Help w/bad mp3 rips?

Having now tried everything under the planet, EAC is definitely the way to go for ripping wav files. I've now re-ripped about 50 CDs flawlessly, despite huge skipping and other problems with MM, Realplayer, and Audiograbber. After some research, I've also been using LAME 3.92 with the "--alt preset extreme" commandline arguments for generating mp3s from wav files. EAC, as far as I can tell, is the only ripping software that lets you call LAME as an external program, thereby enabling you to use the commandline arguments. I gather the commandline "presets" are the coding community's efforts to provide some tags that give optimal sound quality for a given compression factor. The preset extreme is a variable bit rate coding scheme that generates mp3s that are roughly the same size as 128K CBR files, but sound a *lot* better (actually, they sound better than the 192K CBR files I had made). Seems a good compromise between compression/quality.

Now, only 800 or so more CDs to go.

Looks like this is an issue that should be directed to MusicMatch customer service or tech help. They are usually quick with the email. EAC is the best, but it is not half as easy to use as MM jukebox. EAC requires lots of reading to setup everything before using... MM Jukebox is very intuitive and user friendly.

Just got back from a business trip and logged on to A'gon.

All the rips I have done were direct to hard drive. I'll see about finding EAC. Although, if Buckingham hasn't had issues with MM, maybe I have a drive problem, so maybe EAC won't help. Gah.

Are your rips done at 1X or higher speed? The software I was using last (Audiograbber) showed rates that varied, but generally were about 6X. I'm wondering if I would get better results if I forced it to 1X and just made painfully slooooow mp3s.

Are you ripping to CDR or to your hard drive? I find ripping from CD to CDR causes me errors/skips. I think it has to do with “on the fly” conversion to WAV format while writing to CDR. I rip directly to my hard drive at 320 kbps. If I am going to transfer to CDR, I convert the file to WAV format and then rip to CDR. The extras step provides me clean rips.

agree with sailor720. EAC is the best out there.
I haven't had any problems with MusicMatch software.

use exact audio copy and the fgh radium codec i use this and it puts out some pretty good results. EAC allows error correction during extraction and genreally doesnt screw up. Even better if you can find a way to play ogg vorbis files on your ipod these sound better than mp3s.