Happy holidays, and keep the FLAGs flying.
Exact Audio Copy, developed by Andre Wiethoff in 1998, is a CD ripper for Windows that accesses CD-ROM drives at a low level, performing multiple reads and error-detection routines. Unlike iTunes or Windows Media Player, EAC doesn’t cut corners. Mariah Carey Christmas Album 1994-EAC-FLAC--oan-
Open any FLAC. View the spectrogram (log scale, -96dB floor). A real EAC FLAC from CD shows a sharp cut at 22.05 kHz (Nyquist frequency for 44.1kHz sample rate). If you see content above 22.05 kHz, it’s an upsampled lossy transcode. If you see a brickwall at 16 kHz, it’s 128kbps MP3 re-encoded. Happy holidays, and keep the FLAGs flying
