Best Audio & Music 2000 - Millenium Edition

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Best Audio & Music 2000 - Millenium Edition / BAM2000.ISO / Exact Audio Copy 0.85B4 / EAC.TXT < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1999-09-02 | 36.7 KB | 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 Contact If you need help or want to be notified of any news regarding EAC, please subscribe to one or both of the mailing lists below. http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/eac http://www.onelist.com/ subscribe/eac-announce This mailing list is for users This mailing list will notify you helping users. If you are willing to of any news regarding EAC help or if you have questions, subscribe this list and ask your questions. If you encountered severe bugs, please check it twice and read the documentation (the homepages), perhaps this problem is already in work or even already removed. Otherwise you may contact me on my private e-mail address If you want to registrate in order to support me or just want to send me snail mail please use this address Andre Wiethoff Stockumer Str. 412 44227 Dortmund Germany AOL Instant Messager (AIM) identification AWiethoff