How do I name my tracks? If you're currently hooked up to the 'net, hit Alt-G to access the FreeDB, which contains info about every CD ever made. It will name your track titles for you. If you don't have net access, highlight the track and press F2. Cool, I've named my tracks, now what? From the DATABASE menu, select EDIT CD information. Here you can enter in the artist name, album title, and year of release. Make sure the artist name and album title are correct as they will be used in the naming of the files. Now from the EDIT menu choose SELECT ALL TRACKS. From the ACTION menu, select COPY COMPRESSED if you are planning on making MP3s. If you would like to extract pure .WAVS, select COPY UNCOMPRESSED from the ACTION menu. Alright, now what is it doing? EAC is now extracting your CD. If you are creating MP3s, a DOS Window will open after each track, and you can watch LAME compress your audio to MP3 format. (Don't close this window, it'll cut off the compression). If you want windows to hide this DOS Window, you can set that in EAC. And these are the highest quality MP3s on earth? Yep, indistinguishable from the original CD sound. Alright, EAC is done extracting my CD, and it says 'track quality 99.7% !!' I thought EAC made 100% perfect digital copies? Don't worry, the 'track quality' isn't an indicator of the rip quality. Since you're in a secure mode, EAC uses error correction to make sure the copies are correct. The percentage is telling you what percent of the track was ripped without EAC needing to use error correction. The only time you have an imperfect copy is when EAC reports a 'read error', 'synch error' or 'suspicious position'. This means that even EAC's error correction wasn't able to extract the track perfectly, and you may wish to try ripping the track again. If it's really hootched, get a good CD scratch removal kit, and try again. Hey man, my drive supports C2 error correction! It says so right on the box!! Why shouldn't I use it? Unfortunately C2 error correction is not 100% reliable with ANY drive, even Plextors (which have the most accurate C2 error correction). Even the author of EAC himself has said that he has never seen 100% C2 accuracy with any drive. This is why we have C2 disabled on our 'optimum settings' list. If you want to enable it, go ahead, but don't come crying to me when EAC misses a scratch on your CD. By the way, this is a limitation caused more by the hardware than EAC. EAC does the best it can with what it's given. So if you want to be guaranteed that EAC will extract perfectly, keep the settings we gave you. These MP3s we're making, what bit rate are they? What's alt preset standard ? Alt Preset Standard was developed for the LAME encoder by the audiophiles at HydrogenAudio.org It was designed to create MP3s that sound exactly like the CD original, even to audio freaks using equipment that cost more than your car. It uses variable bit-rate, which makes the bit-rate fluctuate based on the complexity of the music. More complex sections of music get higher bit-rates to maintain CD quality. Simpler sections are given lower bitrates, while still maintaining CD quality, to minimize the file size. From experience, I can tell you that most average out to about 192kb/s, but are MUCH higher quality than Constant Bit Rate 192kb/s MP3s. Alt Preset Standard does not use regular command line 'switches', like --r3mix did. It uses special code built into the LAME encoder. For more info, check out Audio-Illumination.org, which is full of very smart people, on the bleeding edge of audio compression. The MP3s I'm making with your method, when I play them in Windows Media Player, the time doesn't display correctly! Yeah, Windows Media Player sucks ass, and can't handle displaying time lengths correctly with VBR mp3s. Get a real MP3 player, any other one on earth, and you'll be fine. I've heard there are some other switches, like Alt Preset Extreme, is that better than Alt Preset Standard? Alt Preset Extreme will create MP3s with bit-rates that average out to 220-240kb/s. Some people automatically assume it must be a higher quality preset, which isn't the case. There are very, very, very, very, very, very, few cases where Alt Preset Standard can't replicate the original audio perfectly. (And even when it can't, most of us regular humans would never notice). From reading Audio-Illumination, even the LAME developers will tell you that in such cases, Alt Preset Extreme rarely makes a difference, and the difference between the two presets is mostly theoretical. So why even have it? I dunno, I guess it makes some people feel better. It's just a waste of disk space though. Alt Preset Standard was designed to be exactly that, the standard. Otherwise it would be called 'Alt Preset Almost The Standard But Really Not Quite There Yet So Use A Different Option'. How do I make EAC automatically create folders? Check this thread. Is there a database anywhere with drive features and offsets? Sure is, check out the database at SatCP. Remember, C2 error correction doesn't work 100% correctly with any drive, despite what people have entered in this database, or the box your drive came in claims. The SatCP Website also has many excellent EAC tutorials, and can help you learn about all the advanced features in EAC. If you are interested in joining a Peer-To-Peer Network, like Napster, full of EAC and Alt Preset Standard users, click here.