Under EAC, my processor usage is near to 0 while ripping. Is it possible to configure EAC to encode a track while ripping the next one? This would save a lot of time.
(that would be using command-line encoder, not using pipes)

EAC options / Tools 'external comressor queue'. I don't how increasing number of simultanious threads could impact performance, but when set to 1 it performs quite well for me.

I do not see this option (0.9b1). Is it a new option?

Ok, found it.
Thank you very much

1 is the only usefull number (beside 0) because every number greater than 1 will reduce the speed of encoding to s/n (s=normal speed, n=number of parallel thrads).

Even if you use 1 its not really faster, but if you want to rip several CD's you can first play the disc-jockey and then have some lunch or go bed, while your computer encodes all the tracks.

Can you start ripping another cd while the previous one is still encoding? (the ripping of the first cd is finished, but not the encoding)

Hm, never tried. Does EAC lock drive only for ripping time or for whole session (including running compression jobs), if first this can reset current encoding queue then, I guess.

Yes. (I have beta4 and it works. It worked with the version I had before, too, but I can't remeber which).

Yes you can.

In the status bar of EAC you can see the info "xx Comression tasks left".

BTW: I'm exactly doing this at the moment

Nice, it saves me about 20minutes per CD.

Yes you can!
But don't change any encoding options. They seem to effect also the encodings running in the background.

You could use a higher setting for multi CPU systems. Maybe also the newest P4's which have "hyper treading". It emulates 2 CPU Symetric Multi Processing if the OS support that.
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Ge Someone

Look at the bottom of the EAC window, it says e.g. '7 compression tasks left' (meaning EAC makes a queue which says 'you gotta encode this and that track').
It allows you to rip a lot of CDs one after the other, and when the last one is finished, EAC might still be busy for a long time doing the encoding work

Note: what if you close EAC in the middle of such a queue? Will it be interrupted? Yes (the current track is finished though), but next time you restart EAC the encoding will be resumed

howevern,
I think that there is no way to

[start a new CD extraction while the previous is still being encoded]

in case EAC is set to 'hide external compressor window'. (but that can be changed easily)