EAC and AAC (qaac)

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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 2.76.

refalac's command line usage

qaac's command line usage

Installation

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

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 .m4a if not already that.
  • 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 the following string:
--title "%title%" --artist "%artist%" --band "%albumartist%" --album "%albumtitle%" --genre "%genre%" --date "%year%" --track "%tracknr%/%numtracks%" %source% -o %dest% 
  • 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 .m4a if not already that.
  • Click the Browse button and locate the qaac.exe or qaac64.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 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.