Hi, just coming out of lurkerdom to find some help regarding my current situation:

I recently just finished building my new computer and I'm using it to rip cds and i've noticed that its slower, much much slower

the new computer:
AMD athlon 64 bit
1 gig of ram
using EAC v.95 beta 2
user defined command line: --alt-preset insane -q 0 --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d
LAME 3.96.1 complied from mitiok encoding at about .3-.5x (?!)

my old computer:
AMD athlon XP 2500+
1.12 gigs of ram
using EAC v.9 beta 4
user defined command line: --alt-preset insane -q 0
LAME 3.93 mmx complied from hot.ee encoding at about 3-4x

another thing of interest might be that when i use "user defined command line: --alt-preset insane -q 0" only on my new computer, lame will run but it will not encode, the final file will still be a .wav file

Thank you very much in advance to any advice and help!

It is the -q0 that is slowing you down to a crawl. The recommended value (-q3) will be much faster; and you don't even need to add it to the commandline, it is already incorporated into the preset. Lower -q values may offer quality improvement in theory, but it seems like nobody is interested in finding out if they really do, given the severe speed penalty.

The encoding fails in your second case because you omitted the %s and %d (source and destination files) placeholders, required with the "User Defined" scheme.

edit: corrected two typos: interested and %d

please, please, please. On any lame except the recent lame alphas, do not add any -q switches : you would be losing quality and speed.

Actually, just use the preset!
And if it's a speed issue, use the latest lame alphas. -V 1 --vbr-new or --preset fast extreme will work fine. and very quickly too...

thank you both very much! that did the trick!

to follow up on question, what would be the best settings in drive options for accuracy/quality? i just used the quality over speed presets in the EAC setup wizard, is there anything else i can change under drive options?

Re: Drive Options

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...e_Configuration
http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eac03p.htm

I'm not questioning the good links Cosmo provided, but I'd like to stress that the drive is a lot more important than the software settings.

To put it in a different way: if your drive sucks at DAE, so will your rips, no matter the settings. Or else EAC may choke and die. Or the rip may take several days to complete. With a good drive, you can rip a scratched/rotting CD in Burst mode and even though the extraction/test CRCs may not match you won't be able to find any audible errors in the rip.

Which brings us to the question: what are good drives for DAE? I've had outstanding experience with Plextor Premium and Plextor PX-712A. I'm sure these are not the only ones; but in combination with PlexTools Pro these two have been so good to me, I find no reason to use anything else.

Just my 0.02 USD (or 0.0163613 EUR, depending on where you are :)