I'm new to ripping MP3's . I have over 1700 audio cd's that I would like rip to my hard drive and gather cddb info, but this will take a very long time. Is there any way to rip several cds at once or at the very least load 50 -100 cd's into a changer and walk away until the ripping is complete.

I have looked at RipDigital, but the posting on this service at this site have not been very favorable. I have looked a few high end audio products specificly Lansonic DAS750 w/music loader that allows the user to connect a audio changer to the media recoding device but this device is nearly $4K.

Are there any short cuts?

You might find by ripping to a lossless format, even if needing a lossy format can speed up the process (then batch convert overnight).

I am able to rip to monkeys audio at around x30 - that is about 2 minutes per full CD.

You could hire someone...

Although I would not do it myself. The reason I rip my preciousss CDs to my computer is because I do not want anyone putting their hands on them

I recently re-ripped a shedload of my CD collection using the mpc plugin for foobar, though it seems slower than EAC for the same task. Whatever, it's quick enough to do > 20 an hour. MP3 shouldn't be too much slower.

This is still a lot of hours, but I brought lumps of CDs to my workplace and ripped them while working on other things, I easily spend > 8 hours sat at a PC per day. If you work it in your normal routine, it's doable.

I would do it for you but unfortunatly I live in Germany, but if you could find someone bringing those CDs to me, I would go to the next store, buy me some pizzas and chicken wings and would live two weeks in front of my PC for you (you do only need CDDB info? no lyrics?)

Just think about it.

No! Wait!! You might be kiddin' but I do exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason....and I am serious. I swear I am serious.

What made you think I was kidding?

I was dead serious!

Outside of the options you already mentioned I can't think of any. I too have a substantial number of CDs and up to this point have been doing them individually.

My main issue is that there is no affordable way to interface a large consumer CD changer with a secure ripper like EAC.
For instance it would be possible to whip up a continuous 1X ripping system with a consumer 200CD jukebox player with a digital output hooked up directly to a computer.
This wouldn't necessarily be "bit-perfect" however, and since it would be such an investment of money and time with no guarantees of accuracy, I have resigned myself to doing the CD's individually.

you could load your pc up with as many drives as will fit and install seperate instances of EAC for each drive. Rip as many cd's at a time as you have drives. (I personally have tried this, and although it did work, i wasn't too fond of it).