EAC and Lame

Software Needed

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 (see this thread for reasoning).
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.

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).
Don't worry about the Use CRC check setting; it won't affect the resultant MP3 file either.
It's a good idea to tick Check for external programs return code.

If you want to let EAC tag your files, you can safely tick Add ID3 tag; and in the Additional command line options box, copy and paste the following string:

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

If you prefer not to let EAC tag your files, untick Add ID3 tag; and in the Additional 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" --tg "%m" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

ID3v2:

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

ID3v1 and ID3v2:

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

Automatic:

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

Automatic means that by default only ID3v1 will be created. In case the length of at least one of the entries exceeds the permitted length of ID3v1, ID3v2 will be created in addition.

Note on ID3 tagging: Lame will exit with an error if you try to write a non-standard genre to either of the ID3 tags. If you experience this issue, either remove --tg "%m" from, or add --ignore-tag-errors to the command line; or simply allow EAC to tag since it doesn't have this problem.

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.