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How fast does your iTunes rip CDs?

S

ShaggyLR

macrumors member
Original poster
I have an iBook G4 1ghz. When I rip a CD, it does it anywhere from 8x to 18x. Firstly, why do some CDs rip faster than others. Secondly, is there anything I can do to speed it up? Is it the processor? Are there any firmware updates I can use to speed it up a bit?
 
ShaggyLR said:
I have an iBook G4 1ghz. When I rip a CD, it does it anywhere from 8x to 18x. Firstly, why do some CDs rip faster than others. Secondly, is there anything I can do to speed it up? Is it the processor? Are there any firmware updates I can use to speed it up a bit?
Click to expand...
With my iBook 500mhz Combo 640MB RAM, I can get between 2x to 3x rip speeds (128 kbps AAC). I have error checking OFF and music set to OFF when ripping.

I'm guessing that no one else is slower. Any takers?
 
Depends where the song is located on the disk. If it is on the outer edges of the CD, the songs rip faster because data moves faster at the outer edges. Plus depending on your computer, and how you have the energy saver set up. Plus, are you ripping and encoding? It should rip fast depending on your CD player, plus the codec you are using, either it be lossless, mp3, or AAC.

You can speed it up by turning off error correction, quitting other open apps, cleaning the disc before rippage, and setting your energy settings to Maximum.
 
I have an original Cube, which typically rips at 5X to 8X. I've ripped about 200 CDs on it; about 100 to go... Unfortunately these are my least favorite ones, so it's harder and harder to get motivated to do it! I have "rediscovered" some of my music doing this, though... some great Jazz "finds" like Jim Tomlinson, Charlie Hadon, and Steve Turre.
 
On my Dual G5 1.8Ghz, I get between 12x - 26x ripping speeds in both AIFF and AAC codecs, this with error correction turned off.
 
on my B&W (400GHz) I get 2.5x- 3.0 with nothing else running, on my Powerbook (ti 1GHz) I get around 5x-6x with a tonne of things open.

for jazz- Larry Carlton, good stuff. Currently listening to "A Pair of Kings"
 
iBook G3/900/640mb --> I get 5.9 - 6.4 (normally 6.2) ripping to AAC 192 with no other apps open. Comparing to the first post, it looks like the Altivec on the G4 chips makes a really big difference. I'm not sure whether it would affect the time that much if I reduced to AAC 128.

Edit: the CD I tested was Matthew Good Band - the Audio of Being
 
On my 1.33GHz PB, iTunes usually rips anywhere from 6x to 16x, sampling at 128kbps. I don't usually do anything other than surf the web while ripping CD's.
I have noticed two issues I would love to understand:

• Every now and then I'll run into a CD that won't rip faster than 1x or 2x. The CD's I have encountered this issue with do not seem to have obvious similarities explaining why. If I try to re-import from one of those CD's later, I'll always get the same slowness issue. Any idea as to why?

• Seems like my combo drive morphs into a jet engine once in awhile. I can rip a few disks with everything running fine and relatively quiet, then run into a disk where the drive starts screaming. The next disk goes in and the drive will be fine again. Why does this happen?
 
I get varied encoding speeds, since I use "error checking".

It all depends on how fast your Optical Drive speed is rated, what other applications you are running in the background, how much ram you have, how much load is on the CPU/HDD, how complex the song is, how many channels, bit rate encode, what type of encode are you using.

There is no simple answer to this, thus its kinda pointless to even compare since at one time you might get 18x and at other times 4x encode speed. 🙂

I never really cared, as long as it rips without errors, I have had this in the past.
 
My ripping speed doesn't vary that much. I almost always get between 14x-15x on my 1GHz eMac (about the same on my 1.2GHz iBook). Error correction, playback off of course, but processor set to Auto. Once in a very rare while I get a CD that only rips at like 5-6x. I think it has something to do with the type of CD--different encoding or something.
 
powermac666 said:
• Seems like my combo drive morphs into a jet engine once in awhile. I can rip a few disks with everything running fine and relatively quiet, then run into a disk where the drive starts screaming. The next disk goes in and the drive will be fine again. Why does this happen?
Click to expand...

Same here, and it seems to do this after burning a cd, goes into jet mode until you eject it. On a Tibook 667 with 1gb, I average 6x-8x, sometimes hitting 12x.

tested on mutinous by dissenting w
 
I don't rip CDs 🙂

All the stuff I import is in WAV format, and I always convert it to Apple Lossless. I do the conversion on my PC - I usually get convert rates around 50-60x.
 
One of the things that can affect how fast the CD will be ripped/encoded is the quality of the CD itself. Some aren't manufactured as well as others. Also dirt, scratches, etc will affect the read rate of the CD.

And as others have mentioned, what else are you doing at the same time?
 
1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook, 768MB RAM, I get around 9x to 18x speeds, but with iTMS I can't remember the last time I used a frisbee-- I mean, CD.
 
On my PowerBook, the best I've seen is 17x. Although depending on the CD it can go down to 5x. I always have Error Checking off (never had a problem with a rip) and encode to 256kbps AAC. I occasionally rip to Apple Lossless and always seem to find that it rips faster to that format than AAC 😕
 
jonat8 said:
On my PowerBook, the best I've seen is 17x. Although depending on the CD it can go down to 5x. I always have Error Checking off (never had a problem with a rip) and encode to 256kbps AAC. I occasionally rip to Apple Lossless and always seem to find that it rips faster to that format than AAC 😕
Click to expand...
The reasons rips to Apple Lossless are faster than rips to AAC are simple:
1. Less compression needs to be done.
2. The compression algorithm doesn't include a human sound model and is thus less taxing on the CPU.
 
combatcolin said:
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS

Leave Error Checking ON

Makes life a lot easier.
Click to expand...

...why? What the hell does it do anyway? Should I go back and re-rip my 20GB worth of CDs with error checking on?
 
i think all of the iTunes codecs are optimized to use Altivec on the G4 all except for lossless. One my upgraded B&W (600mhz G4) I get 6-9x on aac and about the same for mp3. When i import using lossless iget about 12-18x and its about the same for my non upgraded B&W (400mhz G3)
 
neoelectronaut said:
...why? What the hell does it do anyway? Should I go back and re-rip my 20GB worth of CDs with error checking on?
Click to expand...


Exactly. What the hell does it do anyway? Especially if you're ripping brand new CDs....
 
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