EAC results
Previously, I had estimated 360 hours to rip 1000 CDs. This was based on a 4x rip speed using EAC on a HP dvd200i DVD writer. As it turns out, the drive was the problem. I had an old JLMS (Lite-On) XJ-HD166S drive lying around. It was able to rip at 12x with full error correction, and I recently finished all the CDs.
Unfortunately, I found a weird problem with using EAC on two drives. When ripping simultaneously, both drives slowed down to under 4x ripping speed. So it was 50% faster to rip using just the Lite-On drive than using both the Lite-On and the HP. I have no idea how to explain this.
Here are the stats:
This, by the way, represents the threshold at which I will purchase a portable music player---when I can fit my entire music collection in a lossless format. Apple's ipod is at 80GB. I suppose it will be about another 3-5 years before it or a competitor gets to ~400GB.
Unfortunately, I found a weird problem with using EAC on two drives. When ripping simultaneously, both drives slowed down to under 4x ripping speed. So it was 50% faster to rip using just the Lite-On drive than using both the Lite-On and the HP. I have no idea how to explain this.
Here are the stats:
- Days to rip: 24
- CDs: 1009
- Bytes: 351982256 (FLAC Compressed)
This, by the way, represents the threshold at which I will purchase a portable music player---when I can fit my entire music collection in a lossless format. Apple's ipod is at 80GB. I suppose it will be about another 3-5 years before it or a competitor gets to ~400GB.
posted by Ang at 11:28 AM
4 Comments:
Hmm, if I liked music that much, I would live with some slight lossy compression, and cull my music collection to fit into the current generation of portable players.
Then again, if I liked music that much, maybe I wouldn't. :)
To be honest, I am consciously aware of distortion only when the bitrate starts dipping substantially under ~192kbps for mp3. The difference between lossless and high-bitrate lossy is quite a bit more subtle for me: I tend to get fatigued faster when listening to mp3s than when listening to FLAC.
The fatigue sets in (even more severly) when I listen to poorly mastered music. Unfortunately, most recent music is so highly compressed that I can't stand to listen to it for more than an hour or two at a time---even in FLAC. Such "music" is of such poor quality that it's not worth keeping around in lossless format.
For more on compression, check this out.
If you had both drives on the same IDE channel, then you'll be forced to slow to the minimum.
Each CD drive on a dedicated channel should get you full speed on each, with the fastest CD drive on the same channel as the HDD you're copying to.
If you can get a portable player with 400Gb storage, will it support FLAC? What about Monkey's Audio, does that not get more compression at higher speed (still lossless)?
fruey: The two CD drives were master/slave on an IDE channel. The hard drive it was ripping to was SATA.
I'm not all that committed to FLAC---just to lossless in general. I'd even be willing to translate everything into Apple lossless to use the ipod.
For casual background listening, though, I find even Apple's 96kbps lossy to be ok....
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