Chip Hitware 7 A/CHIP_HITWARE_7A.iso/Multimedia/EAC/EAC.TXT

Text File | 1999-09-02 | 38KB | 751 lines

(This is an ASCII version of the EAC web pages)



                              EAC v0.85 beta



Introduction

EAC is a new audio grabber for CD-ROM drives. The main differences towards
most other audio grabbers :

   * Low registration costs (just a postcard and a stamp)
   * It works with a new technology, reading audio CDs almost perfect. 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

I am writing this software, because I am fed up with these other audio
grabbers. I always had to listen to all grabbed waves, because other audio
grabbers will do only jitter correction but CD-ROM drives reading scratched
CDs often produce distortions. Listen to all waves would be a waste of
time. So in march I decided to write my own audio grabber, mainly for my
and my friends private usage. So if you don't like this software - don't
use it!   I don't want to make any profit with it, I just want to use (and
share) the best grabber (that's in my eyes the most exact grabber) ever
programmed. Most important for me is feedback from the users, more about
that later at registration chapter.


Features of EAC

   * 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 method selectable. Fast extraction
     should get 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 lost 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
   * Lyric database support from www.lyrics.ch
   * 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
   * ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop possibility from track listing and
     database
   * Glitch removal after extraction
   * Small WAV editor with functions for 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

   * On some computers the whole system hangs after a short period of time.
     I didn't find the solution to this problem yet, because it never
     happend on my computer. It is possible that any cd-player program
     causes these problems. So try to stop any play in progress before
     starting EAC.
   * On some CD-ROM drives occur extreme jitter errors so the extraction
     will slow down to a non acceptable value (e.g. Mitsumi FX240)



About Me

I am a student of computer science and mathematics here at the University
of Dortmund. At the moment I have some preparations on aural examinations
and the start of an one year project group. Beside the usual work at the
university as a student, I started work for VOB (CDWizard) on Jukebox
driver.
In my spare time I like spending time with my friends and playing computer
and board games. Of course I also work on some computer projects like this
one. Further I do a lot of sports like cycling, walking, inline skating and
some martial arts.
I am using now a Pentium II 400, total of 2.5 GB IDE harddisks, 4.3 GB SCSI
harddisk, 128 MB RAM, Plextor 14/32 CD-ROM drives, Teac R56S-600 CD-R
drive, Asus V3400 TNT 16 MB video card, Creative SB Live! soundcard,
Windows 98 and Stony Brook Modula 2.



Extraction Technology

In secure mode, this program reads every audio sector at least twice. That
is one reason why the program is so slow. But by using this technique
non-identical sectors are detected. If an error occurs (read or sync
error), the program keeps on reading this sector, until eight of 16 retries
are identical, but at maximum one, three or five times (according to the
error recovery quality) these 16 retries are read. So, in the worst case,
bad sectors are read up to 82 times! But this will help the program to
obtain best result by comparing all of the retries. If it is not sure that
the stream is correct (at least it can be said at approx. 99.5%) the
program will tell the user where the (possible) read error occurred. The
program also tries to adjust the jitter artefacts that occur on the first
block of a track, so that each extraction should be exactly the same. On
drives found to have the "accurate stream" feature, this is guaranteed. Of
course, this is a little bit more complex, especially with some CD drives
which have caching. When these drives cache audio data, every sector read
will be read from cache and is identical. I initially implemented two ways
of dealing with the caching problem. First there is an extra option for
resetting the cache for use the the old secure mode (the one being kept for
compatibility reasons). In the current beta version, the cache will still
be reset by resetting the drive completely. You might imagine that this
would slow down the reading process very badly.
That is why I implemented three new read modes in version 0.85beta. One
really fast mode (up to half of maximum speed) is only for non-caching,
accurate stream cdrom drives. The second one could be used for caching,
accurate stream drives and the last one will work with drives that don't
have accurate streams, or do caching. The last two will be much slower,
when no read errors occur it will usually something around a third to a
fourth of the drives maximum speed.
For my testing, I am using a Plextor 14/32 drive that does no caching and a
Teac R56S-600 drive that does caching. Furthermore the Plextor 14/32
supports the "accurate stream" feature, so it produces no jitter artifacts
on any stream. For more information on this have a look at the table at the
end of this document.
This program is really damn slow in secure mode in comparison with other
grabbers, but the program checks every sector over and over to get the
correct data with high certainty. If you don't like this feature of EAC and
prefer fast copies instead of secure copies, you should use the fast or
burst extraction option in the options menu. But of course in fast mode,
the program will no longer be able to find read errors. Only if a read
error occurs in a sector synchronization area, will a sync error will still
be displayed. Fast mode is sector synchronized with 2 blocks of 23 as
synchronization blocks. Burst copy is even worse, no synchronization is
done, enabling extraction at maximum speed of the drive. No error checking
of any kind can be performed. At least I implemented a small help. If the
stream ever breaks, it will tell the user in the status report by showing
up suspicous positions. Of course this is only heuristic; there needn't be
any errors on that positions; moreover there could be errors that are not
found at all.
A new option for selecting the error recovery quality will determine how
often these blocks of 16 reads will be done before giving up and working
with the results obtained so far. For bad CDs, low error recovery quality
will be fastest, but high recover quality should give best results.

Gap Technology

In the new versions of EAC it is possible to detect pre-track gaps. These
are the pauses between two tracks. Usually they are two seconds long and a
cd player will display a negative time during this pause. By enabling the
option 'Detect Pre-Track Gaps' it will be possible to detect all
gap-lengths by reading the sub-channel informations. Because this
information is not stored on the cd directly retrievable, EAC has to search
for the position a track ends. This search is quite fast, but it still
takes on average a second per track. That's why I made it possible to
diable it in the options. Besides that option you can choose to add the
gaps to the previous track nevertheless. Otherwise you can choose either to
append the gap to the correct track or to leave it out . A benefit of
performing the detection and getting the gap times is the selection of a
range to copy. There the correct times will be displayed. A last word on
this topic: because these pre-track gaps are found out by testing
positions, it could occur that not 100% exact values are calculated, but in
most cases it will be correct.

Automatic Feature Detection Technology

From version 0.8 beta on it is possible to autodetect cd-rom drive
features. For each drive the program builds a separate drive options page.
On this option page this function can be called.
There are two different features that will be checked by EAC, first if the
stream is accurate and second if the drive caches audio(!) data. Even if
the drive has a cache (drive specifications), it does not automatically
means that the drive uses that cache also for audio extractions.
The test for the accurate stream feature should be always correct, but
testing on cache will give some problems with drives that extracts audio
very slowly (under 4X speed). If results are uncertain (given e.g. two
different results on different tests), you should assume that the drive
does caching. The new secure mode for non-accurate and/or caching drives
should work for all drives. The other new read modes are only something
faster. If testing on accurate stream will give only sometimes a negative
result, then you could nevertheless try to use the accurate secure mode.

Track Synchronization Technology

Usually cd audio extraction programs will extract one track after another.
This could make some problems on CD-ROM drives that are not accurate on a
CD which has no gaps. When this option is enabled in the EAC options, EAC
will synchronize a track with a preceeding track if there is no silence at
the track junction, so track transitions will be free from jitter artefacts
(e.g. on live recordings).

Offset Technology

'Sample Offset' is another new feature of EAC. Because most drives lack the
'accurate stream' feature, it will help to get always the same wavs as
another reader. Some drives can not position the head correctly. That means
if the program tells the drive to read block 10000 it will probably read
data somewhere in block 9998 instead. But this is not visible to the
reading program, it won't know if it is really the data it wanted. Usually
the head will be set always to a fixed offset before or after the correct
read position. So it is possible to detect this offset once and use it for
all CDs coming afterwards. Because it is a hard task to determine the exact
absolute offset for each drive, I determined it once on my Plextor 14/32.
To find out the offset of any other drive the offset is calculated relative
to that absolute offset. To implement an offset detection for other drives
I took some bytes from some common CDs I and my friends own. These are the
reference each CD-ROM drive has to compare with. Of course I have
implemented only a limited selection of CDs that can be used to detect this
offset, a list follows below. Sometimes there are different versions
(releases) of the same CD, but only the same press like the one I used will
work. That is why in the table below show also a code, that is written on
the inner ring of the music CD, that should identify the release of a CD.
The red codes are from CDs that does not work with this test. In time I
will add more CDs to test this offset. Drives that have jitter are
furthermore not able to position their heads correctly. So you should
activate the secure or fast extraction method and moreover if your drive
does caching, activate no-caching emulation. The 'Searching Track Start'
algorithm tries to find the correct start position even if jitter occurs.
But this is not always possible, mainly if the drive jitters too much. But
it can be shown that nearly 80% of the reads will get the same results. A
drive's characteristic offset can be found automatically from the CD from
on the list of reference CDs. Because of the mentioned jitter error the
value given back is also not 100% sure. You should start the test several
times and remember to activate emulate no-caching if necessary. Then you
should get one value that occurs more often than other values. YOU SHOULD
USE THIS TEST ON TWO DIFFERENT CDS AT LEAST! BOTH TESTS SHOULD GIVE BACK
THE SAME VALUE! My Plextor 14/32 has an offset value of +679 samples, that
means that 679 samples usually are missing at the end of a wav file.
As different modells of common CD-R writer usually do not add the same
offset on writing, it seems that also big CD manufactures also do not
always press the same offset on their CDs. So I determined the most common
offset of pressed CDs and integrated it into the offset detection routines.

List of Included Reference CDs

 4 Non Blondes          Bigger, Better, Faster,  756792112-2
                        More!
 ABBA                   Gold - Greatest Hits     517007-202
 ABBA                   The Hits 3               PWKS 507
 AC/DC                  Ballbreaker              755961780-2
 Adiemus                Songs Of Sanctuary
 Alice Cooper           The Last Temptation      01-476594-1013
 Art Garfunkel          The Art Garfunkel Album  1004611A4
 Bad Religion           Stranger Than Fiction    12-477343-10 12

 Billy Joel             River Of Dreams          01-473872-10 11
                                                 probably wrong offset
 Blind Guardian         The Forgotten Tales      8416262@1
 Bjork                  Debut                    521 323-202
 Bobo In Thite Wodden
 Range                  Cosmic Ceiling

 Bon Jovi               Crossroad                522 936-2
                                                 0117-468451-1021
 Bruce Hornsvy And The
 Range                  The Way It Is
 Celine Dion            Let's Talk About Love    S0148915910-0101 182
 Chris de Burgh         Beautiful Dreams         L003 540 432-2 01
 Chris de Burgh         Best Moves
 Culture Club           The Best Of Culture Club
 Depeche Mode           101                      CD 1 : C-6402/881800-1 A
 Depeche Mode           A Broken Frame
 Depeche Mode           Black Celebration
 Depeche Mode           Construction Time Again
 Depeche Mode           Some Great Reward

 Depeche Mode           Songs Of Faith And
                        Devotion
 Depeche Mode           Speak & Spell

 Depeche Mode           Depeche Mode - The       CD 1 : 4845742@1
                        Singles 86-98            CD 2 : 4845752@1
 Dire Straits           Love Over Gold
 Eric Clapton           Pilgrim                  936246577-2 01/98
 Eric Clapton           Strictly The Blues
 Everything But The
 Girl                   Walking Wounded
 Falco                  The Hit-Singles          L012 398423479-2 05/98
 Fool's Garden          Dish Of The Day          L046 8225442 @4
 F.Mercury & M.Caballe  Barcelona                837277-201
 F.R. David             Greatest Hits
 Genesis                Invisible

 Gloria Gaynor          The Very Best Of Gloria  L134 5196652 02
                        Gaynor
 Guns'N'Roses           Appetite For Destruction F-0932/GED24148B
 H-Blockx               Time To Move             I-3486/4321187512D
 Helloween              Master Of The Rings      I-5687/CSC7150-2 A
 Jennifer Rush          Credo
 Jennifer Rush          Movin'
 Joe Cocker             Organic
 John Miles             Rebel                    820 080-2 03
 Kate Bush              Hounds Of Love
 Kate Bush              The Red Shoes
 Kate Bush              The Sensual World
 Leonard Cohen          So Long, Marianne
 Madonna                Like A Prayer
 Marla Glen             This Is Marla Glen
 Meat Loaf              Bat Out Of Hell II       839067 2@3
 Metallica              Load                     532618-202
 Metallica              Master Of Puppets        838 141-2 01
 Metallica              Metallica                510 022-2 00B L7
 Metallica              Reload
 Michael Jackson        Thriller                 85930 41
 Mike Oldfield          Crises                   CDV2262 100441 02
 Mike Oldfield          Heaven's Open
 Mike Oldfield          Music Wonderland
 Mike Oldfield          Orchestral Tubular Bells S VVIPD 101 01

 Mike Oldfield          The Songs Of Distant
                        Earth
 Mike Oldfield          Voyager

 Musical                Highlights From Miss
                        Saigon

 Musical                Highlights From The
                        Phantom Of The Opera
 Musical                West Side Story
 Nazareth               The Best Of Nazareth     LA41 157 402
 Nik Kershaw            The Best Of Nik Kershaw
 Pet Shop Boys          DISCO2
 Phil Collins           Face Value               2 99143 SRC 01

 Pink Floyd             The Wall                 CD 1 : 746036 2 3
                                                 CD 2 : 746037 2 4
 Queen                  A Night At The Opera     789492 2 @ 2
 Queen                  Greatest Hits            746033 2 AR 3
 Queen                  Greatest Hits II         797971 2 AR @1
 Queen                  Innuendo                 795887 2 00 @3
 Queen                  Made In Heaven           M-4684/4835542A
 Queen                  Queen I                  746204 2 AR 10
 Rolling Stones         Bridges To Babylon       8449092 @1
 Roxette                Joyride                  796048 2 A0 2
 Sade                   The Best Of Sade
 Simple Minds           Glittering Prize

 Simple Minds           The Street Fighting
                        Years
 Soundtrack             Armageddon
 Soundtrack             The Bodyguard            G-5872/7822186992A

 Soundtrack             The Rocky Horror Picture
                        Show

 Soundtrack             Titanic                  S0100239681-0101
                                                 S0106321310-0101
 Spandau Ballet         The Twelve Inch Mixes
 Spice Girls            Spice                    8421742 @ 1
 Sting                  Fields Of Gold           540 321-2 0 1
 Sting                  Mercury Falling
 Tear For Fears         Tears Roll Down
 Ten Sharp              Under The Waterline      17-468451-1021
 The Alan Parsons
 Project                The Instrumental Works
 The Mamas & The Papas  Monday Monday

 Ultravox               Dancing With Tears In My
                        Eyes
 Vangelis               1492
 Vangelis               Oceanic
 Vangelis               Themes
 Wiener Philharmoniker  Dvorak / Symphonie No. 9




                                Sound Editor


From version 0.8 on EAC includes a small wave editor that will have some
neat functions that could be handy when handling extracted audio files. At
the moment only uncompressed 16 bit 44.1 kHz stero samples files could be
used. Following some functions are described more in detail.

Glitch Removal

From version 0.6beta on it is possible to remove glitches from extracted
wave files. This will work only on uncompressed files.
What are glitches? Glitches are single samples that are completly out of
the wave stream. Best to see on these pictures, which is a really extreme
example that probably won't occur with EAC.

Before: [Image] Afterwards: [Image]

Only these glitches are removed. When hearing a wave file with glitches it
is usually a high frequent 'tick'. Linear interpolation is used for removal
of these glitches. Pops and other artefacts are more deep in the sample
structure and are not removed yet, but is also planned for future releases.
Pops occurs mainly in a lost of sync, where two parts of a wavefile are
joined that does not fit correctly at these points of change of parts.

Interpolation

At first I want to note that this feature is not fully correctly
implemented and would create not always clean replacements of the selected
wav range. The selected range has to be pretty small, otherwise the menu
entry will be disabled.
This function will work on the frequency spectrum of the wave. The spectrum
of the selected range will be interpolated from spectra of ranges left and
right of the selected one. This function should be used to remove detected
pops.
Linear Interpolation will create a linear connection between the points of
the wave in the selected range. This should only be used for very small
ranges.

Automatic Detection Of Pops

This function tries to find automatically pops in the selected range. This
is something slow, so you shouldn't select the complete file, but a smaller
area. This algorithmus is also not very good yet, it will find some pops
where no are and also not found all real pops... In the next version
improvements are planned that will add user defineable parameters to nearly
all these edit functions.
After EAC ended the search it will display a dialog with all found
positions. With a double click on such a position it will select the
matching range.

Noise Reduction

To reduce noise from a wave it is necessary to have a noise profile. This
could either be loaded from disk (or saved after created), or created from
a selected range. This range should at least something around half a
second. This range used for the creation of the profile should consist of
pure noise, no other sound/music should be found in the selected range.
After having a noise profile this could be used on any range of the wav
(usually the complete file) to reduce the kind of in the profile analyzed
noise.

Spectral Display

If the Spectral button is selected, it takes some seconds to calculate a
frequency spectrum for the displayed range. This kind of display has some
advantages. E.g. pops are easily be recognized, as example you should have
a look at the top of the page.
The Y axis will be used for different frequencies, at the bottom low
frequencies are displayed and at the top high frequencies (up to 22.5 kHz).
Further the color of a point describe the amplitude of each frequency band.
If there are discontinuties in this view, there is sometimes something
wrong in the wave.

Smooth Samples

This function will smooth the amplitude of a sound. This is usefull for LP
recordings or other pops/clicks. The amplitude is smoothed, what means that
high frequent parts are filtered out. So this function will perform a kind
of low pass filtering, but it won't cut of frequencies about a special
limit, but lower the volume according to its frequency.
This function will also help on removing pops/clicks. This function could
be called as often as needed for the same range.



Documentation

This is only a prerelease, so no work on the user documentation has been
done yet. A complete user guide and documentation will be done as soon as a
stable version has been published.
If you encounter any further bugs, please report them by mail or e-mail.
Also report any drives that work or don't work, to complete the list below.
If you want to report anything, please don't forget these important
informations

   * Operating system
   * Hardware configuration (CPU, memory, CD-ROM drive, etc.)
   * CD-ROM drives working / not working, drive caches audio data / don't
     caches audio data, accurate streaming / non-accurate streaming
   * Any bugs that occurred

Please do not bother me with simple questions like "How could I save my
wave file with 22.050 Hz, 8 bit, mono ?". I will try to answer all reports
/ questions but I don't know how long it will take. I am a student and I
also have to work to earn some money, so I have not much time for these
things, so please be patient.



Registration

As I mentioned before, this program is and will be Cardware. This means,
using the program will cost you no money, but a nice picture postcard from
your hometown or a beautiful countryside nearby (perhaps it will also be
possible to use a nice stamp for sending the postcard). This support helps
me developing the software to more and more functionality and safety.
Please tell me what you like (or dislike) and please don't forget your
e-mail address. If I ever decide that not enough users registrate (to my
subjective decision), I will add nag screens which key codes will remove to
registrated users. So if I have already your e-mail address, it will be
much easier to send you your personal registration code. Of course, this
will only be done if there isn't enough support. But I released until now
also some other programs and so I am already disillusioned.
Of course I would greatly appreciate any donations made freely by you to
help me to improve EAC by using the donations for compiler updates etc.
If you want to registrate in order to support me please use this address

Andre Wiethoff
Stockumer Str. 412
44227 Dortmund
Germany



Legal Limitations

Even if you are free to copy the program for private purposes, it is not
allowed to

   * Make changes to the executable and distribute it
   * Disassemble / decompile the executable
   * Spread it together with other programs on CD-ROM, web sites or any
     other media without my permission. It is allowed to put it up on free
     FTP sites or make links directly to my homepage. Of course you can
     pass a copy of it to your family and friends.

Bugs

Please report if a version starts or stops working on your computer, or if
you find any suspicious behaviour. But try everything multiple times before
reporting and specify as exactly as possible where and how the bug
occured.

CDDB

CDDB (CD database) is an information database containing artist, disc
title, track titles, and other information for digital audio compact discs.
Over time, this archive has grown to contain a substantial collection of CD
information and is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. This database can be
accessed by applications via the CDDB server hosts that have been set up on
the Internet around the world.
The CDDB data format and the CDDB servers are designed to be open, and are
used by many client applications requiring CD information. CDDB has become
the de facto standard for Internet access of compact disc information.
Music CD-related data is provided through the Internet from the Escient «
CDDB(tm) Music CD Database.
Copyright ⌐ 1999 Escient INC. All rights reserved.
Escient is a registered trademark of Escient INC. CDDB(tm), the Escient
CDDB Logo, are trademarks of Escient INC.

Caution !    Beta Version !

This is a only a beta version from the final program that will be
distributed later in this year, at least I hope so. This version should
only be used by experienced users.
I will not take responsibility for any damage to your hard- and/or software
that is caused directly or indirectly by this program. So download this
beta version on your own risk.


Please read also the What's New page!
If you experience any problems, have a look at the Tips & Specs page.


I put up a mailing list. If you want to be notified if a new version is
out, then subscribe to the eac-announce list.


 At this place I want to thank Bertram Mⁿller-Neuh÷ffer, Sotiris Papakostas
   and also Helge B÷cker for helping me with informations and test runs.



Tips & Drive Specifications

Did you know :

   * In the audio editor it is possible to use the time bar and the sample
     value bar for moving the waveform by moving the mouse while having the
     left mouse button pressed on these bars.
     With the right mouse button it is possible to zoom a range on the time
     or sample value bar. A right double click will zoom out the specific
     bar.
   * Some drives make problems reading TOC informations from CDs. As
     version 0.85 beta has some more features regarding the TOC, I
     implemented two more command line options to help on problems when
     starting EAC or inserting a CD. You could use
     -nocdtext
     -nomultisession
     and it again it is possible to combine any of the command line
     options.
   * An unofficial EAC page that has plenty of tips for offset correction,
     etc. can be found under Unofficial EAC Page .
   * Some CD-ROM drives will perform better DAE when updating the firmware.
     For example the Creative DVD drives and some Teacs will perform better
     when a new firmware was flashed in.
   * The WAV comparison feature could also be used to determine a combined
     reader/writer offset for exact audio duplication. This offset will be
     different for each pair of reader/writer.
     To determine the offset, you need an already copied audio CD where the
     WAV files were extracted with 0 offset.
     Now extract the same range (somewhere in the middle of a track) with
     your prefered audio drive of the original and the copied CD.
     When extracted call compare WAV files and have a look at the number of
     the first missing/extraneous samples. This number will be the combined
     reader/writer offset. To determine wheter the number should be
     positive or negative, you have to look if the samples are missing or
     are extraneous. If the original wav file has extraneous samples at the
     beginning, the offset should be negative otherwise positive (if the
     file of the copied CD has extraneous samples the offset should
     otherwise be positive, etc.)
     To check the correct offset, you could enter the offset value in the
     options and extract again the same range from the copied CD and
     compare it again with the range of the original CD, both should then
     be the same...
   * With the WAV editor it is also possible to compare the actual file
     with another WAV file. This has the advantage that the differing
     positions could automatically be selected by double-clicking the
     position in the list box. This will make correction of badly read
     tracks very easy.
   * EAC will crash on some systems. Therefore I implemented some command
     line options that will disable some functions that could crash the
     system. You could combine any of these options, I hope that works for
     this version. I will try to remove these problems in the next
     version... The options are
     -nostopcommand
     -notestunit
     -nospeedsel
     -noreadsub
     e.g. EAC -noreadsub -notestunit
     You should have CDs already inserted in ALL your drives when starting
     EAC. On some systems it will still crash if no CD is present when EAC
     is running.
     Furthermore, you might want to disable the flag 'DMA Transfer' from
     system properties, hardware manager for each CD-ROM drive in the
     system.
   * On some systems EAC will not find a matching read mode. In that case
     select the correct read command in the drive options menu directly. If
     your drives seems to still make a bus reset (red blinking LEDs for
     some seconds) or still does not find a matching read mode, please tell
     me about it!
   * The lyrics server address changed a while ago, so I added an option to
     change the address. But I couldn't test if the new server worked
     because a few days ago it was forced to close down, at least for the
     moment.
   * If a CD has songs from various artists, you could select the option
     'Various Artists' from the 'Edit CD Informations' menu. This will
     enable split track names. The first part of each track name is then
     the artist name and the second part is the song title. Both parts are
     separated by the character '/'. For example :
     Metallica / Nothing Else Matters
   * The caching that is supported by Windows 95/98/NT does not affect a
     cache that is included in a CD-ROM drive. Even if you reduce or
     disable this Windows cache, it does not affect grabbers that use the
     ASPI interface. So you can't make your drive non-caching, in what EAC
     understands by this, by changing that cache.
   * CDDB servers require an E-mail address in the CDDB options. If a
     server times out or does not respond, you can select another CDDB
     server from the list supplied in the list box. From time to time you
     should update the server list by pressing the button below that list
     box.
   * If your computer doesn't show any drives or shows an access violation
     after starting EAC, it is often the ASPI interface. There are many
     versions out there which will work (more or less reliably) with EAC.
     Changing the interface could help. To install a new ASPI, you should
     choose one from Adaptec. If you do not own an Adaptec SCSI adapter you
     should download the file "aspiw95.exe" (after locating it on the
     internet, e.g. with help of a search engine), or perform a search for
     "ASPIME" or "ASPI_ME" on the internet or have a look at the page of
     Official Undernet... I did not tried ASPI installation on NT yet, so I
     can't guarantee success!
     If this still does not help, you should probably look around to find a
     matching one... There should also be ASPI interfaces for NT4 out
     there.
   * You can open two instances of EAC, enabling you to read audio data
     from two different CD-ROM drives simultaneously.
   * To exactly position the sliders in selecting a range to copy, you
     could move the sliders secondswise by clicking left or right of the
     sliders (same as pressing the <page up> and <page down> keys) and
     blockwise by pressing the <cursor left> and <cursor right> keys.
   * If your drive caches audio data, you have to use the appropriate
     extraction mode, or if you still use the old secure mode, you have to
     enable the option 'disable CD-ROM drive cache'. If not, only the same
     result as 'Fast Extraction' is achieved (No error detection).
   * To detect if your drive has the accurate stream feature, you should
     set the options 'secure extraction' and 'emulate cache'. After reading
     a track (a few percent should also be enough) the status window will
     report if it has or not.


     You will get the best results when using Plextor CD-ROM drives.



Here is a premlimitary list of tested CD-ROM drives. There could of course
be mistakes in this list, so please tell me of any you know of.

Results of secure extraction :

 CD-ROM drive name           offset  overreads    cache   accur. stream
 PLEXTOR CD-ROM PX-32TS       +679       I/O        no           yes
 TEAC CDR56S-600              +687        I        yes           yes

   Overread feature "I" stands for Lead-In / "O" stands for Lead-Out



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