I've tested some more. This clearly isn't a problem with disk or CD I/O.
Glen: It wasn't possible to put the CD and HD on the same cable since one is UATA/100 and one ATA/33 or /66.
I did some rips of a 4.34 minute song with different encoders on the VIA PC. These are the results:
WAV uncompressed: 2.25 min, 46,2 MB file
APE/Normal: 3.15 min, 27,4 MB file
Ogg/Normal: 7.12 min, 4.7 MB file (reqd 2 readings)
MP3-VBR/Normal: 28,45 min, 4,4 MB file
MP3/192 kbps: 4.53 min, 6,3 MB file
All done with Digital Secure.
When encoding from HD-WAV to MP3-VBR/Normal the time was 28,08 min size 4,2 MB
For comparison i did the same rip with my regular desktop AMD/1800 with XP Pro.
APE/Normal: 2.32 min, 27,4 MB file
MP3-VBR/Normal: 2.36 min, 4,217 MB
The encoding on the VIA was with the almost ;.) working larger version of LAME.EXE and the encoding on the AMD WS was with the original LAME.EXE from MJ.
The only result that is odd is when doing MP3-LAME on the VIA PC. My conclusion is that this is either a bug in LAME or a VIA HW problem or maybe a combination of the two. More suggestions on how to solve this problem is of course much appreciated. I think I will post this on the VIA support forum as well and see what their response is.
If anyone knows what's the difference between the two LAME.EXE files and if there are any others worth trying, please let me know. Thanks.