1. What You Need To Install
- In order to "rip to FLAC" with EAC, you obviously need to install Exact Audio Copy, EAC for short. Get the latest version from the EAC homepage. You may also download it from Free-Codecs.com.
At the time of writing this guide, the latest version is EAC 0.99 prebeta 5; this version is recommended. (Note that it may not create .m3u files if you run Windows Vista or Windows 7, though. Use another application for creating .m3u files, or create them manually, or use prebeta 4 instead.) The term "prebeta" suggests that it may not yet be as stable as previous "beta" versions, but over time it has turned out to work just as fine as the old "stable" beta versions. (Prebeta 3 had some issues, so if you still use that one, you have to update to prebeta 4 or 5!)
There are some noticeable differences between the old EAC 0.95 and EAC 0.99. The first of these is that flac.exe is included with the EAC 0.99 installer. The second noticeable difference is that EAC 0.99 has in-built support for Accurate Rip: it can automatically fetch setup information about your drive, and it can also automatically fetch information about other users' results from ripping CDs, making it possible to compare the CRC values for many different rips. Finally, the log for 0.99 rips shows some crucial settings that the old 0.95 log left out.
- The ASPI driver/layer
The extra file that you might need is the ASPI driver (or "layer"). It's an interface for accessing drives that EAC needs in order to "see" your CD drive. Windows 2000 and Windows XP both have ASPI preinstalled - if EAC works ("sees" your drives) with the preinstalled ASPI, there is no need to get another one. More about this at step 3i. of the Setup Guide, EAC Options - Interface.
- Other codecs
If you want to convert your files to a lossy format such as .mp3 or .ogg (Vorbis) as you rip your CD, you will also have to install those codes, see EAC Lossy Setup Guide (mp3 and Ogg Vorbis).
