Ripping Audio CD's
This is a guide that will explain the best way of ripping an audio CD with the best sound quality. EAC is the BEST audio ripping program because EAC reads the audio data one sector at a time and reads it again. Then it compares the 2 reads, and if they match, moves to the next one. If the 2 reads of a sector don't match, it will read it again and again until 2 reads match. If they still don't match it displays an error for you so you know the rip wasn't perfect. NO other program does this. So you can forget about using MusicMatch Jukebox or any other program to encode MP3's because if you want the best audio quality, this is the way to go.
You will need the following software for this guide:
You may already have an ASPI layer installed so download the ASPI check program to check. If you don't have it installed you need to download ForceASPI and install it.
Setup
First install EAC and LAME and insert an audio CD. You should get the screen shown below.
From the EAC tab select compression options.
Check the box to use external program for compression and select LAME MP3 Encoder as the parameter passing scheme. Also make sure the path to the Lame encoder is correct.
For additional command line options, type or copy/paste the following command:
--nspsytune --vbr-mtrh -V1 -mj -h -b96 --lowpass 19.5 --athtype 3 --ns-sfb21 2 -Z --scale 0.98 -X0
or
--r3mix
Both command lines are the same except the second one is just a shortened version of the first. These are the best settings to use if you want the optimal sound quality. For an explanation of all the switches in the command line, visit http://www.r3mix.net/.
The Bit rate does not have any effect on bit rate of the MP3 so this can be left alone.
Then check all the boxes and select the button for high quality.
Encoding audio tracks to MP3
Now we want to want to select the audio tracks we want to encode. To do that just select the audio track and press the MP3 button to begin the encoding process. If you want to select multiple tracks, just hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and select the tracks you want. After its finished encoding, you should have some new MP3's.
Thats all there is to encoding MP3's.
Happy Ripping!