EAC and ALAC (refalac)

Exact Audio Copy guides
Configuration
EAC configuration EAC Options EAC Drive Options EAC Compression Options EAC Metadata Options EAC WAV Editor Options EAC Configuration Wizard
Compression
EAC and AAC (neroAac)‎ EAC and AAC (qaac)‎ EAC and ALAC (FFmpeg)‎ EAC and ALAC (qaac)‎ EAC and ALAC (refalac)‎‎‎ EAC and FLAC EAC and LAME EAC and LossyWAV EAC and Monkey's Audio EAC and Musepack EAC and Ogg Vorbis EAC and Opus EAC and TAK EAC and WavPack
Other
EAC Gap Settings EAC and Cue Sheets EAC Lossless Backup

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Software Needed

Installation

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

Download the latest version of qaac - CLI QuickTime AAC/ALAC encoder
Uncompress the zip archive into a directory (e.g. C:\qaac). Alternatively you can uncompress refalac.exe for 32-bit or refalac64.exe for 64-bit into the EAC program directory.

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 tick in the box for use external program for compression.
Change Parameter Passing Scheme to User Defined Encoder.
Change Use file extension to .m4a (alternately you can use .mp4).
Click the Browse button and locate the refalac.exe or refalac64.exe that you unzipped earlier.
Remove the ticks from Use CRC check and Add ID3 tag.
Tick Check for external programs return code.
If you are using EAC 1.0b2 or newer, then in the Additional command line options box, copy and paste from the following examples‎:

--title "%title%" --artist "%artist%" --band "%albumartist%" --album "%albumtitle%" --genre "%genre%" --date "%year%" --track "%tracknr%/%numtracks%" -o %dest% %source%

Includes disk, lyrics, and cover tags:

--title "%title%" --artist "%artist%" --band "%albumartist%" --album "%albumtitle%" --genre "%genre%" --date "%year%" --track "%tracknr%/%numtracks%" --disk "%cdnumber%/%totalcds%" %haslyrics%--lyrics "%lyrics%"%haslyrics% %hascover%--artwork "%coverfile%"%hascover% -o %dest% %source%

Note: Remember that you cannot change the compression level for ALAC.
refalac and refalac64 share much of the code and functionalities with QAAC and work very similar to QAAC -A.
Unlike QAAC, refalac and refalac64 DO NOT require Apple Application Support components.
Unlike QAAC, refalac and refalac64 DO NOT require a codec specifier option such as -A.

Do not worry about the bit rate is shown in the bit rate drop down box; this will be ignored, as will the quality setting below it.

Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet

When extracting to an Image & CUE Sheet, the Tags (artist, album, track titles, etc.) are located in the CUE Sheet so you don't need to tag the Image. Note: There is also a BUG in EAC where Track#2 information is used for all track related placeholders when you Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet.

No Tags:

-o %dest% %source%

No Tags (except for the cover):

%hascover%--artwork "%coverfile%"%hascover% -o %dest% %source%

refalac command line usage

refalac usage