Digital Home Thoughts: Ripping the Perfect MP3 With Exact Audio Copy

Configuration
From the main Exact Audio Copy window, click the EAC menu and select EAC Options. Click on the General tab.


Make sure "On unknown CDs, automatically access online freedb database" is checked and selected. You may or may not want to have EAC eject the CD when it's done, if so, check that option at the bottom of this screen. Note that EAC by default disables Windows autorun for CDs while it's running. Nice.


Next, click on the Filename tab. Here is where you can, using tokens, specify how EAC should label each MP3 file as it's ripping it. Each person will have their own preference as to how their files should be labeled. My preference is %A\%Y - %C\%A - %N - %T, which corresponds to Artist\Year – Album\Artist – Track Number – Track Title, and tells EAC to create a folder with the Artist's name, a folder inside that named with the Year and name of the Album (separated by a dash), and to place each MP3 in that folder, naming each file with the name of the Artist, the Track Number and the Track name (again, all separated by dashes). Confused? It took me a little bit too. In our example, the first file created by EAC would be \The Mars Volta\2005 – Frances the Mute\The Mars Volta – 01 – Cygnus….Vismund Cygnus.mp3, and each subsequent MP3 will be placed in that same folder with a new track number and title.


Once you've told EAC how to label your files, click on the Directories tab. I recommend creating a base-level folder called "Ripped Music" on your hard drive and telling EAC to always rip MP3s to that directory by clicking the "Use this directory" button and Browsing to that folder. Click OK to exit the EAC Options window.