Make a CD Listing In Text Format

This is a way to get a listing of your CD's in text format!

First things first, this is for windows only.

1. Open up notepad. (can use run command "notepad")
2. copy and paste this "dir /b /on > cdlist.txt" without the ""
3. click save as.
4. name it w/e u want but remember to save it as a .BAT extension!
5. place it wherever your mp3s are kept
6. doubclick it
7. open cdlist.txt in your mp3 folder

ENJOY!

Taken from TheMusik forums

jiGGafellz' Step-by-Step Guide to Secure CD Ripping w/Exact Audio Copy

I. Introduction

This is a detailed and up-to-date guide to configure the best CD extractor on the planet, also known as Exact Audio Copy, which is made for Windows. It will guide you through the setup It consists of information I've found on various ripping and encoding sites, including Hydrogen Audio. What I've done is compile the most important and useful specifications that go into making a proper rip without giving you a lot of filler and information that isn't understood by the average user. At first glance, this guide may seem tedious or overwhelming, but the initial setup of EAC along with the setup of the four encoders is a one time deal. After that, it's smooth sailing. I might add that it isn't necessary to configure EAC for all four encoders to use. Just the ones you prefer or need.

Installation

The very first step is installing EAC. You need to download EAC. You also need a working ASPI layer. If you have Nero installed you can copy wnaspi32.dll from the Nero installation folder (C:\Program Files\Ahead\Nero) to your EAC installation folder (C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy) after the installation has finished. If you don't have Nero you can download the needed file here.

• After installation is complete, copy wnaspi32.dll and run EAC.
• If it prompts you to run the Configuration Wizard, click cancel then restart EAC.

Configuring the options

Press F12. You can enter your own email address if you like or you can leave the uber@ubernet.org as the default email. Select a server from the dropdown menu. The default server is highlighted but as you can see there are multiple servers located all over the world. Select the one you want and click OK.

Press F9 and select the 'Extraction' tab. Check 'Fill up missing offset samples with silence' and 'Synchronize between tracks.' Also change the Error recovery quality to High.

On the next tab General check following options:

• On unknown cds automatically access online freedb database: When you insert a cd in your drive EAC will automatically lookup the performer, album and track titles from the online freedb database. That saves you a lot of typing work if the cd is found in the online database. This option makes only sense if you have a permanent Internet connection like DSL or cable.
• When using the Power Down feature wait for external compressors.

On the third tab Tools you also must set a few options:

• Use CD-Text information in CUE sheet generation
• Create '.m3u' playlist on extraction and the sub option 'Write m3u playlist with extended information.' This will make EAC add additional information to the playlist like the track play time.
• Automatically write status report after extraction. This makes EAC write a status report (log file) after extraction in which you can find possible errors and the used settings.
• On extraction, start external compressors queued in the background. This controls how many compressor windows will open and encode while you are ripping. It is unnecessary to select more than one.

• Select the Normalize tab.
• If Normalize is checked, then deselect it.

• Select the Filename tab. You'll notice two input fields with text in them. Below you see %N - %A - %T in those fields. EAC generates filenames using this string which would look like Number - Artist - Title. You can experiment with the various combinations for the filename construction. In any case, please keep the filenames simple and put the track number (%n) first.

• Select the Interface tab and tick 'Installed external ASPI interface.' This would be the wnaspi32.dll file you copied to your EAC folder after installation. This section is complete. Select Ok.

Verifying or setting the drive options

This is one of the most important parts of the EAC configuration.

• Press F10. Select the warning dialog box away.
• Select the 'Extraction Method' tab. Secure Mode *must* be enabled!
• Check 'Drive has 'Accurate Stream' feature' and 'Drive caches audio data.'

Select the Drive tab.

• Select the dropdown menu and select Autodetect read command.
• Select Autodetect read command now. After a few seconds EAC returns the correct read command for your drive.

Select the Offset/Speed tab

• Check 'Use read sample offset correction'
• In the input field below, enter the offset correction value for your drive which can be found on this site. If you don't know what drive you have or what too look for, your drive will be listed at the of the window below. It's likely to be easier searching for the model numbers. (e.g. DRU-720A)
• Check 'Allow speed reduction during extraction' and 'CD-Text Read capable drive.'

Select the Gap Detection tab

• It is recommended to use Detection Method A, and Secure here. Some drives may not use these settings, if this is the case when you are detecting gaps, try changing them.
• Select secure in the detection accuracy dropdown list.

Select OK.

Setting the encoder options

The configuration of EAC and the drives is done. Next step is to configure the encoder settings. These differ from compressor to compressor, but the four steps lists below will remain the same.

• Press F11
• Select External Compression
• Check 'Use external program for compression.
• Select User Defined Encoder from the Parameter passing scheme dropdown box. Use the links below to advance to your preferred encoder.
  1. LAME mp3
  2. FLAC
  3. Monkey's Audio
  4. Ogg Vorbis

LAME mp3

The first thing you need to do is get LAME. (This version is recommended by the experts at Hydrogen Audio).

• Open the downloaded zip file. Extract the lame.exe file to the EAC installation path. (default: C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\)
• Back in EAC set 'Use file extension' to .mp3 (including the dot in front). Next we need to set the path to the LAME executable.
• If you stored it in the recommended location, you can just copy and paste C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\lame.exe.
• Further set the last four options on the tab as shown in the screenshot below.

On the External Compression tab enter one of following command lines in the Additional command line options input field:

• -V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --ignore-tag-errors --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tg "%m" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d
• -V 0 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --ignore-tag-errors --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tg "%m" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d
• -b 320 --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tg "%m" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

List of recommended settings

Switch	Preset	Target Kbit/s	Bitrate range kbit/s	Bitrate designation
-b 320	--preset insane	320	320 CBR	320
-V 0 --vbr-new	--preset fast extreme	245	220...260	V0
-V 2 --vbr-new	--preset fast standard	190	170...210	V2

• For those who are still used to the older --alt-preset settings, here is a short overview. -V 2 --vbr-new equals to --alt-preset standard, -V 0 --vbr-new equals to --alt-preset extreme and -b 320 equals to --alt-preset insane. Just ignore the Bit rate field and the high and low quality selectors.
• I've been made aware of a few people who have problems with LAME.exe not encoding the .wav files to .mp3. Apparently there is a problems with bad genre info causing lame.exe not to work properly. I've added a fix for that to the command lines above.
• Check if the settings on the ID3 Tag tab page match the settings of the screenshot below.

Select OK to save the settings. Continue reading at Saving the compression options to a profile

FLAC

The first thing you need to do is get FLAC.

• Open the downloaded zip file. Extract the flac.exe file to the EAC installation path. (default: C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\)
• Back in EAC set 'Use file extension' to .flac (including the dot in front). Next we need to set the path to the FLAC executable.
• If you stored it in the recommended location, you can just copy and paste C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\flac.exe.
• Further set the last four options on the tab as shown in the screenshot below.

On the External Compression tab enter one of following command lines in the Additional command line options input field:

• -V -5 -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s
• -8 -A tukey(0.25) -A gauss(0.1875) -b 4096 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s --sector-align
  
• Just ignore the Bitrate field and the high and low quality selectors. The bitrate of the compressed files will be "Lossless" no matter the compression (5/8) level used.
• Check if the settings on the ID3 Tag tab page match the settings of the screenshot below.

Select OK to save the settings. Continue reading at Saving the compression options to a profile

Monkey's Audio

The first thing you need to do is get Monkey's Audio. You will also need wapet. The Monkey's Audio format supports the so-called APEv2 tags but the command line encoder doesn't. Therefore, we point EAC to wapet which does support APEv2 tags and, which on its turn, points to the Monkey's Audio compressor.

• You'll have to download and install the full Monkey's Audio Windows suite. When that's done you'll find the command line encoder mac.exe in the Monkey's Audio installation folder (default: C:\Program Files\Monkey's Audio\). Copy and paste it to C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\
• Extract the wapet.exe to C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\
• Back in EAC set Use file extension to .ape (including the dot in front). Next we need to set the path to the wapet executable.
• If you stored it in the recommended location, you can just copy and paste C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\wapet.exe
• Further set the last four options on the tab as shown in the screenshot below.

On the External Compression tab enter one of following command lines in the Additional command line options input field:

• %d -t "Artist=%a" -t "Title=%t" -t "Album=%g" -t "Year=%y" -t "Track=%n" -t "Genre=%m" mac.exe %s %d -c2000 -v
• %d -t "Artist=%a" -t "Title=%t" -t "Album=%g" -t "Year=%y" -t "Track=%n" -t "Genre=%m" mac.exe %s %d -c3000 -v (Recommended)
• %d -t "Artist=%a" -t "Title=%t" -t "Album=%g" -t "Year=%y" -t "Track=%n" -t "Genre=%m" mac.exe %s %d -c4000 -v
  
• Just ignore the Bit rate field and the high and low quality selectors.
• Check if the settings on the ID3 Tag tab page match the settings of the screenshot below.

Select OK to save the settings. Continue reading at Saving the compression options to a profile

Ogg Vorbis

The first thing you need to do is get Ogg Vorbis.

• Open the downloaded zip file. Extract the oggenc2.exe file to the EAC installation path. (default: C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\)
• Back in EAC set 'Use file extension' to .ogg (including the dot in front). Next we need to set the path to the OGG executable.
• If you stored it in the recommended location, you can just copy and paste C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\oggenc2.exe.
• Further set the last four options on the tab as shown in the screenshot below.

On the External Compression tab enter one of following command lines in the Additional command line options input field:

• -q6 -a "%a" -t "%t" -l "%g" -d "%y" -N "%n" -G "%m" %s
• -q8 -a "%a" -t "%t" -l "%g" -d "%y" -N "%n" -G "%m" %s
• -q10 -a "%a" -t "%t" -l "%g" -d "%y" -N "%n" -G "%m" %s (Recommended)
  
• Just ignore the Bit rate field and the high and low quality selectors.
• Check if the settings on the ID3 Tag tab page match the settings of the screenshot below.

Select OK to save the settings. Continue reading at Saving the compression options to a profile

Saving the compression options to a profile

You've just set the options for your preferred encoder and now it's time to save that configuration to it's very own profile so you don't have to go that setup again. This is especially convenient if you want to use several different encoders because each time you change the compression options in EAC the old settings will be lost. You can use one of two ways to create your new profile(s).

1st Method

• Press Shift+F2

• Enter a name for the profile. I suggest naming it after whichever encoder it is configured for. That way, there will be no confusion on which is which later down the road.

• Now choose a save location. There is a Profiles folder in EAC's default installation folder. (C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Profiles\)

2nd Method

• In the status bar on the bottom of the EAC main window you'll notice Load, Save, New and Delete buttons. With these buttons you can manage profiles in EAC.

• Select the New button. Provide a name for the profile, check All Compression options and select OK. You've created and automatically saved your profile to C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Profiles\.

Your new profile should now be added to the dropdown box on the left of the buttons. If you have several profiles in the list you can switch between those by selecting one from the list and selecting the Load button. The second method is the better of the two for it's simplicity and time saving effectiveness. You may now continue setting another compressor or another profile, or you can start using EAC.

2. Using EAC

Insert the cd you want to rip in your cd-rom and wait for EAC to request the cd information in the online freedb database. Verify the titles because the information is sent in by volunteers to freedb and often contains typos.

Ripping an audio cd

This is the most common used extraction method. Repeat this process each time you rip a disc.

• Select only the wanted tracks, or none at all if you wish to rip the entire disc.
• Press F4. EAC will now detect the gaps between tracks of the entire disc and shouldn't take very long.

• Create a CUE Sheet by selecting Action > Create CUE Sheet > Multiple WAV Files With Gaps... (Noncompliant) from the menu bar.
• Save the .cue in the same folder you plan to save the compressed files in.

• Press Shift+F6. The folder that you saved the .cue in should be showing at this point.
• Select Save if this is the location where you indeed want to save the compressed files.

EAC will now start the extraction process. It will test read each track for errors and then read, copy and then compress the track using the external compressor. You will see another pop up during extraction. This is the external compressor encoding the file. It looks just like the window you get by clicking Start > Run and typing cmd. Do not close this window! It will open and close as it begins and finishes the compression, respectively. During extraction you'll sometimes notice red dots lighting up in the extraction dialog window and after the extraction completed you get a log with things like Peak Level and Track Quality. When a Read Error or Sync Error occurs, there's an uncorrectable error in the read audio data. After extraction you'll get a list of the exact locations of the suspicious positions.

EAC has now completed the extraction process.

• Click OK. Do not close EAC because the external compression quite possibly be a track or two behind the extraction process. Be sure all encoding is finished before exiting EAC. Open the folder where you saved the compressed files. There will be a .log file. This file contains information such as the output format, the command line which was used, pre-gap lengths, peak levels, track quality, CRC checksums, and any errors that occurred during the extraction. You may want to compare the CRC checksums in the .log to the ones listed in EAC to make sure they actually do match. In the same folder, there should be an .m3u playlist which you can drop into the player of your choice and it will load all of the tracks for you. Congratulations! You've just made a proper rip.

Explanation of nCore's Point System

Taken from InvitesCentral.net Forums,Written by Rozsomak,Not me!

:)

I made a small review and translation on Ncore's recently launched point -sytem and invite sytem. For those who might be interested, I wanted to help U. I know that Hungarian is not an easy language.

Here we go.
You can send invites if you have 500 points. There ain't no time limitations, schedules at the moment. Simple as that: collect the 500 points and you can invite Your friend.
How can you get points?

Uploading 1 torrentfile (after Moderator's Approval): 5 points
Fulfilling a request: 20 points(maximum 2 p. / day)
Login on the tracker: 1 point (maximum 1 p. / day)
Uploading 100 Mb / day : 1 point (maximum 1 occasion / day)
Downloading 1 Gb / day: 1 point (max. 1 occasion / day, freebies don' t count)

Deductions:
1 warn = -20 points
Any other breeching: - 2 points

What else you can use Your points for:
1 request = -25 points
1 invite sent = -500 points(50 points during freeleech sometimes)
Under warning you cannot collect points until warning is lifted!

How to upload the same file to two Private Trackers

Written by "TheWimp" at waffles forums,Not me!



step by step guide using uTorrent 1.6
by: thewimp
thanks to: Tich

introduction:
This tutorial will explain how to upload an album to two different private trackers.
I have seen some people doing things like adding 2 trackers to the same torrent job, this is a bad thing and
will be flagged as cheating. So I decided to write this tutorial to help people do it the right way. Tich was the first to talk about that on the other thread, so the kudos go to him.
The tutorial was made using uTorrent 1.6, but may work with any version.

CREATING THE FIRST TORRENT

first you will need some album to upload. I'll use an imaginary one, let's call it "waffos - best hits"



now you have to upload it to the tracker, but first you'll need to create the torrent:
open uTorrent, click on 'create new torrent'.
a window will pop, now follow the instructions:



1 - click on 'add directory' and point to the folder you want to upload.
2 - paste the tracker url from waffles upload page/use your url with the passkey.
3 - since this is the first torrent you will create, it's recommended to leave this option on auto detect.
4 - UNTICK start seeding, TICK private torrent.
5 - click on 'create and save as...' button, the progress bar below it will fill up, and you'll be asked where you want to save the .torrent.

click on 'close' button.

now you can see a new job added to uTorrent, you may want to label it, or just leave it on No Label category.
click on the torrent job, you'll notice some tabs below it, click on the general tab, now you have to check the 'piece size' used by uTorrent .

this is needed because:
1 - the piece size was set to auto during torrent creation so you need to know what size was used.
2 - you will have to select a different piece size for the second torrent

pic:



now go to the upload page on waffles and select the .torrent you have created, upload it and start seeding.

ADDITIONAL STEPS: if you have used the standard tracker url (i.e. without passkey), you may have to download the .torrent file on the upload page in order to proper seed it. To do this, just download it from the page, open uTorrent, select the new torrent job you have created, CLICK ON REMOVE BUTTON (otherwise uTorrent will try to add new tracker to existing job), add the new .torrent you downloaded and point it to your album folder (in this case: G:waffos - best hits).

now you're done with the first torrent, let's create the second torrent to upload to what.cd tracker.

CREATING SECOND TORRENT

click on create a new torrent, the same window will popup.



As you can see on the pic above, the folder will be the same as the first (YOU DON'T NEED TO MODIFY THE FILES INSIDE THE FOLDER).
Now you have to use the what.cd tracker, get it from your what.cd upload page.
IMPORTANT STEP: this is the where you do the trick, you'll have to select a different piece size for the new torrent. In this example, the first torrent have a piece size of 512 kB, so I'll select a close number, like 256 or 1024 kB.
Untick start seeding, TICK private torrent.
Click on 'create and save as...' and save the new .torrent on a different location, or with a different name (otherwise uTorrent will ask to overwrite the first one). remember to keep your .torrent stored because you may need them on the future.
uTorrent will add a new job and now you can see 2 exactly identical torrents on the job list, but one is for waffles and the other is for what. I strongly suggest that you create labels for better management of your upload jobs.
upload the new torrent to what.cd and start seeding.

that's it, you now have 2 identical torrents on two different private trackers.

please suggest corrections or additions to the tutorial.
cheers.

Rip to FLAC with Log/Cue/M3U on Mac

Taken from Waffles forums,Not written by me!

Yes! You can rip to FLAC without Windows! I'm going to show you how to rip an audio CD to FLAC on your Mac using two freely available programs:

xACT: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14246
VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/


First off, you are going to want to insert your CD you want to rip, and open up xACT. Then at the top of xACT, click on "util" Select "CD Extraction, and don't select "extract tracks to one file" unless you want the tracks you are ripping to be a continuous track.



Next click "add" near the bottom of xACT, and a window will come up for you to select where the audio tracks are that you will be ripping. Navigate to the CD in your finder, and select all the tracks. (press Command + A) Then click "Add Files" at the bottom of the Finder window.



Once you click "Add Files" they will appear in the box in xACT. Then in xACT, click Execute, and another window will appear asking you where to save the WAV files. I just made a folder on my desktop named "Legion of Boom" to match the album name. Once you have that chosen, you can click choose, and xACT will start to extract the tracks. *Note: xACT may appear to be unresponsive during the ripping progress, and the CD will also disappear from the desktop and Finder. DON'T TRY TO QUIT IT. If you quit while the CD is still ripping, it will not appear back on the desktop. I will post a trouble shooting note at the bottom of this tutorial for if your CD becomes stuck in the drive.*





After the ripping process is complete, the CD will appear back on the desktop and Finder. xACT will also automatically bring up the ripping log. Scroll through the log and make sure you do not have any errors. It might take a few rips to get all the errors out.



If you get something like this (image below) you can edit out the error(s) in the log and re-rip the track(s) by going back to "util" in xACT, click Add, and just add the one file that was ripped with an error. To save the text as a log, copy and paste the text from the log in to TextEdit, and delete the track with the error from where the 0% starts to the end of the (0.5 .. 0.5). Then, if the CD tracks that had errors ripped successfully, you can copy and paste the text from the new log in the place of where the track with the error was in TextEdit. If you continuously get errors when ripping a certain track, you might try cleaning the CD.



Once everything is error-free, save the file in TextEdit as 'albumname.log.rtf' and save it to your desktop.



After you save it, select the file name, and delete the .rtf extension. The Finder will then ask you if you are sure you want to change the extension of the file, click "Use .log" and then the file will be named "albumname.log" which can still be opened as a text file.



Now go back into xACT, and click on "encode" at the top. Select FLAC Compression, and set the compression to 8. Don't worry about the TTA Compression. Then add the WAV files you ripped from the CD.



Click on "add" and select the files from the folder you ripped to. Then click Encode, and choose a folder to convert the WAV files to. I chose the same folder I ripped the WAV files to. Now wait for the WAV files to convert. If you want, you can eject the CD from your drive, you don't need it anymore.



After the FLAC conversion is finished, you can delete the WAV files, you just need the FLAC files now.


Now you are going to want to tag the FLAC files with the artist name, album name, track titles, etc. You can do this by going to xACT, clicking on "FLAC tags" at the top, and adding the FLAC files you converted. You can select all the files at once to edit multiple tracks by hitting Command + A, then type in the information in the boxes, then hit Enter, or click Write Tags. You can select each song individually to edit track names.


Next you are going to want to create a Cue file for the FLAC files. In xACT, go to "shntool" at the top, add the FLAC files, select the Cue circle, and then click "Call Shntool." Then save the cue file in the folder the FLAC files are in. (You don't need to rename the cue file at all).



Optionally you can create a fingerprint text file, and/or verify the FLAC files by clicking on "checksum" at the top of xACT, adding the FLAC files, click "Checksum" and select what you would like to create. The fingerprint will be saved to a text file automatically, but for the verification you will need to paste the text into TextEdit and save it as a text file manually.


Now to create the M3U file, relatively easy. Open up VLC, and drag the FLAC files into the VLC playlist area. Then click File>Save Playlist.



Then for the name of the M3U file, just type in the album name, save it where the FLAC files are, and click Save. You can open the M3U file in VLC and the FLAC files will play continuously.


Another way to do this as rccc pointed out:
- open Terminal
- type: cd your/path/to/the/flacfiles
- type: ls > "Artist - Album.m3u"


That's it! You're done! If I was vague on something, or I did not explain anything thoroughly, feel free to PM me, and I will answer the question personally, or edit the tutorial. Have fun!



If you quit xACT while ripping and your disc is not appearing on the desktop or the Finder:

Open Activity Monitor, and Force Quit "cdda2wav" Your CD will now appear back on your desktop/Finder, and you will be able to reimport or eject.

Transmission: Creating/seeding on Mac

Taken From Waffles forums! Not Written by me!

Transmission is a fairly simple torrent client to create torrents with, short and quick steps. So first when you open up Transmission, you want to go to File>Create Torrent File...


Then a window will appear asking you which file you want to make a torrent out of. Navigate to the file or folder of your choice, and click Select.


The next window will ask you to input the tracker of your choice, any comments if you wish, where the file torrent file should be created, and if the torrent you want to make should be private or not. For this tutorial, I am going to be using the Waffles tracker (http://tracker.waffles.fm/announce.php). The tracker URL can also be found on the upload page. So copy and paste that into the Tracker box. Now in this tutorial, I will be uploading to Waffles which IS a private torrent tracker, so I will need to have the Private Tracker box checked. Also, in Transmission, there is no way to change the piece size, so we will have to leave it at the default setting. For the "Open when created" box, I usually do not have that checked when I am making a torrent for Waffles. This is because the Waffles tracker does not initially include your passkey in the tracker URL. If you tried to seed with a torrent you originally made with Transmission without redownloading it from Waffles, the torrent will not work, and you will be unable to seed. After you have all of this put in, click Create.


Transmission will then proceed to create the torrent file.


All that is left now is to upload the torrent, redownload the uploaded torrent, and start seeding.

Go to the Upload page in Waffles, and put in all the required information about the torrent. Click Choose file, and locate the torrent file you just made with Transmission, then click Choose. Once you have all the information in the Upload page, click Do it! at the bottom of the page, and the next window will appear saying that you have successfully uploaded your torrent.



Now, just download your torrent you just uploaded, and replace the torrent that you originally made with Transmission with the new one you downloaded. You no longer need the original torrent file since it does not contain your passkey necessary to start seeding. So, you can either double click the torrent, or drag it into the Transmission window to start seeding.

If you get an error, such as Transmission telling you the torrent is not complete and you cannot start seeding, recheck the files by highlighting the torrent in the Transmission window, and going to Transfers>Recheck Existing Data, and Transmission will recheck the file or folder for that torrent to make sure it is 100% complete so you can start seeding.

This concludes creating, and seeding a torrent with Transmission on Mac OS X