[John151]

I have been annoyed by the slow speed of my Mac Mini importing CDs into iTunes.  The speed reported by iTunes typically ranges from 4x to 7x, and occasionally is in the teens.  To speed things up, I brought out an old Iomega external USB CD drive that I have not used in years (hoping that iTunes would allow for dual rips, like I have done with EAC on the PC).  Well, I plugged the Iomega int to the back of the Mac, and the Mac immediately recognized it, and I popped in a CD, and the Iomega ripped that CD at an amazing speed.  I mean fast, like 30x to 50x. 

While I am excited by the speed, I am worried that there may be a down side.  Does anyone know if there is a loss in audio quality (jitter?), error correction, etc., from a really fast rip? 

Also, any thoughts on why the Iomega is so much faster? 

[denjo]

Good question! I have often wondered about that myself. Since upgrading my pc, I found that the ripping speed was much faster and attributed the increased speed to the computer upgrade. But, if you are experiencing this speed phenomena with an old CD drive then it does sound suspect.

[richidoo]

The software (iTunes in your case) is the primary determiner of ripping quality vs speed. Along with processor speed, of course... You have a hardware issue there if the Iomega is that much faster. Macs aren't my expertise, but on a PC I would check that the ripper and the rippie (HD) are on separate controller channels. That still wouldn't make it that slow... Check some home recording websites about optimizing mac for audio. There may be hard drive settings that can be tweaked, much of that hardware stuff is similar in windows or Mac.

I use EZ-CD, it rips very fast with bit perfect result, almost as fast as Windows Media player ripping to 320k mp3. Don't know if there is a mac version. iTunes, Windows Media, Musicmatch, all those do not have bit perfect ripping. They are still handy to have though, for when you have a poorly mastered CD which a bit perfect ripper is too stubborn to get the whole thing. Like EAC will just stall and crash on a bad disk. I would rather hear imperfect music than nothing. EZDC has not given me that problem yet.
Good luck.
Rich