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[syncopates]

Good Afternoon All,

I am in the process of Ripping and ALAC encoding my CD music collection (Vinyl next). What I have noticed in the process is the need to 'refresh' by closing the app, unplugging the external Super Drive and in some instances, restarting Windows 10.

What is happening is the Ripping time increases dramatically, the number of 'rereads' is outrageous. Example: ripping/encoding Jeff Beck Beck Ola (which is a mediocre recording at best, made worse by sloppy CINRAM manufacturing) last night the process took close to an hour. When I was closing MC the 'secure report' listed multiple rereads for every track. Now it did complete the task but the sound quality was made even worse. I re-ripped/encoded this morning and the process took 20 mins tops. Sound quality as average for this copy. (Everything was shut down for the night and restarted in the morning)

I haven't determined exactly where the fault lays or is it in all 3: the MC app, the ASUS Super Drive, the ASUS Gaming Laptop. I assume there is a buffer/cache in the ASUS Super Drive. The Laptop is a GV75 with I7 @ 2.4, 16 Gigs of Ram, a TB of HDD (C:\ has 129 free of 370 and D:\ 348 free of 537. During the Rip, I close all other apps with the exception of Windows Explorer.

I am in the process of cleaning C:\ to free up even more space. Music is being stored on D:\, app runs from C:\.

Is there something in the app that is caching and when it reaches a certain point it, well, needs to be restarted?

Greg

[JimH]

Probably the drive.  Is it USB?  Is it plugged into a USB 3.0 port?

[syncopates]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm trying to narrow it down. I'm thinking the same thing. It is USB and yes all ports are 3.0. What I have been doing is to unplug the drive before ripping, closing the app occasionally. Not sure if it is doing anything. Trying to rip David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust via MC and it was taking forever to rip just one track. Canceled, unplugged, restarted and then it would read the TOC but that's it. When I first noticed this, a while back, I read an article in the forum about external rippers, one mentioned was AudioGrabber; one that I've used a decade or so ago. Opened AudioGrabber; read and ripped without issue. But you can imagine the process involved. Rip in AudioGrabber resulting file WAV (or a  choice of MP3 or WMA encoding) The tagging produced is Artist, Track, Name. Conversion to ALAC via MC will or can take place in bulk after ripping so many CDs. The problem is that you then have to dissect the Tag into its parts, essentially retagging each song.

As I blather on. So you are suggesting inherent backward compatibility issues with USB 3.0 to 2.0 devices? The internal Super Drive bit the dust and I chose a quick readily available alternative, the external. So if I replaced the internal drive or went to a 3.0 external that may solve the issue?

[syncopates]

I bought the ASUS external drive as my laptop's internal drive bit the dust; thought I could share it between the laptop and tablet. After this conversation, I decided to replace the pooched internal with a BlueRay Writer, a quick and easy swap. While it's still early in the running, the new drive cut the rip times in half (from 2x to 4x read, haven't tried max yet), loads faster and so far only one track reporting a re-read out of 100 or so tracks!

[syncopates]

Hello again,
So still ripping and while it seems the number of retries had dropped with early trials with the new internal read/writer, there still is a number of them. I started closing and reopening MC22 with almost every rip, just to be sure. I don't want to be ripping 1000 discs again.

Today I received notice of a few newly added features on 23 including 64 bit which was to make things faster and perhaps solve driver issues at a promo price, well what the.... Bought it, tried it and so far it hasn't changed anything in the ripping arena. Tried ripping Steely Dan Pretzel Logic after a run of two other discs then did a shutdown. The secure report states multiple retries on almost every song. Shut down, restart, re-rip. No retries. I tried using Audio Grabber again and it rips well but the additional tagging and encoding would bring a man to drink.

[JimH]

... so far it hasn't changed anything in the ripping arena. Tried ripping Steely Dan Pretzel Logic after a run of two other discs then did a shutdown. The secure report states multiple retries on almost every song.

A couple of possibilities:

Antivirus
Failing drive

[syncopates]

The ASUS external drive I was using (still working though not in use) is about six months old (USB 2.0 into a USB 3.0 port, the reason I swapped it for the current two weeks old Internal BluRay writer, as suggested). I will try the Antivirus approach, I use the Windows Internal, Windows Defender.

While the retries generally produce a finished product, the quality of it is in question. Thin, lifeless almost like listening through a dried out, nearly blown speaker.

[JimH]

The ASUS external drive I was using (still working though not in use) is about six months old (USB 2.0 into a USB 3.0 port, the reason I swapped it for the current two weeks old Internal BluRay writer, as suggested). I will try the Antivirus approach, I use the Windows Internal, Windows Defender.

While the retries generally produce a finished product, the quality of it is in question. Thin, lifeless almost like listening through a dried out, nearly blown speaker.

I'm sorry, but something must be wrong with your machine.