Reducing Rip Time

[modman]

I did a trial rip of a "typical" CD with 11 tracks today. I ripped to WAV, using my Lenovo Ideacenter (nothing special...very average). It took 12 minutes.

So I'm looking for hints...what reduces rip time?

1. Optical reader speed/rating?
2. Memory?
3. The ripping program itself?

Also, the rip was done using Window Media Player. It allowed me to do some specification of file name...but I saw no provision for adding my own tag. Would I do this with the provided "genre" provision in the file name?

Thanks!

 

[MDS]

A typical DVD/CD drive doing digital audio extraction at 40x should be able to rip a full 700 MB CD in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. If it took 12 minutes to rip and average CD then either it is a very poor CD drive or more likely it defaulted to ripping at 1x or 2x speed.

WMP and many other players that are more oriented to just 'play' features and include ripping as an afterthought don't support adding ID3 tags (they can of course read them if they are already there). The filename convention is just to allow you to organize them in whatever folder structure you choose without having to manually create the directory structure beforehand.

There are a few free or relatively inexpensive programs that let you rip, add tags, and also create the directory structure you want like WMP does. You could add the tags after the fact too - even using windows explorer.

 

[GlocksRock]

The drive itself makes a big difference. I had an LG drive that ripped cd's faster than any drive I ever used, but it died on me and no drive before or after it has been as fast.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

WMP might be even utilizing drive's full speed potential. I'd rec give EAC a try - it's support everything mentioned above + more. Bonus - it's freeware
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

 

[Beatmatcher247]

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Audio-Encoding-iTunes-9.0.3.15-wav-to-aac-Audio,2422.html

Check out the above chart to see what kind of impact different cpus have on your rip time. I think toms used all the same optic drives in those benchmarks to keep apples-to-apples comparisons. Overclocking the CPU can shave a lot off of your rip times if that's in your comfort zone and your cpu will accommodate you.

.Wav to .mp3 and .wav to .wma (microsoft's proprietary compressed file format) are very CPU intensive and speeds are often bottle-necked by cpu speed. Unless you've got a real lemon of a hard drive or optic drive, upgrading the cpu where you can get the biggest benefit in reduced rip and conversion times. .wav to .wav is fastest because you are copying, not converting. Your .wav to .wav times are pretty long... the disc you are copying is original, not burned with .mp3's?

I find winamp pro to be a pretty superior media management software. That's just my preference though. It makes ripping cds into .flacs and keeping my ipod synched with my collection (with on the fly .flac to .mp3 conversion into the ipod) a breeze. I've always had program freezing issues with multiple versions of WMP and Itunes when ripping cds. Never had a freeze yet with winamp. Ipods have horrible sound quality but I like their convenience in my car etc... where the road noise is loud enough to where it doesn't even bother me.

You should post your specs for your cpu, hard drive, optic drive, memory...