Simon Bennett-Smith shared this tip with us for using MusicBrainz with Exact Audio Copy:
I was delighted to recently discover your “MusicBrainz to FreeDB” gateway, as it is exactly what I would have wished for had I thought of it myself! However, following your directions I did encounter a problem in configuring “Exact Audio Copy” to accept the server URL:
I found that EAC will not accept a server that has been typed into the “Freedb server” box – it will only accept one from its own list of available servers, ie. one from the drop-down list.
Fortunately EAC creates this list in the Registry and it is updatable. The mb2freedb URL can be included by adding the Registry Key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareAWSoftwareEACInternet OptionsHostshttp://freedb.musicbrainz.org:80/~cddb/cddb.cgi
From the next time EAC is started, the mb2freedb URL will be selectable from the drop-down list.Maybe you could offer a downloadable .reg file containing, simply:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareAWSoftwareEACInternet OptionsHostshttp://freedb.musicbrainz.org:80/~cddb/cddb.cgi]
@=””I use EAC v0.95 beta3 and do not know if other versions use the same key, or even exhibit the same behaviour.
Thanks for sharing Simon!
MetaBrainz Blog 
Sweet! I’ve been looking for a solution to this for soooo long!!
I’ve been missing exactly this when ripping cds. Thanks a ton for the tip!
Oh, and it works brilliantly in 0.99 prebeta 3, which should be latest released version.
Actually, I entered the full URL directly into the program, and it accepted it just fine. Maybe this was a recent change in 0.99? (I made the change in 0.95.)
I don’t remember doing anything this complicated, I just entered the URL…
Aanyway, EAC & MB is definitely the combination to use if you want easy ripping and tagging. The only problem currently is that EAC freedb implementation doesn’t seem to support UTF-8 data, so anything outside ASCII will become garbled.
Yeah, I didn’t have to go about editing registry either, it just accepted it as is. I’m using the .95 beta 3.
Hmm, I just tried adding it to the drop down list, which it seemed to accept, but I keep getting a connection error when I actually ask it to download the CD’s information.
Can anyone give more step-by-step instructions about this?
Still doesn’t work – “No connection with host” error
This is a very old post and this method probably no longer works.. From February 2020 there should be an actual MusicBrainz plugin, according to http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/whats-new/whats-new/
After updating to EAC 1.5 due to the FreeDb shutting down, I’m using now Muscbrainz. Just wondering why there are not info about year, extended CD information, and no comment information? And sometimes the genre are wrong. Does MusicBrainz support these informations? And do they save to their database to other users, if I type in the year ect in the fields? Just to give an example of the wrong genre ect. I have CD with Anita Baker “Compositions” Thats from year 1990, and it’s just blank in the year field. Genre has been put as “Disco”. That is “R&B, soul-popjazz” according to wikipedia and discogs ect (and my ears 🙂 ). And comment are also blank, instead of eg. showing ” Elektra” (the Label of the album) and eg. Barcode information.