Let me preface this by saying I have made an extensive effort to find the answer to this myself on this forum for the past several days. I'm at a total loss...

My computer is a 2.2Ghz, 24x CD, 512RAM...not the latest, but definitely not old. I have EAC and Lame.exe. I've followed the tutorials on the Wiki and other newbie sections to get my settings correct, and I'm using the following settings for MP3 extraction with lame.exe and wapet.exe tagging:

%d -t "Artist=%a" -t "Title=%t" -t "Album=%g" -t "Year=%y" -t "Track=%n" -t "Genre=%m"</font> LAME.exe -V 2 --vbr-new %s %d

I've also tried it without wapet with the standard settings discussed:

-V 2 --vbr-new

Can anyone answer the following for me:

1. WHY IS MY EXTRACTION HAPPENING AT 0.1X (took me 11 hours to extract a CD)?
2. WHY DO I END UP WITH .WAV FILES WHEN I SPECIFICALLY CHECK FOR .WAV TO BE DELETED AFTER EXTRACTION?

The first question is by far the most important.

Thank you in advance! You all are much smarter than I am.

1. The CD may be heavily scratched; or else you selected the wrong read command for your drive in Drive Options (what drive is it anyway?). Try MMC1.

Another thing to try is download Nero's ASPI DLL, copy it into EAC's directory, select Installed External ASPI on the Interface tab of EAC Options and restart EAC.

2. Do you get MP3s at the end of the ripping/encoding, or just WAVs?

I downloaded that Nero ASPI interface you told me to, put it in the EAC program folder, restarted EAC, and re-tried the extraction. The highest I could achieve was 0.2X.

I used auto detect for my drive. I am using MMC1 already. My drive says:

QSI CDRW/DVD SBW-241 Adapter: 0 ID: 1

Regarding Question 2:
The first CD I tried gave me .WAV files and .MP3 files. The second CD I tried gave me just .WAV files. I'm not sure why this happened. I did adjust settings in between the two CDs. Neither CD had scratches.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. It's unbelievable frustrating not being able to rip the CD with normal speed.

I get fast results in iTunes and WMP, so it's not the drive or the computer.

Sorry thats the typo in the Wiki, it should read ... I've just updated the guide.

What Extraction Method are you using in EAC, and on the same tab, what options are ticked.

Remember that EAC is a different kettle of fish compared to itunes and WMP, it doesn't use the same method to rip when it is in secure mode.

I have made the changes in my compression settings. Thank you.



The extraction method I am using is:

Secure Mode with the Following Features
Drive has "Accurate Stream" features is checked and grayed out (I do not have the option to change it. Most likely because I used detect read features).
Drive is capable of retreiving C2 error information is also checked.

I tried fast mode as well, just to see the difference. The speed climbed as high as 3X in that mode, which I thought would be faster, but it's at least bearable. Can someone help me with a decent compromise or something. I know the CD does not have any scratches on it, so I assumed the secure mode would not be so rediculously slow. Are there other settings I'm missing here?


This I am well aware of, but should 11 hours to rip 1 CD be something I should expect from this program in secure mode with a brand new CD? I would think I could at least pull off 3-5x in secure mode. Right now I can't beat 0.1-0.2X

Also, I am unable to get any other file than a .WAV, even though I am using the Lame MP3 compression. Maybe something is keeping the Lame compressor from working. I see a brief command line window pop up for a split second, but it is immediately gone. I would assume it would take longer than that to compress a .WAV file into an MP3.

I also have the box to delete the .WAV file after compression, so I'm assuming something is keeping the .WAV file from compressing into the .MP3. Should I have the Lame.exe file directly in the Exact Audio Copy directory, or does it really matter? I currently have all the Lame files contained in their own folder inside the Exact Audio Copy directory. The file to use for external compression is located at:
C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\lame-3.97b\lame.exe

This is what my (laptop) drive calls itself too. I also had 0.1X extraction speeds. I had set EAC up using its own detection wizards, which told me my drive is able to retrieve C2 error information.

F10>Extraction Method - Try un-ticking the C2 box. That fixed it for me.

As to the second problem, no idea sorry. Maybe try:

F11>External Compression - Tick Check for external programs return code

which might give you a hint what is going wrong.

One problem resolved, one to go.



Thank You!!! This worked very well for me. I'm now up to 3.6X, which although it's not where I would like to be at all, it's exponentially better than what I had. Thanks again.



I tried this and it did return an error. It said "External Compression Program Returned an Error!" It did not give me any ideas as to how to remedy the problem, however. Should I move this question to a new topic? Thanks again.

Glad it helped. That speed is similar to what I get from the drive.

What I have done is save two presets - one secure and one burst. I mostly use burst test and copy, remembering to check the CRCs are all OK. I only use secure mode for the troublesome tracks.

I know I'll get some wrong CRC matches, but it's so much quicker that the trade-off is worth it to me. I'll no doubt feel different when a favourite track is skipping on me and I'm hundreds of miles away from my CDs, but I simply wouldn't have time to rip my 300+ CDs otherwise.

As to Lame, I'm using the 3.97b from Dmitry set up as recommended in the first post here, and haven't had any problems.

Good luck

ocluke wrote..
could be it can't rename the file..
after it flashing on the screen check whether it remains on the status bar(am assuming you have the option ticked to show the window while compression is in progress)

F11->external compression TAB
with 'User Defined encoder' in the 'Parameter passing scheme', put this line in the 'Additional Commandline Options' box


just to check.

-

I figured it out. I had the directory pointed to the Lame.exe file, rather than the Wapet.exe file. It worked once I switched it, but I soon realized that I didn't want to use Wapet because my audio players and iPod cannot read the tagging.

What speed do you get with this setting, may I ask? I get about 7.7X-7.9X. I would love to speed up my ripping as well, but it seems every 3rd disk I rip has errors found. Would the test and copy rip do as good of a job at fixing those errors? I looked everywhere in the settings and couldn't find "test and copy" as an option. I know I must just be blind.

Just under 8X like you.

Test & Copy is a command used to start a rip, not actually a setting. It's under the Action pull-down. It reads a track and calculates a CRC (Test), then rips the track and calculates the CRC again (Read). The CRCs are reported in the main EAC window.

The buttons down the left of EAC's main window just do a copy without the test, so far as I can tell.

So long as the CRCs match then you have a rip the same as a secure one. Well, apparently it's possible to have the exactly the same errors twice, but uncommon - I'll live with it.

If the CRCs don't match for a track or two then firstly I select just those tracks and test them again. Often with my drive that clears up most mismatches. For the ones still not OK I will either set EAC Options>Extraction>Error recovery quality>High and do another test & copy, or switch to secure mode and do a copy.

Related debate

speeds are diff,....depending on the cds & songs i guess
just tried & the track speed showed 12.5x

for the mosy part like yours around 8-9

The warnings from other people on here are to not use fast mode unless you are absolutely sure there are no scratches on the CD. I think I'm switching back to secure. Do I need to do Test and Copy if I'm in Secure Mode? Secure Mode without Test and Copy is basically the same speed as Fast Mode with Test and Copy. Secure + Test and Copy is incredibly slow.

that's right don't use fast mode.
I always use 'Secure'. - the speeds i posted earlier were in 'Secure' mode
worth it in my opinion.
you could just do something else & forget about it while its ripping


that would depend a lot on the CD i think..



better to...- that way you get a crc check & can be absolutely sure.
if there is a CRC mismatch then it won't show in the status report. - its the only type
of error that doesn't show there in EAC. you need to see if it matches & says 'OK in
the main screen.'
practically speaking maybe you could just copy, if in your judgement the cd is good.
or after the copy if you feel unsure, you could just do a 'Test' F8 & see if the CRCs match up.
take a look at this page http://users.fulladsl.be/spb2267/eac/eac3.htm

good luck.

-

Is it generally true that laptop DVD drives perform slowly with EAC? Because mine sure does. Even with C2 error detecting clicked off, it only goes up to about 3-4X unless I use a burst mode. And it's supposedly rated much higher speed than that. It's a TEAC DVDRW drive in a laptop, I don't have the exact model handy righ tnow.

I know this (really faulty!) drive from two of my friends' notebooks - it's definitely not faster than ~4x with EACs secure ripping.

The C2 error correction of this drive is faulty anyway (just google for some discussions about this drive) - also on pure data CDs!

I discovered another heavy error for this crazy drive: The QSI CDRW/DVD SBW-241 is just unable to burn audio CDs with sub-indexes and will produce not running CD audios (pure garbage!) if you try (regardless what burning program is used and also if you don't burn an CD audio image from a cue sheet but use plain CD Copy!).



Audio CDs with sub-indices >01 (as in the example above) will be burnt as garbage with the QSI drive. There's a simple workaround: Because sub-indexes aren't needed anyway and most actual CD-Players even just don't evaluate them, too - just delete the lines starting with INDEX 02... INDEX 03... and so on.
INDEX 01 -of course - is always needed and works fine!

Additionally the two drives I had to do with don't read any DVD-RWs (+ & -), too.
Never saw such a faulty drive!

Thanks! Useful information - I have indeed had trouble reading a DVD+RW - only being able to read part of the data. Again, as you say, EAC detects the drive as having C2 error correction, but I have to untick that option to obtain a usable ripping speed. I rarely burn audio CDs so I haven't come across the indexing problem.

As a redeeming feature, it seems to be able to rip tracks hidden at index 00 of track 1, although I've only had a couple of them, so it could still let me down yet...

I am becoming more and more convinced that that is the case. And not just notebook drives, but any DVD-R drive.

I had a Lite-On burner (CD only, no DVD) that routinely ran 20-25x in EAC secure mode. The drive was wearing out, making bad noises, so I decided to treat myself and upgrade to a nice DVD burner. With no other changes, the new Samsung DVD burner dropped to about 1.5x speed. Yet using Audio-Catalyst it would run at 25-30x.

So, I take out the Samsung, replace it with a nice new Lite-On DVD burner. Much faster -- instead of 1.5x, sometimes I could get up to 2.5x. Hey, that's a 66% improvement, getting me to almost 10% of the speed I used to have. This new Lite-On also ran full speed under Audio-Catalyst.

Next, I built a whole new computer: dual-core 3GHz, 2GB RAM, 256 MB on the video card, a terabyte of hard drive, 800+ MHz front side bus... and a brand new Philips DVD writer. Oh, boy. 1.0x ripping speed. I used to rip faster than that on a 66 MHz Pentium running Windows 3.1! Well... probably not, I don't think I got into MP3s until after I was using Windows 98.)

My audio collection currently runs to more than 2500 hours, all but about 20 hours of it ripped (thank goodness!) with my old Lite-On CD burner.

Does anyone get reasonable (>20x) ripping speeds using a DVD player/burner as opposed to a CD-only machine?

tanstaafl.

My Samsung SH-S182D gets about 8-10x extraction speed with EAC in secure mode, which I personally think is fine. Occasionally it'll go faster but rarely any slower. Sometimes my old Lite-ON LTD163 would surprse me and get up to near 30x on some discs but for the most part it was pretty close to the same speed as my current Samsung. Granted, these are both full-sized desktop 5.25" drives but I'm definitely not getting 1x.

I've never ripped a disc on my laptop so I can't say how fast it rips.

My NEC DVD-DL-R\RW\+\- would always get +20x when ripping in burst mode, and if I recall right, 12x in secure mode. I can't remember the specks other than I bought it two years ago for my desktop, which I no longer have. However, my TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L632D in my laptop gets 14x in burst and +8x in secure.

The only time I have ever experienced such slow ripping speed was a couple years ago and my firmware was out of date.

What version of EAC are you using? What operating system do you have? Is all firmware and software up-to-date?

EAC version is 0.99 beta
Operating system is Windows Vista, 32-bit.
Firmware/software should be up to date -- all components are brand new, computer was built just a few weeks ago and all Windows updates are applied.

The player is a Philips SD2513P

C2 checking is un-ticked.

I just ran a test in burst mode, and the ripping speed was 23x. I compared the burst-mode output files to the ones run in secure mode, and interestingly enough, every burst-mode file was exactly 1 byte larger than the corresponding secure-mode file, except for the first file on the CD which was 15 bytes different. That file generated an error in burst mode about "...timing problem at 00:17" but the file plays perfectly.

So, what exactly are the downsides of using burst mode? 99% of the time I am ripping "virgin" CDs that have never been out of the shrink wrap until I rip them. I suppose I could use burst mode as a default, and if I thought a CD looked anything but perfect revert to secure mode.

tanstaafl.

All right there. That is what I use.

I thought I have read compatibility issues with Vista and EAC... I cannot for the life of me recall what they were or any useful means to search them out. I avoid Vista like the plague until I absolutely have to use, or all my programs say they work with Vista.

Just because it is a virgin CD does not mean it is faulty. In rare instances I have had to clean new CDs straight out of the plastic wrapper. Install the newest AccurateRip Plugin for EAC, use burst mode and set your error recovery quality to low (in EAC Options, Extraction). I think that is why your rips are taking forever. Whenever I get an error and the recovery mode kicks in, my ripping drops to nearly nothing... 0.1x...

If your rips are verified as correct by AccurateRip, then you can feel confident in your rip. If you get an error still on one (or all) of the tracks, then set it to Burst, with a high error recovery quality. However, when doing that, I recommend experimenting with ripping to tracks only (I always rip to images, and errors at the beginning of a CD are the worst). If it still is wrong, then try secure with high, but beware it will take forever if there is an error.

1) Timing problems do not necessarily indicate that there were errors.

2) "Error recovery quality" (which is really a misnomer, btw) does not apply to burst rips.

3) "Error recovery quality" set to high will often do nothing but increase the chances of errors going unreported.

tanstaafl., if you are interested in speed and want to use EAC, get a drive that doesn't cache and provides C2 pointers or rip in burst mode. If you are interested in accuracy then also use test and copy. Finding a drive that provides C2 pointers that work reliably with EAC will help as well. By the looks of your angry face, the only other option I think will suit you is to use a different ripping program.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=512213