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[Iplod along]

I am new to Music Center and currently have BCv9 on trial. To date I have found it far better than MusicMatch which came with my 30gb Ipod.

Can anyone please tell me how long it takes to rip an average CD? I am currently experience times of an hour. I have a high mp3var encoding setting because I was experiencing high distortion on an ordinary mp3 setting in MusicMatch

I am running XP with a pentiumII processor and 320 RAM

[RemyJ]

There are lots of factors which can affect ripping/encoding speed.  If you go to help/system info and paste the results here it will help.  

What happens if you rip with encoding set to Uncompressed Wave?

[Iplod along]

Thanks Citizen for your response. I have not tried an uncompressed rip and will do one to see. Is an hour a common time to rip in your experience?

Media Center 9.0.175 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium II 348 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 327 MB, Free - 75 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive E:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: No /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
 Eject after ripping: No /  Play sound after ripping: No  

Burning /  No burners found.
 Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: No
 Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

[JimH]

Ripping by itself should normally go at several times the speed of real playback.  80 minutes in 20, for example, would be 4x.  It depends on the drive and can be much faster.

Your problem may be unusual encoder settings.  Try accepting default settings as a test.  Try turning off rip and encode simultaneously.

[Wobbley]

David,

Ripping and Encoding is primarily dependent upon:

1. Processor Speed and
2. Read speed of CD/ROM or DVD-ROM Drive and
3. Encoder Type and Encoder Settings

1. Your processor is, unfortunately as I am sure you are aware, VERY SLOW, and this is probably the most important component of encoding the ripped .wav files to whatever file type you've chosen (Media Center first rips the files on the CD to .wav files, them encodes them to the file type you've selected).  The processor speed, in and of itself, is enough to make the process of ripping and encoding take an abnormally long time for you.

2. Your CD Read Speed in your settings info says "Max", so that doesn't tell me what the actualy max read speed value is, but if it is something like 4x or 8x, then that also will affect the speed at which you rip the tracks from the CD, but WILL NOT affect the speed at which Media Center encodes the ripped .wav files.  This is probably the least of your worries.

3. The encoder type and encoder settings you chose will also greatly affect the speed at which you encode the ripped .wav files.  The encoder settings are generally more important (are more efficacious) than the encoder type.  Obviously, the more stringent the encoder settings (the higher the bitrate, especially if you've chosen VBR, which almost always takes longer than any other method), the longer it is going to take than, say, encoding the files at a CBR of 128 or so.

Hope this helps...

Wobbley

[Iplod along]

Thank you to everyone for your contributions. They are very much appreciated.

I know when I used Music Match it ripped at a far greater speed and I think it was because of this that the sound quality was so poor. Until I upgrade my computer it seems I am going to have to tolerate slow speed although I will play around with some of the settings in the mean time.

At the moment I am ripping a CD at the speed of just .3x!!

Just a final point. Is is possible to change the play or smartlist to a CD for another?

[rocketsauce]

MusicMatch uses a different MP3 encoder than Media Center. It is faster than MCs encoder, but as you've noticed, the files created with Media Center sound better.  Also, encoding with VBR (variable bitrate) settings is slower. On my PIII 733, I'm lucky to get encoding speeds of around 1.5x - 2x.

Since encoding speed is probably what is bottlenecking the overall riping/encoding process on your system, I would suggest rippping CDs to wav and then doing a batch conversion to MP3, either overnight or at some other time when you're not using your system. Unless you have a really old cd-rom drive, you will probably get decent speeds ripping to wav. You could also try using different copy modes (Tools/Options/Device Settings/Advanced Ripping Settings) to see if one is faster for you.

Rob

[RemyJ]

Well, MP3 VBR High is probably the most CPU intensive setting there is but my 366mhz laptop does about 1.4x with those settings.  I'd try uncompressed wave just to see what the max you can expect from the IO stream will be then adjust the encoder settings to get a reasonable compromise between speed and quality.

If ripping to uncompressed wave takes more than about 10-15% CPU, check the settings for the drive and make sure DMA is enabled.

Is is possible to change the play or smartlist to a CD for another?

Not sure what you're asking.

[zevele10]

I may be wrong ,but when you rip to wav not converting it 'on the fly' , there is no problem with tags?

I think that it can be better to rip to APE and convert othernight or in the day ,if you are working outside.

[JohnT]

.3X sounds extremely slow. Make sure it's ripping digitally - check Tools/Options/Device Settings/Advanced Ripping Settings/Copy mode, this should be set to Digital Large buffer (or Digital secure if your drive is unreliable or you have scratchy CD's). Set it to Digital Large Buffer for speed testing purposes.

As others have said, you should try ripping to uncompressed wave and let us know what the speed is. Then you can tune your encoder settings.

[Iplod along]

I (Dumbo) would like to say again, many thanks for all your advice and help.

I turned off the rip and encode simultaneously option but regrettably there was distortion on playback. The speed of ripping was significantly quicker (i.e. >2.0x). Prehaps its my encoder setting?

My digital buffer settings were already set to Large already so I suspect there is not much I can do in this respect.

To test a rip to uncompressed wav I know how to change to this setting but unsure what process I would need to follow to tune my encoder settings. Any pearls of wisdom?

Finally, turning to platlists, my musin seems to appear on a number of playlists when I view my iPod contents from Music Center. Can I reassign the playlists to a newly created playlist?

Thank you for your patience.

[RemyJ]

Turning OFF rip and encode simultaneous caused distortion on playback?  That's really odd.

On the rip to uncompressed wave, there are no encoder settings.  It's just a test to see how fast the rip part of the rip/encode process will run.   Seeing as you're getting distortion in some cases, listening to the wave files will also tell you of the distortion is being generated during the rip.     If you get a good clean rip to uncomressed wave, use the converter to convert the files to MP3 using the settings you desire, leaving the wave files intact for comparison purposes.   Note the speed of the convert and the resulting sound quality.

I'm not an iPod guy so I can't help you there.

[JimH]

Please post your iPod questions in the iPod support thread.  A lot of people read and reply to posts there.

[Iplod along]

After a few days away I am trying out the advice received.

I ripped to uncompressed wave and synced to Ipod and achieved speeds of 5.5x. The playback quality of the wav file was poor and much similar to that under Music Match.

Because It was not a good clean rip does this mean that I revert to my slow tried and trusted method until I upgrade my PC (which I was thinking of doing anyway)?