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[Raistlin2k]

found a cd-ripper that made it possible to use Xing-dll directly, means without using x3enc.exe.

So it can encode using xing as internal codec audio-tracks on-the-fly while ripping.

Could you create an encoder-plugin for MJ offering this??
As I wrote my last tool in Turbo Pascal 7 more than 5 years ago, I have no idea how to do:)

Thanks
Raist

P.S. If you want to create this plug-in & need help, look at cdngo.com, homepage of mentioned cd-ripper.

[joe|PLS|mama]

MP3 Encoder Comparison

Xing- is a blistering fast mp3 encoder that is owned by Real and can only be found in Real Jukebox and AudioCatalyst. (both of which are not free) Unlike Blade, being outdated isn't its problem, but being absolute rubbish definitely is!!!

"Haste makes waste" certainly applies here. First, frequency reproduction above 16Khz is terrible, even at 320kbps.

Second, their code is buggy. It's not uncommon to have an mp3 mangled from time to time. (clicks and other artifacts)

Third, bad joint stereo implementation. Like with FHG's encoders, joint stereo is only defaulted for 128kbps or lower.

Fourth, a known weakness of the mp3 format is that it has problems with handling sharp impulses (also known as transients) like drumbeats and cymbals. When encoding to mp3, these transients can become less sharp, this is what is referred to as pre/post echo. To help prevent pre/post echo, most encoders use short blocks (Lame, FHG and Blade included, though Blade's implementation is pretty pathetic) which gets rid of some of the pre/post echo problems. Xing does not use short blocks at all.

It does have a few positves. Out of the mp3 encoders compared here, it is by far the fastest. Also, unlike FHG's encoders, the Xing encoder writes a VBR header. If you really want speed, use FHG's FastENC, it may be a little bit slower than Xing, but it certainly keeps a lot more quality.

[zevele1]

FHG's FastENC

As far as i know there is only 2 programs using it:
MusicMatch and a $40 jukebox-i do not remember his name-

Concerning Xing,from time to time it can be a good bargain.
When going away i do one or two cds with mp3 on it.Most of the time last cds i bought.
I play the cd one time ,just the time i'am not home.In this case i rip with RealJukebox plus at 192 VBR.
Not worth the hours needed with Lame.

And at the end of each rip,RealJukebox plays a sound.Like it i do not waste time as with a 'non playing sound at the end of rip' software

[Raistlin2k]

In fact, Xing is not only available as bundle in Audiocatalyst & RealJukebox but also as stand-alone.

This one gets used till now my MJ on command-line (x3enc.exe) as external encoder, therefore no on-the-fly-encoding.
CD'n'Go managed to use dll directly offering this one-step-method.

Since MJ offers encoder-plugins, there is no need to change the main-program, moreover it is not a question of quality, since nobody is forced to use this Xing-DLL-Plugin, it would be an optional download.

Thanks
Raist

[nila]

Raist - It's a commonly accepted fact that Xing is complete and utter rubbish. I doubt therefore they'll do much work at supporting it. It's just not worth any effort at all.
I'm not sure why you'd want to use it. LAME is by far the best encoder out there and if you want faster encodings then just set up the LAME plugin to do speed rather than quality.

[Mirko]

With external lame use "--alt-preset fast standard" or "--alt-preset standard fast". And use the newest alpha (3.93a2), newest is important, because the nasty bug with too high bitrates is fixed.
This version is much faster than the stable ones (and the quality doesn't suffer).

[Raistlin2k]

Well, did some benchmarks with this new 3.93-release.

BUT my opinion didn't change because my results were very clearly:
MJ with Lame 3.93 creating CBR 160 kbit : 11x speed
MJ with Lame 3.93 creating VBR 1: 5x speed
CD'n'Go with on-the-fly Xing VBR 100: 30X SPEED!!!!!!!!!!

You see what I mean!?!
And as I already wrote, this is not a quality discussion, nobody is pressed to use Xing, but in fact all those objective tests are no good for a lossy codec like mp3, only thing that counts is subjective quality, and a very well known magazine, c't, showed up some time ago, that Xing is not good on CBR, but best on VBR mp3s, since they invented vbr!!! And they were right, have a look at all new codecs, everyone is using vbr, even new wma9 (although this is really crap)

And I guess that the whole plugin-engine of MJ is based on the idea to support as much as possible without getting a very big tool that needs to be rewritten & updated for every change. So why not enhance capabilities of MJ with this downloadable plugin?

I would be very sad if this plugin has no future just for the fact that some people don't like xing. I for example don't like VQF, but I don't argue about the fact that there is a MJ-plugin for VQF.

To be honest, I think that Ogg is the future, in last c't ogg beats all other competitors, but my Expanium-Discman can only read MP3s that's why I ask for that plug-in.

Cheers
Raist

[nila]

Raistlin,
Not sure if you've thought of this, but have you also considered that it might not just be the encoder that has the speed differences but also the actual ripping program.
You could possibly try using lame with that ripper and see what speeds you get. That might give you a better idea of whether it's the ripping program or the encoder.
I know I can get faster speed rips with other programs than with MJ but it's just because the quality of the rip isn't as high. You really need one program that you can rip with and try both encoders with.

[Mr.X]

Off on a tangent here, but I still think the fastest MP3 ripper is GOGO, and it at least uses the LAME encoding engine (albiet not the latest one)

With MJ, LAME rips a v1 VBR on my machine at about 8x, GOGO at 25x.

Sorry to interject.

[Raistlin2k]

@Nila
Well, did tests with CD'n'GO using Lame as well, same results, not wodering, Lame was always slower than Xing

@Mr. X
I'm sorry, but Gogo is very fast on CBR (sometimes even faster than xing) but for VBR, Xing is still faster. Moreover, you should not forget that being based on Lame means not same quality. In fact, high-speed mode of GoGo disables the psy-model, so it is no better in quality than xing then.

Thanks for your suggestions, but XING WAS AND IS THE FASTEST encoder around, hopefully, MJ will support the dll directly with a plugin.

Thanks
Raist

[phelt]

I'll act as if we're voting and say: I would hate for development time to be wasted on Xing.

[Doof]

Raistlin2k> MJ supports an external encoder option for all of the encoders that don't have a dll encoder plugin.

[zevele1]

Nila

I am looking for a way to rip faster with the same quality than MJ.
I tested many encoders using  the same encoder than MJ.
And they are not faster than MJ.If they are it is on one cd,the next one, time is the same.I did not find faster solution.Or so little that better to do it with MJ

Now if you use Encspot to check,you see than a Xing VBR 128 and a Lame 128 CBR get the same rate=not bad the yellow color.
Xing 128 CBR gets the 'bad quality 'tag.And true Xing 128 CBR sounds terrible
I know that this program just give a global indication and sometimes funny results.

People like you putting they music collection on they computer once for good are right to put quality first.
Other people like me still play they LPs vinyl and most of they cds using they stereo.

When i rip it is most of the time to make cds\mp3 for friends or to put on p2p.I do not want to spend time.
If i rip to APE and convert overnight,i cannot have downloads\uploads running,i get artefact in the mp3.A privilege of ADSL|PPP1 connection.

So i want to find a fast\good sound way to rip.Even if i have to buy one program.

When i want good conversion like when converting shn to any format,i use MJ.No connection,no programs running in the back and not using my computer.
And you are right: the result is first class

[JimH]

So you don't have to vote, we aren't going to do anything with Xing.

[nila]

Z - If you want a fast way to rip, MJ can be set to rip faster,
If you find it's still not ripping that fast then try EAC.
Everyone knows about the quality of that as a ripper and it can be set up to rip pretty fast. Cant remember what speeds I've had with it but they were pretty fast.
Finally, if that doesn't get fast enough for you, I'd try Audiograbber, it's old but it always ripped pretty fast.

If none of those suit you then it'll just be a case of testing all the rippers out there. It'll depend a lot on your hardware.

As for encoding, cbr is the fastest as far as I know. There are a lot of sites with info on how to rip.
A good one is: www.r3mix.net

One good thing about EAC is it rips as fast as it can then encodes in the background so you can rip through the cd's ripping as fast as your machine can and then put in the next cd to rip and it'll still be encoding in the background going as fast as it can. You can have ripped 5 cd's while it's still encoding the first.

Works quite nice.

Again though there are a lot of people who know a LOT more about this than me. Matt for instance created APE I think it was so obviously knows a LOT about audio

[JimH]

Nila,
Perhaps you'd like to do some timed tests of EAC vs MJ on ripping speeds and report the results here.  I question whether you'll see a significant difference.

Jim

[nila]

Jim, I'll take your word for it then
I dont really have time right now to do alot of tests.
Finishing off building a website and I'm workin like 11hrs a day.
Comin on here to check for updates is around as much free time as I get. Dont have time to do any comprehensive tests.

I just know in the past I personally have found it faster at times.

Like I said though, it'll all depend a lot on the particular hardware.

If you say they're close though I believe you Didn't mean to put down MJ at all. Like I said at the beginning of the post, MJ can be tweaked to do pretty fast rips.

[RemyJ]

I'm actually doing some comparisons between MJ and EAC right now and will post the results in the next day or so.  The preliminary results seem to indicate that for atomic actions (the rip of a single track to uncompressed wav for instance) the times are comparable but for overall throughput (ripping and encoding an entire CD), EAC is faster because of the parallelized activities.  Stay tuned...

Remy

[zevele1]

First maybe the words i used not the good one : i mean get mp3 on the fly.
I had a go at many, trying to find as good as MJ quality but faster=with the same settings than in Mj for a good quality.This does not mean to set all at fast ,but to set all at hight .

I can say that MJ is not slow.To get mp3 of good quality with the same encoder as MJ is slow.I don't care to get a 2 minutes less on a full cd.In this case better to use MJ ,you know you get good results.

When i saw the 'rip to RAM' fonction in DBPower Amp,i was full of hope,and ready to spend $19 on the plugin.But look like i am the only one to get longer time using 'rip to RAM',according to the builder of the program.....

Now if you want to speak about riping and after converting,keep in mind the speed ripping to APE using MJ. MUCH faster than other programs.When i say MUCH,i mean it.

For other rips as i say before,i use RealJukebox at 192 kps,on the fly of cause.If i can find a way to get Xing faster ,this i would like.

For 'my personal' rip ,even if slow,like Nila i want the best,so i use MJ,even if i would like it to be faster
and if THE PLAY A SOUND WHEN FINISH lays in wish list since few centurys.....

With 9 you will be able to see the pictures you will take NEXT year in slide show,but to get 'play a sound' looks to much average user to get it.

Look like a whine ......

[zevele1]

To Raistlink2k

I had a look to CD'n'GO
The Xing encoder is not included.

I have RealJukebox plus2,any way to make CD'n'Go seing the Xing encoder i have ?

When you are at the Xing page in option inside CD''GO,the link send you to Real page to buy the encoder ,but i see 'not WindowsMe and 2000 compatible.
Can you give me any tips ,help?
You may use my email,if you want
thank you

[LCtheDJ]

Several years ago I was concerned with using a 'fast' encoder so I wouldn't have to wait so long to get my mp3's, even though the end quality wasn't what it should be.  Then a friend of mine enlightened me to a concept I hadn't discovered on my own:  1) Do all your ripping to wav first.  2) Then start to batch encode (convert) all those wav files to mp3 with a good (lame) encoder.  3) Go to bed and let the encoder work overnight.  4) Get up in the morning to find a load of good quality mp3's and I didn't have to wait at all.

That was back when I had a P166 and Windows 95.  Now with a P4 2.4 GHz, I don't worry about encoding speed at all.  Besides, I'm switching to ogg anyway.  Of course for your portable mp3 only player, you'll still be making mp3's.

The time you save encoding is a transient gain; the quality of your files lasts as long as you keep those files.  Next year when I'm listening to my music I don't want to be saying to myself, "These files may not sound that good, but I DID save an hour last year encoding them!"

To really save time AND get good quality sound, try letting your computer do all the work while YOU go catch some zzzzz's.

[zevele1]

In this case rip to APE instead of wav.

It is faster to rip to APE.After this ,as you say ,go to sleep when convertuing to mp3.

I do like you,but many times i would like to have a very very fast way to rip to mp3 on the fly.
In 2 hours from now,i leave.Going  to friends in a kibboutz.I just think i would like to take few cds i want them to listen to.
In this csae a x35 rip on the fly would be great.After it just to have to burn a mp3©d in few minutes.Quality is not the goal,to make it fast is.

I do not ask MJ to do it.Far from it.I want MJ to stay the very top program .
Just looking to find a program,aside of MJ.

The CD''Go |PLS|Xing encoder sounds great,and i do not mind to spend $19 on it.
But look like Xing encoder is only Windows 95 and 98 compatible.Not working with ME [i have it ]and 200[i will upgrade soon].So.....

[joe|PLS|mama]

In this case rip to APE instead of wav.

It is faster to rip to APE.

How could it possibly be faster to rip to APE than WAV?

Rob