• FLAC is lossless and consumes much more space than MP3s
• MP3 ranges from 128Kbps to 320Kbps

Windows Media Player's “Retrieve additional information from the Internet” is terrible.

1. Open Windows Media Player
2. Right Click → More Options
   1. Rip Music
      1. Select the folder
      2. Select the format: MP3
      3. (Do not “Rip CD Automatically” because you want additional information from the Internet.)
   2. Library
      1. Retrieve additional information from the Internet

I abandoned this effort.

(Andre Wiethoff, the author of EAC also makes Easy Audio Copy, and games like Slitherlink.)

EAC can be used to rip to lossless WAV, convert to lossless FLAC, and also convert to MP3 in "one pass" (screenshots of preferences tabs).

Perfect CD-ripping to FLAC with Exact Audio Copy (Guide, How-to).

1. EAC → Metadata Options (maybe choose provider, not GD3)
2. EAC Options → General:
   1. Check “Use alternate CD Play routines” (Default)
   2. Check “Disable 'CD Autostart' for audio and data CDs while EAC running”
   3. Check “On unknown CDs,” and select “automatically access online metadata database”.
3. EAC Options → Naming Scheme
   1. FLAC\%artist%\%albumtitle%\%tracknr2% - %artist% - %title%
   2. FLAC\Various Artists\%albumtitle%\%tracknr2% - %artist% - %title%
   3. (Similar for the “Additional naming scheme”, but change/remove FLAC)
4. External Compression Options (FLAC here)
   1. User Defined Encoder
   2. .flac
   3. \Flac\flac.exe
   4. Additional command-line options: -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "TRACKTOTAL=%numtracks%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "DISCTOTAL=%totalcds%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%
      1. Seems like we should prefer TRACKTOTAL to TOTALTRACKS and DISCTOTAL to TOTALDISCS.
5. Additional External Compression Options (MP3 here)
   1. User Defined Encoder
   2. tick "Add ID3 tag"
   3. Consider adding “Additional command line options” -p -h -V2 %source% %dest%
      1. “-V2” means Variable Bitrate of about 190Kbps (usage docs), seems like a good compromise.
      2. Here's a nice graph of size vs. quality.
      3. Test the decoder to see what parameters are sent. The EAC author says how additional parameters get accounted.

Here's a recommendation to write a huge FLAC file for the whole album with embedded cue sheet, metadata and album art, from which cuetools or Foobar2k could be used to bulk-convert to MP3s later (click “show quoted text” too).

• foobar2000
• CUETools

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgxPyTBgu74