PCA Forums

I installed a Lite-On 52x32x52x in my new system. I'm sitting here making MP3s from some CDs, and am a little disappointed with the speed of the extraction. Tracks are only being extracted at ~2x or less. Am I doing something wrong or were my expectations too high? I'm using Exact Audio Copy w/ LAME encoding.

are you going strait to MP3 or to wav first?

Well its my understanding that I am using LAME to do the encoding, so wouldn't that mean I'm going cd->wav->mp3?

i've always used audiograbber (an OLD version...1.6 or something) and extraction to WAV is very fast, but if you do an all-in-one to MP3 it slows it way down. extraction from CD-->WAV may go at ~13x or so on one of my rigs, but that is not including the MP3 portion. i use some old version of LAME as well.

not sure how fast a direct CD-->MP3 should go.

anyone?

Should be a LOT faster than that. I use AudioGrabber and Lame. On my 32X Liteon burner I can usually extract around 10x I think.

what proc speed?

XP 2000+ w/ 512 Mb RAM

so is lame doing the encoding as it rips or after?

To me it appears that LAME is doing the encoding AFTER EAC rips the song. What is displayed while ripping a CD:

Copying Track 10
Reading track
Normalizing track
Copy OK
Encoding using external program

After it says the bit about using the external program, LAME pops up in a DOS window and I see the progress indicators as it encodes. Every indication to me is that EAC is ripping the CD to WAV then running LAME to encode the wav to MP3.

lower your error settings in EAC and it will speed it up A LOT. sound like you have it set on the highest setting that will take sample after sample until it has a 100% perfect wav. I tell ya even at 95% original you cannot hear any of the errors unless you sit there and listen for it. I can't remember the settings for sure but in your error setup area lower the settings a little and i think you'll see the time on it speed up a bunch.

Originally posted by PreDatoR
lower your error settings in EAC and it will speed it up A LOT. sound like you have it set on the highest setting that will take sample after sample until it has a 100% perfect wav. I tell ya even at 95% original you cannot hear any of the errors unless you sit there and listen for it. I can't remember the settings for sure but in your error setup area lower the settings a little and i think you'll see the time on it speed up a bunch.

OK, that seems to have helped some. I lowered the error correction level to "Medium" vs. "High" that it was on. Ripping was somewhat faster, although not worlds faster.

Now it seems that EAC is trying to start ripping the next track while LAME encodes the current track, and its taking a big performance hit for doing so. Is this OK, or can I change some options so that it doesn't rip the next track until LAME is finished?