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Exact Audio Copy, does this really work?
Exact Audio Copy is supposed to give you an accurate rip from audio cd without any errors, and tell you if there are the slightest errors; well so they say.
Heres some tests I have performed:
Tests were performed using an LG dvd-rw drive GH22NS50 and EAC v0.99 prebeta5 on xp pro sp3.
First cd had average amount of scratches for its age and use, it was about 5 years old. Extracted all tracks to wav files using secure mode, with "accurate stream feature" ticked and also "caches audio data" ticked. Copy went ok and no errors occured but took about 30mins.
Next I used ISO buster and extracted all tracks again from the CD to seperate wave files in another folder. Took about 8 mins.
Now this is where it got interesting, I generated md5 hash sums for all the wav files from EAC and also ISO buster; the wav files from both programs were identical.
I know that ISO buster does not perform the kind of error recovery that EAC does, and is also tonns faster. So why is ISO buster outputting identical wav files to EAC? I also tried on a different dvd drive, a samsung (havent got model on me) and was the same scenario, I also tried with several different cd's, some new and others well used.
I also tried a cd I knew was partly unreadable, EAC encountered errors and kind of froze up when trying to read past them. ISO buster on same cd spat out an error saying "sector blah blah unreadable" and gave a sector number.
So to me looks like ISO buster gets the same result as EAC but is much faster.
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I use EAC for some discs that CDex just won't read properly, and it has varying results depending on how scratched the disc actually is.
I notice that there are discs that even EAC won't read correctly - despite it saying it's doing all manner of wonderful things the recovered audio still has glitches in it.
Conversely, there are CDs that EAC has problems with, and CDex just races through them.
So, I have wondered, as you have, whether it's just hype, or if it really does do the deal.
One nice feature that EAC does have is you can take a look at a wav file using the spectral view. Using this tool enables me to see if a file has previously been an mp3, that someone has 'converted to' or saved as, a wav - and believe me, I have found examples of this!
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make sure you setup EAC properly -
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