From: Fred Maxwell <rockbox_at_anti-spam.org>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 18:09:47 -0500

Johan wrote:

> Why using a closed source, Windows specific, program that may
> have all kinds of 'hidden' features if there are really free
> open source tools that can do the job equally well (maybe better)?

Stop with the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). EAC is distributed free
of charge and has no hidden spyware, etc. The guy who distributes it is one
of the nicest, most decent people you'll meet. EAC has been widely used for
years and it doesn't call home, store undocumented data, etc. It simply
works better than anything else.

There are no comparable open source tools of which I am aware. EAC is the
only ripper I have found which actually goes to great lengths to assure that
the rip is error-free before passing it on to the encoder. Show me an
open-source, multi-platform program that has the following features (snagged
from the EAC web page):

Hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction)

Read error and complete loss of sync detection and correction in secure
modes, as far as possible

Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards

Output of time positions of all non-exact corrections and listen to these
positions

Glitch removal after extraction

Small WAV editor with the following functionality: delete, trim, normalize,
pad, glitch removal, pop detection, interpolation of ranges, noise
reduction, fade in/out, undo (and more)

Copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks

Normalization of extracted audio

Usage of the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct
compression e.g. to MP3 waves

Support of external MP3, VQF, RA and AAC encoders for automatic compression
after extraction

Compression offset support for exact compression/decompression

Detection of pre-track gaps

Detection of silence in pre-track gaps

Automatic creation of CUE sheets including all gaps, indicies, track
attributes, UPC and ISRC

CD player functionality and prelistening to selected ranges

Automatic detection of drive features, whether a drive has an accurate
stream and/or does caching

Sample Offsets for drives with no accurate streams, including the option of
filling up missing samples with silence

Option for synchronizing tracks for non-accurate stream drives

Filename editing with local and remote CDDB database and cdplayer.ini
support and more features like ID3 tagging

Browse and edit local database

Certified Escient R CDDB(TM) Compatible

Local CDDB support

Record and Loop Record functions for recording from LP, radio, etc.

Automatic rename of MP3 files according to their ID3 tag

CD-Write support for some drives

ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop possibility from track listing and
database

> E.g. cdda2wav from cdrtools

Not even close. It's error detection and correction are, for all intents
and purposes, non-existent. It doesn't automatically invoke the MP3
encoder. It does not do Freedb title lookups. It doesn't correct for read
offsets.

Again, find me one that has all (or almost all) of the features shown above
and I'll be happy to give it a try.

Regards,
  Fred Maxwell
Received on 2003-12-20