Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a audio grabber for CD-ROM drives. The main differences between most other audio grabbers :
• The cost of registration is low (just a postcard and a stamp) It is free (for non-commercial purposes)
• It works with a new technology, reading audio CDs almost perfectly. If there are any errors that can't be corrected, it will tell you on which time position the (possible) distortion occurred, so you could easily control it with e.g. the media player
Features of Exact Audio Copy 0.99 :
- Usage of the Windows 95 and Windows NT ASPI Interface, so both SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported
- Hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction)
- Secure, fast and burst extraction methods selectable. Fast extraction should run at the same speed as other grabbers, but is probably not exact anymore. Burst mode just grabs the audio data without any synchronization.
- Read error and complete loss of sync detection and correction in secure modes, as far as possible
- Output of time positions of all non-exact corrections and listen to these positions
- Copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks
- Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards
- Normalization of extracted audio
- Usage of the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct compression e.g. to MP3 waves
- Support for the BladeEnc DLL that is usable like an ACM Codec for online MP3 compression
- Support of external MP3, VQF, RA and AAC encoders for automatic compression after extraction
- Batch compression and decompression of/to WAV files
- Compression offset support for exact compression/decompression
- Detection of pre-track gaps
- Detection of silence in pre-track gaps
- Automatic creation of CUE sheets for CDRWin, 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 ® 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
- Catalog extraction function
- Multisession (CD-Extra) support
- CD-Text support
- CD-Write support for some drives
- ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop possibility from track listing and database
- 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)
- Program is Cardware, so feel free to copy
Known bugs:
- Some older CD-ROMs cause extreme jitter errors to occur on some CD-ROM drives causing the extraction to slow down to an unacceptable rate (e.g. Mitsumi FX240)
Changes in Exact Audio Copy 0.99 prebeta 1 :
- Better AccurateRip support (reading ranges and CD images)
- Much improved configuration wizard
- Improved log file output
- Flac encoder now comes with EAC
- Writing CD-Text using CDRDAO
- Copy and test range
- Added writing new tags for ID3V2 like duration, encoder settings and the CD TOC
- Correction of Xing header after writing ID3V2
- Drive options are now stored by the drive name and not by adapter and LUN
- Fixed many issues and bugs
Important Notes :
- To solve "No CD Problem", go to EAC > EAC Options... > click on Interface tab and check "Native Win32 interface for Win NT/2000/XP".
- Please remark that now the drive options are not stored by adapter and ID anymore, but by the drives name. So, if you own two identical drives, changing one drives options will directly change the other drives option. To realise this, all old profiles can not be loaded anymore. If you need your old profiles, it would be best to install the new version side by side with the old version. Then load a profile with the old version and close the program. Open the new version and save the appropriate options (e.g. compression options). Sorry for the inconvenience!
An excellent Freeware tool with more than 9 years development work.