I have my new SB 2 and tomorrow my 2 new harddrives and Zalman fan will be installed. I am attempting to install EAC via Jakepunk's handy FAQ manual. The interesting thing is that I am using the EAC Quickstart Manual, Hydrogen Audio suggested settings and MPC Tutorial on www.high-quality.ch.vu/ The suggested settings vary on all 3. Quite confusing for a non-techie like myself. In addition to the differences, it's difficult to understand what those settings are/do. I wonder if it would not have been ...
So, where are you now? Did you get it set up and running or not? I agree that EAC has a very poor user interface (or is unfinished, or outdated, depending on how you want to view it), but I still use the program daily.
I've been using EAC for at least the last five years, often read the EAC forums, and have a Computer Science degree. And some of the settings are _still_ a mystery to me. Anyway, ask about anything that you're confused about and maybe someone can help out.
One thing I recall when first setting up EAC is that there's a fair amount of "I wonder what does this does?" to the process. I think I ripped the same CD, or a few tracks from the CD about 20 times before I was satisfied that I had figured out all of the controls and had everything working the way I wanted. (tip: Find a CD with a few very short tracks for testing the whole process). You'll usually see the difference right away - whether it's how the tracks are ripped, or how they're encoded, how CUE sheets are created, how the logs are written, whether you get beeps, whether encoding is done in the background, etc., etc.