6. Saving Profiles
Phew! There are a lot of EAC settings...
Don't worry, you don't have to go through all that every time you want to rip a CD with EAC. All you need to do now is to save the complete profile. In the future, you just need to load that profile in EAC, and the settings will be there for your next CD rip.
This is how to save all the settings:
- Click the "New" button at the bottom bar of the EAC window.
- In the window that pops up, type a descriptive name for the profile, such as "[Drive name] FLAC".
- Check "All EAC Options" - that means that every setting you have made above will be saved to a complete profile.
- Then click "OK". EAC will add "(Complete)" after the profile name to clarify that it is indeed complete: it contains the FreeDB Options, EAC Options, Compression Options, and Drive Options.
If you have more than one drive, it is wise to configure the other ones for ripping with EAC, too. Sometimes a CD that gives problems with one drive can be easily ripped with another drive.
It is very important that you set up each drive that you will use separately, storing separate profiles for them. If you rip with one drive using the settings for another drive, your copies will no longer be "perfect", since different drives may have very different features.
In order to configure another drive, you need to go back to step 5, and start all over again.
- First, select the new drive in the drop-down menu.
- Then repeat steps 5a to 5d. You do not need to re-do the other configuration settings (EAC and Compression) if you set up this new drive right away (or you already have a correct complete profile loaded).
- After you have completed the configuration of the new drive, click "New" at the bottom of the EAC main window, and save the complete profile under a descriptive name such as "[Drive name] FLAC".
If you need to change an existing profile, for example because you discover that you got some setting wrong, load the profile (by clicking the "Load" button at the bottom bar of the EAC main window), apply the changes, and click the "Save" button.
If you plan to rip straight to lossy files such as mp3 or Ogg Vorbis, you might want to continue to
EAC Lossy Setup Guide (mp3 and Ogg Vorbis). Otherwise, you are ready to start ripping, saving your files as FLAC files!