As I've researched techniques for ripping, I see that many of you take advantage of EAC's secure ripping mode. All of my CDs are in very good condition, so I'm more interested in speed than in accuracy of the rip -- I've got >300 CDs I want to rip.

I've conducted a few brief tests with various ripping programs and I must admit I'm a bit disappointed. Info on test setup:

CD - ATB's album "Dedicated"
drive - Matsushita DVD-RAM UJ-832S
computer - HP Compaq nw8240 laptop

In both dBPowerAmp 11 and foobar2000 0.9 beta 12, ripping without any compression to WAV files took 7 minutes 25 seconds. In EAC, though, it takes much longer. My EAC configuration:

interface - native Win32
extraction method - burst
action - copy all tracks uncompressed

After 7 minutes 25 seconds the rip is only 42% complete. The drive speed is at 3.6x.

I really prefer EAC's interface over these other programs, but I'm not satisfied with the speed. I've read through a number of guides, and I think I've got it configured for fastest ripping. Does EAC read twice even in burst mode?

Oddly enough, I'm a bit surprised even with the other programs. I've been using DVD Shrink to rip DVDs uncompressed, and I can rip a 3.5 gig file from a DVD in about 15 minutes. What's different about CDs that it takes 7.5 minutes to rip 650 megabytes?

Yeah, I'm one of those weirdos for whom speed is important. I'm open to suggestions for ways to get fast rips -- even if it means trying other software. Thanks!

--Steve

If you're sure that your CDs aren't scratched, try setting the burst mode in EAC's drive options (you might have to enable the expert mode first). This mode rips at the speed of the drive (which you can also select in drive options). I have been able to rip a pressed CD (not a burned one) at 48x speed (CAV - data speed increases during rip up to 48x in the end). If it rips slowly for you, try changing the drive speed in the drive settings.

If you want to check, whether the CD was read without errors, select all the tracks again and choose "test tracks". EAC then reads the CD again but only computes a CRC. Finally, just check if all tracks have the same read CRCs as test CRCs. If they do, you may safely assume that the CD was read right. If CRCs differ for some of the tracks, read them individually using the safe mode setting (which is very slow).
This procedure may substantially speed up the ripping process of undamaged CDs.

I'm in expert mode, and I've got the speed set to maximum. Any other thoughts?

get a better drive.

Agreed.
Most laptop drives are a fuss and wuss to rip with.

~personalExperience...

What about using external ASPI interface instead native Win32 interface?

On my desktop computer, ripping is indeed much faster. It's best in the HP DVD-+RW drive, where it ripped the CD in 3 minutes 8 seconds and was running 20.9x at the end. It isn't so good on the LG DVD-RAM drive, but it was still faster than the laptop.

Interesting idea about an ASPI interface, I'll give that a try just to see what the difference might be. Do any of you have a preferred interface? I see mention of Adaptec and Nero interfaces...

--Steve

Tell me one thing: do you really think that the speed-gain is worth the lower quality of the rip?

If you are ripping in burst mode you can use the windows media player as well...

I listen to my music on an iPod, with Sony in-ear phones, almost exclusively in noisy environments: car, bus, plane. So speed and file size are more important to me than super-high-quality rips and encodes. My formerly golden ears from high school days are now quite tarnished from spending way too much time in impossibly loud dance clubs, although not so tarnished that I can tell iTunes MP3 isn't too good. Thus my desire to rerip my collection and encode with LAME.

Judging from other posts I've read at hydrogenaudio, I'm guessing my speed fetish puts me in the minority!

--Steve

It always amazes me that when someone wants both speed and accuracy in their rips, nobody ever mentions Accuraterip (http://www.accuraterip.com/).

Well, AccurateRip only tells you whether an album has been accurately ripped or not.
It doesn't improve speed nor does it improve accuracy (offset correction aside, of course).
As such, if someone ripped an album in Burst Mode and it's 'approved' by AccurateRip, then it's thanks to the optical drive.

Though I have to agree that it does, in a sense, speed things up if a drive is trusted to accurately rip in modes faster than Secure.

What if...you have a CD drive which when it reads an error it interpolates the results for that entire cd sector, that would mean 100 re-reads would reproduce the same flawed data.

I think all my drives do this as I have a few protected CDs which have bad data to create noise every few seconds (on computers only), but the drives rip it fine without error or noise.

Read my post above PROPERLY. Ripping in burst doesn't necessarily lead to a worse quality if you know what you're doing (e.g. don't try it with scratched/fast-burned CDs).
You always have the possibility to check the rip by ripping again. If the CRCs are the same, you have just about 1:10000...(don't know precisely the CRC32 math) possibility that two rips of a song that differ in some samples would have the same CRC. The chances that the drive reads a bad sector two times with the same result is also very (really very) low (unless it substitutes the whole sector with zeros or something like that), CD reading process is all-analogue after all (analogue feedback circuit keeps the beam inside the track) as is the world around us, computer digitality is only a mathematical fiction.

I have a Samsung ts-h552u that WAS ripping at a decent speed in secure mode (10x-20x). I did a firmware upgrade to the drive (ver. 3 to ver. 7) and now it almost seems like it is locked in 'quiet' mode - which never gets above 5x. I tried Samsung's 'magic speed' utility. It shows the drive is in 'fast' mode. I even re-select 'fast' mode and it will work for 1 disc, then it settles back into 5x range. I have tried setting the firmware back to ver. 3 but that didn;t change anything.

Has anyone ran into this issue?

I am using :

EAC (latest)
WavPack (latest)
AccurateRip

WinXP SP2

Thanks,
Jason

Shift-F6 in burst mode will get you Test & Rip. If you have accurate rip installed its the fastest and easiest way to get accurate rips. If the CRCs dont match or the rip is not accurate then you can move on to slower methods (ie secure rip, ect...)

You don't need to press "shift".
F6 will be enough.

IMHO, this is the best way to rip. Fast and accurate. Most modern drives can deliver perfect results each time.

Of course, the CDs themselves are important, so treat them carefully

Jason,

I had that exact problem with my ts-h552u. It happened just like you said when I upgraded the firmware. I went from ver. 3 to ver. 6 when I upgraded. I think I ended up going down to to ver. 1 and got most of the speed back but it's never been quite as fast as it was.

I posted about this in this thread


Do you also have the issue with the pause at the beginning of extraction that I described in that thread? I really liked this drive when I got it but it's reliability has me doubting it. I already had it replaced once because it quit reading any burned CD or CD-R blanks. It would read pressed CD's fine and also read and burn DVD's. I found several other people on other forums with the same problem with this drive.

Jamie

What seems really strange is that it will rip at randomly different speeds - almost like it depends on the disc?!? For example, I just ripped a Black Sabbath disc and it went up into the 20x range - now I am ripping Broken Hope and it is sub 5x levels. When I can HEAR the drive spin up after I put in a disc, I know it is going to rip it quickly. So far all the rips have been right on according to Accurate Rip. I tried switching to an external ASPI driver, but it didn;t seem to help either.

Does anyone know of a technology that might be scaling down the speed due to anything in particular (disc structure both physical and audio, heat, possession)??

I am currently archiving my collection and am into the discs that typically see the light of day every so often so I know they are in superb condition. I could sit here and do 10 discs and have 3 of them rip slowly in no particular order.

On a side note - has any one had trouble with EAC popping up to the front window conastantly for like the first 30 seconds of a new rip process? This just started recently and is bugging me to death. I'll throw another disc in, and then start surfing the net and I'll have to select my browser window over and over until it finally stays on top. I'm thinking it might have to do with me messing around researching the drive issue.

Jason

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Detai...spx?NewsId=5098

F6 does not compress the audio. Shift-F6 is if you want to run any compression (mp3, flac, ect...). As most people would want some sort of compression, Shift-F6 is the correct choice.

I have learnedfrom personal experience that slow drives are so in part because they slow down in between tracks. Mine certainly do (all Lite-On). So I prefer to rip all tracks to wav first and then use something like foobar2000 or Frontah to encode.
I can rip and encode a CD using this method (burst T & C, of course) in less than 7 minutes.