defined by Q subcode data in the Lead-in!

 

Thanks for the help. I have this one figured out now. I have a new problem though. I tried to burn a disc with EAC using the cue sheet but got an error message I have never seen before then EAC crashes or just shuts down after I exit the message. It reads exactly as follows: Unhandled exception at Unicode.1353 -> INDEX - RANGE

What the heck does this mean? I have never seen it before and not sure what the problem is or how to fix it. I tried to google the problem but did not find a solution or answer. Thanks ahead of time for any help out there.