EAC & Drive Offset Correction

Ok, for 3 reference cds i used i got an offset of +30 samples and +120 bytes using accuraterip. However for one of my cds I got something way out there -1607 samples and -6428 bytes. Why is that? Have any of you done offset correction for ur music library on your computer?

I've never had a problem setting the offset using EAC.

It may be that the outlier CD isn't really a reference CD. For example, it may be the same album and artist, but a different pressing/edition.

Is your drive in the database?

http://www.accuraterip.com/driveoffsets.htm

That's one way to double check it.

Mine is an OEM version of the benq dw1655 which has shown multiple drive offsets and thus accuraterip has taken it off their list. My drive is rebadged as an atapi drive. I got it to be +30 but I'm not sure how I can be absolutely positive that it is that. 3 out of 4 cds (neglecting the one crazy aforementioned cd) have given me +30 samples and +120 bytes. To be honest, I'm nitpicking here but I'm obsessed. what i can i say? I assume the +120 bytes is irrelevant...

Yet another conundrum, EAC is a brilliant program but why don't they have read and write offsets as separate. Is it because when burning a cd off of your collection that both read and write offsets are used thus the combined offset is needed not necessarily the write offset alone? My write offset is +66 which follows with other benq drives writing under the highest speed. So my combined is +96, however EAC allows only one or the other. The read or the combined not both. Why not both to make it more convenient so that when you're writing a cd you don't have to switch between the options...

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Originally Posted by avgjoe

Yet another conundrum, EAC is a brilliant program but why don't they have read and write offsets as separate. Is it because when burning a cd off of your collection that both read and write offsets are used thus the combined offset is needed not necessarily the write offset alone?

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The combined offset is something like: (read offset) - (write offset). So by setting both the read offset and the combined offset, you've implicitly set the write offset.

What version of EAC are you using? Mine has this option. I have a link on this at home, I'll send it.

i have .95 which i believe to be the newest version. SO should i put a value for the read offset which I know and then choose the second option. BTW I've calculated combined by doing EAC burn test offset cd thing. So should I use the second option if I'm going to burn as well as read CDs? thanks...

another question. I was ripping some of my cds and decided to play one of my old mp3s on my computer when i noticed something. The mp3s had filenames separated into subcategories: track artist album year

How can you set that up for wav files using EAC? Or can you?

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Originally Posted by avgjoe

i have .95 which i believe to be the newest version. SO should i put a value for the read offset which I know and then choose the second option. BTW I've calculated combined by doing EAC burn test offset cd thing. So should I use the second option if I'm going to burn as well as read CDs? thanks...

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I'm using v 0.95 beta 4. Here's an excellent tutorial on using it:

http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eachelp01.htm

See the instructions here for determining the write offset:

http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eacoffsets03.htm#-

So the idea is NOT to use the combined offset option in the EAC options menus, but rather to calculate the write offset by burning a test disk. Then, you go through the same read offset detection process you used to detect the read offset using the reference CDs, BUT this time you used the test CD you just burned. This will give you the combined read/write offset.

You then calculate the write offset as:

write offset = combined read/write offset correction - read offset correction

So, for example, you already know (or think, anyway) that your read offset is +30. Now suppose that after you burn the test CD and re-do the read offset detection using the test CD, it gives you a value of +40. This is your combined read/write offset, and so you calculate your write offset as:

write offset = combined read/write offset correction - read offset correction = 40 - 30 = +10.

Of course the problem you have is that you don't know for sure what your read offset it, because of the different values you're getting. I'm not 100% sure how to solve that problem, I've never seen that happen with any drive I've used.

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Originally Posted by avgjoe

another question. I was ripping some of my cds and decided to play one of my old mp3s on my computer when i noticed something. The mp3s had filenames separated into subcategories: track artist album year

How can you set that up for wav files using EAC? Or can you?

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Yes, you can. You can set it up to use any naming convention you like. See this page:

http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eac02.htm#-

Scroll down to where it says "Explanation of the settings on the Filename tab", and that will tell you what string to enter for a given naming convention (and directory structure).

For example, suppose you want to have each CD ripped into its own artist subdirectory, containing a subdirectory for each album, and you want the file names for each song to include the track, artist, album and year, and you want each to be separated by an underscore ("_") character. Then you'd enter the string:

%A\%C\%T_%A_%C_%Y

Mike the only problem is that I was referring to the mp3s ability to have embedded information which I don't think the wav files support. I don't mean subfolder but those things where if you put your mouse above an mp3 file: the artist, the title, the year are all shown. I think it's called Id3 tags or something. I'm not sure however if this is not possible with wavs as it is with mp3s.

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Originally Posted by avgjoe

Mike the only problem is that I was referring to the mp3s ability to have embedded information which I don't think the wav files support. I don't mean subfolder but those things where if you put your mouse above an mp3 file: the artist, the title, the year are all shown. I think it's called Id3 tags or something. I'm not sure however if this is not possible with wavs as it is with mp3s.

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Oh - right, you're talking about tags, I thought you meant filenames.

Yeah, WAV files don't support tags. You might want to start using FLAC instead of WAV, since FLAC supports tags.

FLAC is lossless compression -- there's zero information thrown away, which means you can always get back the original WAV file, and there's absolutely no loss of sound quality. You'll save disk space too, since the files sizes are about half the size of a WAV file.

I'll try flac. thanks for the guide, btw...