Automatic Feature Detection Technology
EAC is able to autodetect the drive features. For each drive the program builds a separate drive options page. On this option page the feature autodetection function can be evoked.
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There are three different features that will be checked by EAC: Firstly whether the stream is accurate, secondly whether the drive caches audio data and finally whether the drive supports C2 error pointers.
Even if the drive has a cache (from the drive specifications), it does not necessarily mean that the drive will use the cache on audio extractions.
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The test for the accurate stream feature should be always correct, but testing for caching will give some problems with drives that extract audio very slowly (below 4x speed). If the test results are uncertain (e.g. on different tests there are two different results), you should assume that the drive does caching. If testing for accurate stream only sometimes gives a negative result, then you could nevertheless try to use the accurate secure mode.
Having a drive that does cache audio, the appropriate option in the drive options need to be set. This has the consequence that the drive need to flush the cache between read operations. This will take time and slow down the extraction quite much. If you select a drive for extraction better have a look that the drive does not cache audio data.
The drive configuration wizard has also a build-in drive database which can identify a drives features by the drives name. This should work for all drives which are sold already quite some time. On drive feature autodetection you are able send the results to the EAC database in order to be included in future versions.
