Burn an exact copy of a CD using a FLAC rip.

To burn a 100% bit-for-bit perfect audio copy of this CD, determine and enter your drive's write offset correction in Exact Audio Copy, decode the FLACs to WAVs using FLAC frontend, open the .CUE in EAC, burn it, delete the WAVs, then enjoy your 100% exact copy of this audio CD.

To determine drive's offset corretion:

The easiest way to determine your drives write offset is to burn a CD-R.
Maybe you want a CD copy for use in your car or you can make a CD-R for a friend.
The wave files do not have to be from the same CD so if you want to make a compilation CD, that's ok.

To find your drives write offset with these instructions you MUST have your drives read offset configured correctly. If you don’t know your drive’s read offset you may find it here http://www.accuraterip.com/driveoffsets.htm

Once you have collected the music tracks you will use to make your CD it's time to burn.

Decode all compressed files to wave.
Open EAC and select the device you want to use for setting the write offset in the top left drop down box. If you only have one drive then it may be already selected.

Press F10 and click on the 'Writer' tab
Check to make sure the write offset for this drive is set to ZERO.
Close 'Drive Options' dialog window.
If you make changes to the write offset value, exit and restart EAC.


Press Alt+W to open the 'CD Layout Editor' window
Make sure the drive you want to use for setting the write offset is selected in the 'Use CD-R drive' drop down box
Click on the 'Layout' menu and make sure the 'Add 2 Second Gap On Append' is set to off (un-checked)
Load the wave files you want to burn into the 'CD Layout' pane

Click on the 'CD_R' menu then click on 'Write CD ...'
The ‘CD Write options’ window will open.

Select the write speed.
To finalize the disc set 'Close mode' to Close CD.
BURN (click 'Make it so').

When the burned disc is finished close the EAC CD Layout window and reset the drive if EAC has not done so by opening and closing the drive tray.

In the EAC track list pane, re-name the first track of the burned CD-R to "COPY".
Extract the first CD-R track you just re-named to a new folder on your hard drive.

You should have the original track wave file in a folder and the extracted "Copy" track in another folder on your hard drive.

The next step will use the wave comparison tool that comes with EAC.
From the Tools menu select Compare WAVs... or press ALT+C.
EAC will ask for 2 WAV files to load. Make sure you navigate to and select the original wave file first.
Then navigate to and select the CD-R "COPY" wave file second.
EAC will display the write offset in the 'WAV Compare' window.

http://img314.imageshack.us/img314/3...compare8nz.png

If the ORIGINAL track is missing samples OR if the CD-R COPY track has repeated samples the write offset is a positive number.
If the ORIGINAL track has repeated samples OR if the CD-R COPY track is missing samples the write offset is a negative number.

Enter this number with the sign for the Write Offset value in EAC for the current device and restart EAC
To test this offset value is correct all you need to do is burn another CD-R.
If the resulting CD-R Copy track has NO difference from the Original then all is good.

Credits: Not mine, but won't disclose the username, since it is from a private tracker.

Looks good.

I may give it a test in the next day or two when I have the time.

Nice post, dbmp. EAC's great! :)

I thought I'd add a couple of tips for ease of use:

1. There's also a great little free audio CD burning program called Burrrn which will burn EAC's cue sheets (including 'non-compliant' ones). It's light on your system (opens straight away), simple but very functional. There's a few basic things to configure first and then it's ready to go. You can simply drag & drop a cue file into the main window or a bunch of FLAC (or various other audio) files & click Burrrn! It will decode the files on-the-fly to wav, using the temp directory of your choice.

Download burrrn here.


2. If you prefer to decompress your FLAC (or other audio) files first and want a handy solution, try out dBpoweramp Music Converter, another great audio program. The basic version is free and is all you need to use it to convert FLAC and many other audio files. It installs a "Convert files" shell extension so you can simply select your audio file(s) in your file browser, right click and choose "Convert to". It will present you with a bunch of options but remembers your last used settings.

Download the program here.
Download the latest dbPowerAmp plugins for FLAC and many other audio codecs here.

Happy burning! :D

Thanks, i forgot Burrrn, it's an awesome utility. :) Thanks for the tip!

No worries, dbmp! :)

One great thing I forgot to mention about Burrrn is that it has an in-built cue editor. This is a very handy little tool which can be used to quickly edit any cue sheet by browsing for it, even while Burrrning. (Open a 2nd instance of Burrrn to do this.)

For instance, in one click you can strip filenames of the folder paths generated by EAC so it doesn't matter where the folder is on your hard drive, and search-and-replace instances of ".wav" with ".flac". It will remember your last used settings.

nice :)

Thanks Nice info:happy:

very helpful tutorial .thank you

very helpful ~ .flac is the new .mp3!!

Thanks, i can't burn, it's an awesome utility and i will rip my CD's