Exact Audio Copy version 1.7 has been released. Exact Audio Copy is an advanced audio extraction program for reading protected or unprotected audio CDs on your computer, where you can choose almost any compression format imaginable. The program was developed by Andrei Vithoff, due to dissatisfaction with the extraction programs of the time, which often gave poor results with damaged CDs. Exact Audio Copy uses a reading technology that allows errors to be detected with very high reliability and even corrected in many cases. The release notes for this version look like this:

Audio version 1.7

Due to some concerns regarding freedb/gnudb, I have removed freedb support entirely, including freedb type, etc. As an alternative, the AccurateRip meta service has now been integrated, which provides enhanced metadata such as composers and covers. This is available without any .NET plugins, but is natively integrated into EAC. Currently, the application does not support submissions for unknown CDs, but will do so in the future. At this point, I would like to thank Spoon for providing the AccurateRip meta service for free to everyone! Check it out dBpoweramp for more information.

Otherwise, I’ve updated the MusicBrainz metadata plugin to use the correct artist info and bring in more/better covers and lyrics. The built-in flac encoder and CTDB plugin (which also provides CD metadata) are also updated to the latest version.

There is an issue connecting to the AcoustID server, and we hope it will be fixed in the next few weeks (on the server side). When it is fixed, submissions should start working again. If it is not fixed by November, EAC will output an error message for the first failed submission at every EAC start. If you don’t want to wait for this feature to work again, simply generate your own personal user API key and enter it in the AcoustID plugin settings in the EAC options.