import music via Superdrive - Very slow

[asf1966]

I recently imported 8 songs from a homemade CD into my daughter's new MBA using a Superdrive and USB and it took about an hour. Is this normal?

thanks

 

[fastlanephil]

I recently imported 8 songs from a homemade CD into my daughter's new MBA using a Superdrive and USB and it took about an hour. Is this normal?

thanks

No, that's not normal.

 

[asf1966]

Fastlanephil,

Any suggestions?

 

[72jal]

re: import music via Superdrive - Very slow

I've just imported an album and it seemed to take for ever - 2.7 x speed according to iTunes on my brand new MacBook Air and Superdrive ...
:-(

 

[ChrisA]

I've just imported an album and it seemed to take for ever - 2.7 x speed according to iTunes on my brand new MacBook Air and Superdrive ...
:-(

What format were you converting to? Some times the CPU is the bottle next because it has to trans code the audio data. The MBA is not very good at media transcoding. Next time watch "Activity Monitor" and see if the CPU is pegged to 100%.

 

[72jal]

I was ripping a 69 min CD to mp4 for itunes. I upgraded to 10.8.1 in case that helped and tried again. It took 57 min altogether. Activity monitor showed iTunes at about 5% and iTunes showed the conversion speed at 2.1 to 8.1 x - but mostly it showed about 2.1 x

 

[ChrisA]

I was ripping a 69 min CD to mp4 for itunes. I upgraded to 10.8.1 in case that helped and tried again. It took 57 min altogether. Activity monitor showed iTunes at about 5% and iTunes showed the conversion speed at 2.1 to 8.1 x - but mostly it showed about 2.1 x

Is your Internet connection working. The long delay might (maybe) be that iTunes is trying to look up the meta-data and can't connect and tries for a long time.

That does not add up does it? At even a solid 2.0 X it should have taken only 34.5 minutes. Have you tried using XLD to rip the CDs. XLD can take advantage of all the cores in your CPU if you set the number of processes up.

 

[72jal]

Problem resolved

Dear ChrisA,
Thanks for your interest and advice.
I tried a different CD (19 tracks, 60 min) and disconnected from the internet: this took 12:51 and iTunes showed about 8 x all the way through and Activity Monitor 15-20% - much better.
I then ripped the same CD with internet on, to access GraceNote, and this showed about 5 - 9 x on iTunes, and about 15% on Activity Monitor and took 14:56 - again most acceptable.
So I think that this was a combination of a problematic CD and the impact of GraceNote rather than reflecting a hardware fault which was what was worrying me.
Thanks again, John