EAC and Lame

Software Needed

• Exact Audio Copy
• Lame 3.90.3

OR

• Lame 3.96.1

Note: Although LAME is being continuously developed, the version that is extensively tested and recommended here at hydrogenaudio.org is version 3.90.3. So, you may want to stick with that version for now until a later version is tested and recommended.

Installation

Note: This guide assumes that EAC is has been configured for secure ripping, if not please follow this guide.

• Unzip the chosen lame version into the same directory that EAC is in.

Configuration

• Open EAC and insert a CD into the drive.
• Click the EAC menu and select Compression Options.
• Click the External Compression Tab, and put a check box in use external program for compression.
• Change Parameter Passing Scheme to User Defined Encoder.
• Change Use file extension to .mp3 if not already that.
• Click the Browse button and locate the LAME.EXE that you unzipped earlier.
• Remove the ticks from Use CRC check, Add ID3 tag and check for external programs return code.
• Do not worry what bit rate is shown in the Bit rate drop down box as this will not have any effect on the resultant MP3 file (See Note 4 at the bottom of this page).

• In the Addtional command line options box, copy and paste one of the below strings based on the Tag you would prefer.

No Tags:

-V 2 --vbr-new %s %d

ID3v1:

-V 2 --vbr-new  --id3v1-only --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

ID3v2:

-V 2 --vbr-new --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

ID3v1 and ID3v2:

-V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

APEv2: (requires wapet.exe)

• Set file extension to .mp3
• Locate wapet.exe

%d -t "Artist=%a" -t "Title=%t" -t "Album=%g" -t "Year=%y" -t "Track=%n" -t "Genre=%m" lame.exe -V 2 --vbr-new %s %d

Note 1: lame.exe needs to be in the same directory as wapet.exe.

Note 2: If you wanted to change the Lame preset, the green portion what you would substitute with the new preset.

Note 3: If you are using Lame version 3.95.1+, please note that --alt-preset is no longer used, it is now just --preset

Note 4: The %l...%l and %h...%h placeholders are used to add text according to whether the High quality or Low quality radio button is selected as shown below:

%l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s %d

Therefore, if you select Low quality, EAC will invoke the LAME encoder with the following command line parameters:

LAME.EXE --alt-preset 128 %s %d

..and if you select High quality EAC will invoke LAME with these command line parameters:

LAME.EXE --alt-preset standard %s %d

You can access the bitrate value in the dropdown list using the %r placeholder, For Example:

--alt-preset %r %s %d

So, if you selected 192 kBit/s in the Bit Rate drop-down list, the command line would be:

LAME.EXE --alt-preset 192 %s %d

It is a generally accepted fact that the bitrate selected in the drop-down list doesn't affect the command line. In essence this is true, as it will not affect the command line unless you use the %r placeholder. However, using ABR or CBR over VBR is not recommended and hence, you will probably never have to use the %r option.

Lame configured with ID3v1 tagging

Addtional Reading

• MP3
• LAME
• Exact Audio Copy