Speeding up my CD ripping?

[Triumph]

I have a Yamaha 2100S scsi CD burner as my only drive, and this thing rips SLOOOOOOWWWW. It's supposed to be a 40x drive, but you wouldn't know it, since it has taken me an hour and 15 minutes to rip and compress 1 cd. I hate this drive. Is there any way to speed this thing up?

 

[DaveSimmons]

High data read speed doesn't often mean good digital audio extraction (DAE) speed, some 40x drives can only do audio extraction at 1x - 2x.

Asus IDE CD (not DVD) and Plextor SCSI CD readers both have fast and clean audio extraction, as do the TDK VeloCD burners. With a Celeron 400 I was getting about 4X rip-and-encode speed using a Plextor 32x, using MusicMatch (not the best ripper).

Also, are you using Exact Audio Copy for the extraction? Because it tries multiple reads to get more reliable extraction it can be very slow on scratched, dirty or old CDs. You might try a different, newer CD and see if the speed is better.

 

[Need4Speed]

Plextor makes some of the best DAE drives, but of course that doesn't help you now 🙂
In any event, I would heed the advice DaveSimmons and check to see that you are and/or are not using Exact Audio Extraction. Ripping an average length cd without Exact Audio Extraction shouldn't take more than a few minutes on a decent drive.

But bear in mind that speed sometimes comes at the cost of quality....

 

[Workin']

I have a 2100S (which I like, BTW) and it rips at about 4-5x using EAC. A typical CD takes about 12-15 minutes not including mp3 encoding time. It rips at about 12x using CDEX or other non-secure rippers, but there are occasional clicks in the ripped files, which is not acceptable. So use EAC, get the latest version from their web site. Also pick up the latest executable version of LAME. After you install LAME and EAC, run EAC's setup wizard to configure your drive and mp3 compression. If EAC is not configured to work correctly with your drive, rip times can be really really slow.

My Toshiba and Pioneer DVD drives rip at about the same speed as the Yamaha.

 

[Triumph]

Yes, I'm using EAC, for the reasons stated above, perfect quality. I'm fairly sure I set it up correctly, and I usually try to clean my CD's before ripping them. My computer is only a Celeron 450, but I'm running scsi and ripping to a dedicated SCSI hard drive, so writing shouldn't be a problem. Workin', what is the config on the rest of your computer? I have never gotten a 4-5x rip on mine with this drive.

 

[Workin']

<< what is the config on the rest of your computer? >>

Athlon 1.4GHz T-bird at 1.466GHz
Shuttle AK31A KT266A mobo
Gainward Geforce3 Ti 200/450
1GB RAM
60GB Maxtor 7200RPM ATA100 hard drive in Lian-Li removable rack
Pioneer DVD115 16x DVDROM
Adaptec 2930 SCSI card
Realtek network card
Creative Labs Audigy sound card
SCSI Zip100 drive (internal)
SCSI Jaz 2GB drive (external)
HP USB scanner
3.5" floppy
Chieftec workstation case
Enermax 431W PSU
Windows XP Professional

I have the Yamaha 2100S mounted in an external drive case instead of internal.

Your CPU is fast enough, I used to have a Celeron 450 before I built the Athlon rig and I got the same ripping performance.

 

[Triumph]

thanks, workin'. not sure what the problem is, I'll try some things over the weekend with the EAC setup.

 

[Triumph]

I fixed it! I found a FAQ somewhere for setting up EAC and also I installed the ASPI drivers from Adaptec. Now I'm ripping at 5-6X and more. Hooray!