EAC and AAC (qaac)

From Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase
Revision as of 13:51, 10 June 2024 by Mike2718 (talk | contribs) (Add instructions for the software installation steps.)

Important note

This guide is in need of an update, because in EAC 1.0 beta 2, the replacement strings changed. For example:

  • "%s" is now "%source%"
  • "%d" is now "%dest%"
  • "%a" is now "%artist%"

See the full list in the EAC FAQ or in the EAC Compression Options guide.

Software Needed

Note: This guide has now been amended to reflect changes made to QAAC as of 2.82.

qaac's command line usage

refalac's command line usage

Installation

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

  1. Install 7-zip.
  2. Download iTunes64Setup.exe (64-bit) or iTunesSetup.exe (32-bit) into a directory.
  3. Download the latest version of QAAC, Then unzip the chosen QAAC version (include qaac.exe and refalac.exe for 32-bit, include qaac64.exe and refalac64.exe for 64-bit) into same directory.
  4. Download makeportable2.cmd into same directory.
  5. Double-click on the file makeportable.cmd.
  6. After that there are one folder created. QTfiles64 or QTfiles.
  7. Open a command prompt window. Change to that directory (cd command). Enter `qaac64.exe --check` (64-bit) or `qaac.exe --check` (32-bit) to see if the version number is displayed.

General Configuration for Encode Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC)

  • 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 .mp4 if not already that.
  • Click the Browse button and locate the refalac.exe or refalac64.exe that you unzipped earlier.
  • Uncheck Use CRC check and Add ID3 tag.
  • Check 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 the following string:
 -A --title "%title%" --artist "%artist%" --band "%albumartist%" --album "%albumtitle%" --genre "%genre%" --date "%year%" --track "%tracknr%/%numtracks%" %source% -o %dest% 
QAAC configured with ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), in an newer version of EAC
  • Note: Remember that you cannot change the compression level.

General Configuration for Encode Apple AAC

  • 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 .mp4 if not already that.
  • Click the Browse button and locate the qaac.exe or qaac64.exe that you unzipped earlier.
  • Uncheck Use CRC check and Add ID3 tag.
  • Check 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 the following string:
--title "%title%" --artist "%artist%" --band "%albumartist%" --album "%albumtitle%" --genre "%genre%" --date "%year%" --track "%tracknr%/%numtracks%" %islow%-a %bitrate%%islow% %ishigh%-v %bitrate%%ishigh% %source% -o %dest% 
  • High quality in EAC = Constrained VBR mode = VBR on in iTunes.
  • Low quality in EAC = ABR mode = VBR off in iTunes.
  • Note: for other encoding modes (such as CBR, True VBR, HE-AAC, etc.), edit the parameters between the %islow% and/or %ishigh% tags. See Command Line Options.