Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a

CD ripping Ripping is extracting all or parts of digital content from a container. Originally, it meant to rip music out of Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was used to extract WAV or MP3 format files from digital audio CDs, but got applied as well to ext ...

program for Microsoft Windows. The program has been developed by Andre Wiethoff since 1998. Wiethoff's motivation for creating the program was that other such software only performed

jitter In electronics and telecommunications, jitter is the deviation from true periodicity of a presumably periodic signal, often in relation to a reference clock signal. In clock recovery applications it is called timing jitter. Jitter is a significa ...

correction while scratched CDs often produce distortions.

Overview

Exact Audio Copy is proprietary

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

, free for

non-commercial A non-commercial (also spelled noncommercial) activity is an activity that does not, in some sense, involve commerce, at least relative to similar activities that do have a commercial objective or emphasis. For example, advertising-free community ...

use. It is written for Microsoft Windows. It has also been tested to work under newer versions of

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

. EAC is used to convert the tracks on standard audio CDs to WAV files, which can then be transcoded into other formats. These include

lossy In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...

ones such as MP3,

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New York * American Aviation, a company from Cleveland, ...

Ogg Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...

, or lossless ones such as

ALAC ALAC may refer to: * Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand, autonomous Crown entity for promoting alcohol moderation * Aluminium acetate (AlAc), a number of different salts of aluminum with acetic acid * Apple Lossless Audio Codec, an audio cod ...

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

, or

WavPack WavPack is a free and open-source lossless audio compression format and application implementing the format. It is unique in the way that it supports hybrid audio compression alongside normal compression which is similar to how FLAC works. ...

using external encoders. It also has the option of using the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct compression. It supports AccurateRip, which automatically compares the copy with rips made by others, and can automatically create cue sheets, with all gaps, track attributes, ISRC, and CD-Text included. EAC also supports automatic ID3 tagging using Internet-based databases such as freedb, GD3 (see below), or a local database. If there are uncorrectable errors the software reports the error location. EAC is popular among

audiophile An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a piece of recorded music or a live musical performance, typically inside closed headphones, In-ear monitors, open ...

s for its accuracy and ability to rip slightly damaged audio compact discs. A licensed version of Exact Audio Copy called ''Rockstar Custom Tracks'' was released by

Rockstar Games Rockstar Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in New York City. The company was established in December 1998 as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, using the assets Take-Two had previously acquired from BMG Interactive. Foun ...

in collaboration with Andre Wiethoff for use on the

PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PAL regions on September 1, 200 ...

release of '' Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories''.

History

The program was created by Andre Wiethoff in 1998, while he was a student at the University of Dortmund in Germany. Wiethoff stated that he became "fed up with other audio grabbers" that only do

correction while scratched CDs often produce distortions, and decided to develop his own. In release 1.0b1, EAC supported the downloading of CD cover art, and in b2, an option was added to have the ID3 information, such as artist, CD title, track names, and cover art downloaded automatically from the GD3 database. Release 1.0b1 removed support for

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was official ...

and older versions of Windows. Version 1.1 was released in 2015. Version 1.2, released in 2016, provided mainly bug fixes for the

cdrdao cdrdao (''“ CD recorder disc-at-once”'') is a free utility software product for authoring and ripping of CD-ROMs. The program is released under the GPL. Cdrdao records audio or data CD-Rs in disk-at-once mode based on a textual descrip ...

component and updated the cover search in the freedb++ plugin. Version 1.3 was a

hotfix A hotfix or quick-fix engineering update (QFE update) is a single, cumulative package that includes information (often in the form of one or more files) that is used to address a problem in a software product (i.e., a software bug). Typically, hot ...

released soon after version 1.2. Version 1.4 was released in 2020 with version 1.5 released soon after as a hotfix.

References

External links

* {{official website, www.exactaudiocopy.de Windows-only freeware Windows CD ripping software 1998 software

Overview

History

See also

References

External links