Should EAC and Lame be this slow?

[zodder]

I installed EAC w/ the Lame encoder (set at default n00b settings) and it takes forever to rip mp3s. I takes at least 2-3 minutes to rip and create the mp3. Is this normal? I understand that it's doing a lot of error correction, but dasm. <flame retardent suit>Xing rips mp3s at 40x with my Lite On 16x dvd drive, so why so long with EAC/Lame?</flame retardent suit>

XP 1700+ w/ 516MB DDR

 

[JellyBaby]

EAC does perfect error correction. LAME does thorough encoding and creates great sounding audio files.

I guess if the wait is too long switch to something quicker and enjoy pops, skips and reduced quality. But don't cry later on when you waste far more time re-encoding everything for better sounding results.

 

[RudeBoie]

Not sure if mine takes 2-3 per song, but it's probably at least a minute plus and I do HQ VBR ripping.
I use CDEX but I'm not sure if it's the program or the encoder or both.

 

[mk]

Yes, LAME is a little slow. But think of it this way: you need to encode only once but may listen to a song dozens or hundreds of times.
The time savings you get with Xing just aren't worth it considering the crappy sound you get as a result.

 

[zodder]

The mp3s that they produce do sound very good. Does anyone know what the default quality is? 128K? How can I change it to 192 or something like that?

I'm not complaining, I just feel like I should be getting faster rip times from one of the fastest DAE drives on the market.

 

[randypj]

Quick.....before Workin' gets here.....

check out the Anandtech FAQ's, and that will be a good start for ya.
--Randy

 

[mk]

To change encoding settings choose: EAC > Compression Options (F11) > External Compression.
Here you can set the command line you want.

A list of recommended LAME settings.

 

[JellyBaby]

To start just have EAC pass this to LAME:

--r3mix

That'll give you excellent results for 95% of the stuff you'll encode (and the other 5% will still sound damn good, too).

 

[mk]

Originally posted by: JellyBaby
To start just have EAC pass this to LAME:

--r3mix

That'll give you excellent results for 95% of the stuff you'll encode (and the other 5% will still sound damn good, too).

Using roughly the same scale --alt-preset standard should give excellent results for over 99% of the stuff (on the 1% of cases the artifacts should be more subtle than those you get with --r3mix) with a slightly higher but more stable average bitrate. There are still some of cases where any modifications to the command line alone won't help removing the artifacts; --r3mix is just a command line, the --alt-presets include a number of beneficial code level tweaks that aren't otherwise available.

 

[Workin']

Quick.....before Workin' gets here.....

Lately Mk4's been beating me to it. They know a lot about this stuff, too. And are likely more up to date than I am, as well.

Use EAC's setup wizard to get all your settings set to the optimal values. Be sure to download the latest version of EAC and LAME. If you have EAC set up LAME as an external encoder you can tell it to use the best quality settings as described in the link in Mk4's earlier post.

I get about 5-6x rip speeds with my Lite-on drive and LAME encodes at about 3x on my XP 2000+ w/1GB DDR. Which means it takes almost 2 minutes to create the typical mp3 file from a CD track.

BTW. xing is the worst possible ripper/encoder you could choose to use, it's absolutely horrible crap. No other program is worse.

I remember back in the early days of mp3 that on a P2-450 my CD drive would rip at about 1.7x using AudioGrabber and the original FhG mp3 encoder would encode at 1/20x, so a single song would take about 20 minutes to rip and encode, and more often than not there would be clicks, pops, and other artifacts. So we have made some progress

 

[JellyBaby]

Mk4, that may be true. I've been using LAME a long time now. The "best recommended" default command line entry changes quite a bit. There was a point at which my ears could no longer detect any differences using the latest and greatest command line over the previous latest and greatest command line. That point was "--r3mix".

I did save that list you linked to and I may do another ear check when I get some free time.

 

[zodder]

Thanks, guys. I think I have it set up fine now. I used the --r3mix setting and all seems well.