Not to bore you with too many details about the thing, but EAC stands for "ExactAudioCopy" and is literally the best program around for copying audio. Audio ripping with any other program leaves you open to having all sorts of problems with whatever you rip. MusicMatch Jukebox may be good enough to rip the new Linkin Park CD, but not for a bootleg. We're picky. Seriously. You don't even know. Anyway.
Moving on, unzip the program to wherever you want it to go. I keep mine in Program Files, but you may want it elsewhere. I don't care, it doesn't matter. Make a shortcut if you like.
Start up EAC.
You're going to get a configuration wizard. Go through it. You're going to want to change a thing or two though, so be ready.
It starts with:
Just select your drive(s) and move on. You don't need to configure anything but the drive(s) you plan on using to rip shows with. Hopefully it's obvious which is which if you have multiple drives. Moving on, you get:
You prefer accurate results. Seriously. Speed is not a factor here. If it's taking too long, you're doing it right. If you prefer speed, you're doing things wrong and you need to re-think your bootleg hobby. Lets keep moving:
Assuming you got something like this, you're good to go. Generally, their database should have the best results, it has quite a lot of data. If you don't get this screen, I don't know what to do next with you, because I've never had a drive blow the wizard install since they put it in. It used to be a huge pain in the ass and you had to look junk up about your drive and put it all in manually. You may have to do that if the wizard fails you. Then again, if the wizard fails you, maybe nobody can help you. Lets hope you avoid that. And go to the next input:
You don't want this. Well, you can install it, but if you're using EAC to rip mp3's, that's a bit of overkill. I'd suggest using something like CDEx if all you want are mp3's, because it's faster and probably more friendly. Next Slide, Please:
A-ha! Done! You are an expert, regardless of what you may think, because you're here with me. Or at least you're trying. Regardless, you want the expert mode, because it's really not that scary and I promise you can handle it. We definitely want to tweak things (or at least make sure they're correct!) so expert mode you should choose.