Compression and Other Options

Of course many people need more than just basic CD ripping. Even if you want to maintain full quality from the original CD it can be compressed to save space. This can be accomplished easily and for free using the FLAC (lossless) encoder that comes with EAC, the LAME MP3 encoder, or Nero AAC audio encoder. You can find comprehensive instructions for configuring compressionin our guide on Exact Audio Copy Installation and Configuration.

Optional Software
	LAME LAME is one of the best, if not the absolute best MP3 encoder available. Since it's a command line tool most people prefer to use a third party GUI to run it.
	Nero Digital AAC Encoder Nero's free AAC audio encoder is capable of producing high quality MPEG-4 or MPEG-2 AAC files either by itself, or more commonly through a third party GUI.

Compression Options

Select Compression Options from the EAC menu.

External Compression

The External Compression tab is where you provide instructions for EAC to operate a program like LAME or FLAC. We won't discuss those settings here. Instead you should read our earlier guide on EAC configuration.

ID3 Tag

If you happen to be ripping to MP3 files you can also set some options for ID3 tags. These tags provide the song, album, and artist information to media players and other software.

Making Compressed Backups

Whichever compressed format is configured to be used, it's as easy as making a backup. But instead of selecting Uncompressed select Compressed instead. The CD or songs will be extracted normally and then the resulting WAV files will be encoded.