Ripping with EAC

Rob Babcock · « **on:** 3 Apr 2004, 04:09 am »

I'm guessing most of you guys use EAC for extracting wav.files, right? If so, what kind of horsepower do you have, PC-wise? I find a lot of my discs will only reach 0.9X-1.5X; these aren't scratched up old POS's, either. I've got discs fresh outta the plastic, played only once that I can't get over 2X with! My PC is a 2.8 Gig Celeron, 3/4 of a Gig of DDR...now EAC might be really processor intensive, but it's pretty tough to accept speeds lower than real time!

My drives are a 52X Memorex Burner and a Liteon '411S DVD Burner with the newest firmware update.

Is this unusual for EAC or am I just spoiled from years of Nero?

ghersh · « **Reply #1 on:** 3 Apr 2004, 06:31 am »

Quote from: Rob Babcock

I'm guessing most of you guys use EAC for extracting wav.files, right? If so, what kind of horsepower do you have, PC-wise? I find a lot of my discs will only reach 0.9X-1.5X; these aren't scratched up old POS's, either. I've got discs fresh outta the plastic, played only once that I can't get over 2X with! My PC is a 2.8 Gig Celeron, 3/4 of a Gig of DDR...now EAC might be really processor intensive, but it's pretty tough to accept speeds lower than real time! My drives are a 52X Memorex B ...

I believe two primary factors of the ripping speed is (i) your drive and (ii) the quality of your CD. As far as CD is concerned, even perfectly new one may have some problems, this depends on manufacturer.

I have laptop with TEAC drive, I let EAC to figure out the optimal ripping and burning speed, and so its verdict is to rip at 10X and to burn at 24X. I"ve noticed that if there are some errors, the speed may drop down to 6-7X, and if there are hard errors, it drops down to 1x, and if I see that EAC keeps retrying reading the same segment, I switch to the burst mode, and after I rip the track, I carefully listen the part with offending sector and examine the WAV file with EAC tools and my eyes as well. Yet in majority of cases, EAC rips at 10X, no problems.

I also clean all the CDs very carefully before the ripping.

Pentium 4M, 2Ghz, 1GB of RAM, 60GB hard drive, 5400 RPM. (well, it's a laptop after all, when I was putting things together, couldn't find the larger capacity 7200RPM, 2'5" drive, now of course it is not the issue)

Saying that, I'm truly puzzled why you can't rip at > 1X. Incidently, have you tried diferent rippers, like Audiograbber? On my machine, it rips at the same speed 10X. Or Easy CD-DA (the same story, rips at 10X). Why don't you give them a try? At least if they *all* rip at 1X or less, the problem is certainly not the EAC, but what ? May be your drive ??? Gotta experiment! Give it a shot, and get back with the results. Good luck.

randytsuch · « **Reply #2 on:** 3 Apr 2004, 06:59 am »

Hi Rob,
I have not played with EAC for a while, but I remember there were a few options that affected reading speed, and EAC was not the simple to setup. That may be a factor here.

Randy

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #3 on:** 3 Apr 2004, 07:40 am »

Yeah, I know what you mean. I have my Memorex drive set to "only speed matters." It will crank it up to 15X to 25X. I have the Liteon set to "ony accuracy matters." That won't spin up much past 2X. The reason I'm using EAC is because lots of other rippers save metadata, which fucks up my discs when I use DVD+Audio. Eximius also claims that bit perfect rips are recommended to prevent pops and dropouts. I can verify that the way Nero extracts wav.'s does lead to pops between every track. EAC is the only one I know makes perfect rips for my app.

I think the "only speed matters" option will work for me- I should have clarifyed the mode I meant.

Perhaps copy protection or computer-related bonus stuff slows it down. I've seen several brand new unplayed or barely played discs in perfect physical shape extract much slower than some other ones. My new Diana Krall single is really slow to rip.

Thanks for the input, I'll try to mess around with the options a bit more tomorrow.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #4 on:** 5 Apr 2004, 12:31 am »

Okay, I just ordered a Pioneer DVR-107 today in black. Hopefully this drive will extract faster than my Liteon. Neither my Memorex CD-R nor my Liteon DVD-R are very quick when set to "only accuracy matters" with EAC.

For anyone who's followed the "DVD:M Saga" in the Square Circle on my experiences with Eximius' DVD+Audio software, my Liteon '411S isn't really compatible with the brands of DVD recordables that I like to use. Pioneer cert's the Prodiscs as A+ in their drives, so I'm figuring the DVR-107 will work well with them.

So far, I'm amazed the DVD+Audio software; the music DVDs it burns sound amazing. I'm a believer for sure.

sunshinedawg · « **Reply #5 on:** 5 Apr 2004, 04:40 am »

From my experience, .95x-1.5x is very slow with EAC. Newer drives should be able to reach a lot higher speeds. Check this out
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=daeresults.php3

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #6 on:** 5 Apr 2004, 05:01 am »

Yeah, that's really pitifully slow. But unfortunately all I have is 2 burners! I didn't set out to do that, but I had a CD burner already and only relatively recently decided I needed a DVD burner.

My question is, is a DVD burner just as good at burning CD-Rs as DVDs? It would be very nice to get a Plextor (looks like that's as good as it gets, from that link you posted, sunshinedawg).

I've wondered if something's seriously amiss that both my drives are that slow. Should I turn off Norton Antivirus & any other stuff that runs in the background or is speed only based on the drives?

sunshinedawg · « **Reply #7 on:** 5 Apr 2004, 05:09 am »

I'm not talking about blazing speeds, but my drives will average around 10x with good source discs. I have a Pioneer DVD 105 burner, a dvd-rom that came with my dell desktop that is 3 years old, and a dvd-rom in my new laptop(not sure of the make/model). All have about the same extraction speeds. Note that with EAC, speeds will be a lot slower than the top extraction speeds listed.

I have antivirus running all the time, sounds like your drives are just slow, but you never know.

bubba966 · « **Reply #8 on:** 5 Apr 2004, 08:45 am »

Quote from: sunshinedawg

From my experience, .95x-1.5x is very slow with EAC. Newer drives should be able to reach a lot higher speeds. Check this out
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=daeresults.php3

Hmm, according to that, my Kenwwod TrueX 72X drive kicks serious ass, even though it's about 4 years old.

Good to know that it's still a hell of a damn nice drive...

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #9 on:** 5 Apr 2004, 02:03 pm »

Have you extracted WAV.files with EAC on your drive, Brian? My drive is a 52X, and it can do that speed, but not with EAC. Set to the Max Accuracy mode it rereads the same sector up to 80 times, basically as many times as it takes. It may read 50 times until it gets the same result 25 times. With Nero I can extract at blistering speed, but EAC is a whole nuther ballgame.

JoshK · « **Reply #10 on:** 5 Apr 2004, 02:08 pm »

EAC was meant for most accurate rips, esp on "accuracy matters", and most believe for truely accurate rips the speed must not exceed 2x. So I don't see this as a conflict, other than <1x or close to is pretty damn slow. I haven't paid that close attention actually but I'd guess based on time that my rips are usually around 2x and I am using an oldie but goodie Sony 4x burner for extracting. It is more reliable and often faster than my teac 40x CDrom.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #11 on:** 5 Apr 2004, 02:17 pm »

I want accuracy, but I can't live with ripping > real time. At that rate I'd never get anything done!

Hopefully when my new Pioneer gets here I can at least get up in the 5X to 7X range.

randytsuch · « **Reply #12 on:** 6 Apr 2004, 01:29 am »

Hi rob,
downloaded and installed eac yesterday on my new PC.

They have really simplified the installation, now you don't really have to do much, used to be VERY complicated.

On my 3Gig P4, in accurate mode (or whatever it is called), it took less then 10 mins to read about 50 mins of CD.

Used my generic DVD burner, which is all I have on it.

Do you have DMA enabled?

Randy

bubba966 · « **Reply #13 on:** 8 Apr 2004, 05:51 am »

Quote from: Rob Babcock

Have you extracted WAV.files with EAC on your drive, Brian? My drive is a 52X, and it can do that speed, but not with EAC.

Haven't ripped a disc for almost 2 years. Didn't have EAC then...

But my Kenwood is an honest 72X. The 72X is not a max speed rating (such as the 52X of your drive is the max speed, not the average), it's the average speed of the drive, and it's spining at about the speed of a 10X drive. So it's virtually silent.

It acomplishes the 72X average speed at such low RPM's as it's splitting the laser into 7 beams. 6 beams are used for reading the disc, and the 7th is used to track the other 6. So you're reading the disc in 6 spots at the same time!

Awesome drive. Wish they still made them as I hate to think of what I'll have to settle with if it ever croaks on me...

Thump553 · « **Reply #14 on:** 8 Apr 2004, 01:05 pm »

I haven't used EAC in over a year. I spent forever configuring it and researching it but I could never get around one problem: there was a very audible pop at the beginning of the first track of every copy I burnt. I would extract the WAVs with EAC and burn with NERO (EAC didn't support any of my burners).

Anyone else ever have this problem or know how to solve it?

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #15 on:** 9 Apr 2004, 01:09 am »

I started using EAC precisely to cure the popping problem- when using Emimius' DVD+Audio program I always got pops if I ripped with Nero. Once I switched to EAC the pops were gone.

You might try ripping with Nero or Audiograbber. The latter is a free download.

BTW, the popping is due to the fact that some rippers and wav.editors retain metadata and add it to the audiophile. Some if them have settings to not save metadata. You might nose around in whatever software you're using.