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[raistlin2k]

Just got the new helix encoder and I'm really impressed by the encoding speed. I managed to use it as internal encoder (renaming it to lame.exe), and found a wierd behaviour.

When "Rip and encode simultaneously" is disabled, the drive rips at a very fast speed (>25x) and encodes afterwards,also very quickly.

When "Rip and encode simultaneously" is ENABLED, it does both things at once, but ripping speed is down to 7x.

The drive is connected via USB-2.0, but it cannot be a problem with the interface, because in this case it wouldn't rip so fast in the first scenario.
CPU-load is also not a problem, my athlon 3500+ never passes 40% while ripping with slow 7x.

What makes me really mad, is the fact that sometimes the CDs rip fast with "..simultaneously" enabled, but in most cases they do NOT.

??WHY? What's going on?

Thanks for any hints,
Raist

P.S. Mistake in the manual, I think it's not encoding previous tracks while ripping, but encode the directly into mp3s, no?

[raistlin2k]

OK, I found out something very interesting,

when I first disable the mentioned feature, the drive spins up to fast speed, then I abort ripping, enable the feature again and restart ripping before the drive reaches it#s spin-down time.

VOILA, this way it's ripping fast. But this is not very comfortable, so why doesn't the drive spin up to fast mode when the feature is enabled???

Really bad, since this feature should improve performance, but instead it decreases it!!!

Please check this topic,
Raist

[Alex B]

Since the Helix encoder has nothing to do with JRiver could you try this behaviour with the original encoder?

So far I have only tested some normal file conversions with Helix. Even if it works properly I would recommend it only for temporally encodings when encoding speed is essential (e.g. for portables). LAME has better audio quality at all bitrates.

If you use VBR you could try LAME 3.97 alpha11 with Fast mode enabled in MC. Its fast mode (VBR new) has already been tested to be usually as good or sometimes better than the previous versions in normal VBR mode. Hydrogen Audio has more info about this.

[Alex B]

I forgot to add that it is quite possible that the behavior you are experiencing has nothing to do with the encoder you replaced, but the fact you mentioned it is likely to cause confusion.

You really need to re-test this using the default encoder. It would be best if you could try several formats. For example: uncompressed wave, MP3 and APE.

[raistlin2k]

Tested with LAME encoder it works ok (EDIT: means it goes up to high speed), but I really would like to use Helix instead because high speed is limited by the slower encoding speed of Lame to ~15x.

I know that you recommend LAME, but anyway every user should have the choice to use the encoder he wants. MC always tried to satisfy all users and thats why I love it.

The question is now: Where is the bug, which software needs improvement, is it the mp3 encoder plugin of MC or is it the (quite new) piping of Helix encoder??

I'll check by using other ripping software together with LAME and helix and report back,
thx
Raist

[Alex B]

Raist, you could have posted in the "Helix" thread I started instead of starting a new thread.

I'll do some further testing later. Perhaps I'll find something useful. Also, it is possible that the HA guys develop the encoder further. Let's see what happens.

   -----

Could a mod move this thread to the http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=29053.0 thread I started? It would be good to have all discussion in one thread. Thanks.

[raistlin2k]

Thanks for your fast replies!

I thought about placing the topic inside your thread, but I was unsure if the problem was related to Helix only or a problem of MC itself. I forgot about testting with LAME before posting to sort this out, I'm sorry.

I'll report this error in hydrogenaudio forum, perhaps they can have a look at it.

I failed to test both encoders in a different ripper, as I'm not aware of a ripper that support external EXE encoders with piping, they all rip and encode in two steps. Anyone knows a ripper for this tests?

I really hope there will be a solution to this. Altough I do not understand why MC has problems with direct-to-mp3-ripping when using Helix. Because of the piping?

Thx
Raist

[raistlin2k]

Now it's even more wierd!!

Just tested with my internal devices (DVD-burner and DVD-ROM), they both work with Helix at fast speed, whereas the external CD burner (normally the fastest of the three for audio ripping) runs only slowly with Helix, but at full speed for uncompressed wav and Lame (as far as lame doesn't limit the speed).

The external drive is a freecom FX-1 (52x), so I cannot connect it internally to check the problem. anyone knows where to get a firmware update? there's none on freecom homepage.

Thx
Raist

[raistlin2k]

Some more results: I left Nero DriveSpeed opened while ripping with Helix and Lame.

DriveSpeed shows only actual speed of 8x when ripping with Helix, and 48x when ripping with lame. Why??

I'm getting more and more confused about that, why does MC spin up the drive only to 8x when using Helix? When the drive is spinned up before ripping (just start and abort ripping with uncompressed) it works high-speed!

?!?!?

Thx
Raist