I finally got off my duff and put the rest of my modest collection of Cd's on my hard drive using the built in encoder in MediaMonkey. I have run into 3 tracks that were not encoded properly. The errors show up as static on the recording. In two of the three the music degrades completely into static within about 60 seconds of the problem showing up. In one case it starts and then fades out after about a minute. In all 3 cases it is the first track on the disc.

I did all the encoding without listening so there may be more tracks with issues.

Has anyone else run into this? What encoder are you folks using for FLAC files?

I use: Exact Audio Copy

It will tell you the quality of the rip when it finishes and so far I’ve never had a bad rip in over 200 CDs. It will try it’s best to keep re-ripping a bad track like no other program I know of. IMO it’s simply the best ripper out there.

I have been using Winamp for my FLAC rips, it will also convert the FLAC files to any other format you want as well.

Dean. EAC seems to be the guaranteed solution, but it sounds quite fiddly. I spend all day fiddling with networks and wonky computers. I just want something point & shoot at home. I may end up going with EAC if I have to though.

Jay. Now that I have figured out some of MediaMonkey's quirks I really like the program. Ideally I would love to find another plugin that works with MediaMonkey. If not, I will look at Winamp. I seem to remember that there is some integration between Winamp and MediaMonkey. I'll have to look into it.

I was also hesitant to try EAC because of it’s “power user” reputation but I had no problems installing and running it twice (boot drive crash). It definitely has more features than I need but the basic program seems fairly intuitive. I’m only doing FLAC rips and not converting to anything else so I’m not sure how it integrates with the LAME mp3 encoder.

I also really like MediaMonkey. I went ahead and paid for the full version mainly so I could create as many playlists as I want, but if you don’t need that feature then the standard version is fantastic too.

I also read that MM integrates with Winamp but haven’t done that myself.

Dean

I use autoflac with EAC. Autoflac comes with some instructions on how to configure EAC to work with it... just follow the steps and it is very simple.

Thanks guys. I will give EAC another look.

I will probably end up with the pay version as well. There are some customization options I would like.

Looks like MediaMonkey supports a large part of the Winamp api so most winamp plugins should work with MM.

There is also a scripting language with MM so I wonder if there is some way to use scripting to integrate EAC into MM.

I ripped my collection with EAC. I recently installed DBPower Amp and sure wish I would have used it instead of EAC. It's as good as EAC, but much, much easier to use. What I really like about it, is that I can rip two formats at the same time. This is convenient for me, as I use I-Tunes for my I-Pod and FLAC for my home rig. It also gathers album art and uses a more accurate tagging service than EAC.

Thanks for the info about DBPower Amp. Tagging has been the one thing about EAC I’ve found disappointing.

EAC. it never fails me unless I have an old CD with horrid scratches. Accurip is a nice feature. In the case of a tiny anomaly from a scratch, it it uses Internet comparisons to fill in the missing gaps.

I tag after the fact with MP3Tag. I keep my genres very simple so I usually like to tweak what the 'Interweb' recommended, make sure my track numbers have leading zeros, etc. It's easy and very fast.