EAC and Lame

Software Needed

• Exact Audio Copy
• Recommended LAME version

Installation

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

• Unzip the chosen LAME version into the same directory as EAC.
• If you would like to tag with APEv2 tags please download wapet.zip and unzip it into the same folder.

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.
• Click the Browse button and locate the lame.exe that you unzipped into the EAC directory earlier.

Note: If you want to tag with APEv2 tags using Wapet please locate wapet.exe, not lame.exe.

• Remove the ticks from Use CRC check, Add ID3 tag and Check for external programs return code.
• Don't worry which 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 strings below, based on the tag format you 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: (This requires wapet.exe. Remember to browse for wapet.exe instead of lame.exe as the external encoding program.)

%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 text denotes the part that needs to be altered.

Note 3: The %s and %d at the end of each string are placeholders for EAC. %s means source filename and %d means destination filename.

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

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

LAME.exe --preset standard %s %d

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

--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 --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 therefore you should never have to use the %r option.

LAME configured with ID3v1 tagging