I am using foobar 0.9.4.2, when I try to rip files from cd, or convert files on my hd from one format to another, the converter runs very very slowly, like 0.05x. I have tried converting from .wav and flac, to both ogg and mp3. Sometimes if I restart my computer it will rip faster like 5x for half of the files, but then slow back down to a crawl. anyone know how I could make things speed up a little bit?

What's your computer specifications? Maybe you're running too many background processes.

all i have runnning in the background is zone alarm and and avast antivirus. 1.8ghz p4, 256mb ram, if I use a different ripper and encoder speeds are fine, the problem only happens using foobar

If you go to File > Open Audio CD > Drive Settings, do you have your drive speed limited?

I do not

I also noticed I have this problem applying replaygain to a large number of tracks, it starts out fast, then slows way down.

I have this same problem when I have Firefox on screen . My replaygain can get down to 0.00x speed, and sit there until I maximize foobar to get Firefox off the screen. Then it jumps up to 20.00-40.00x+ :S. I don't know what the problem is, but it seems to happen randomly. I have 1GB of ram, so shouldn't be a problem I don't think.

Try doing your operations with NOTHING running except the necessary files (AV, firewall etc) and foobar maximized. See if that increases performance? Also, when trying to update two of the same files (or different ones) at the same time, I get slow down also. Like if I replaygain 1 file, while playcount updates another. It lasts for a few seconds, then goes away.

Just trying to cover all bases so the root of the problem can be found for you .

no the problem still persists, even on a fresh boot, closed down all processes I could, then maximised foobar, speed was fine for a minute, then slowed down to barely above zero.