Ripping with Exact Audio Copy - what are acceptable speeds?

Another thread about ripping :/. I am planning on ripping my entire CD collection again to FLAC. Because a lot of FLAC rips I have on my PC are some 10 years old. Now I believe at the time I wasn't too well informed about making a good rip. A lot of them don't have a log file so I don't know if they were accurate rips and/or if they were done in secure mode or burst mode...

Now I have ripped some discs recently. But I was wondering about the speed because I am under the impression it is a lot slower than when I was ripping 10 years ago on my previous computer. Again I don't know if I was ripping in burst or secure mode back then.
My computer now is a Windows 10 pc of 5 years old. The disc drive is an internal one: an LG LG CH12NS30 - Blu-ray Combo - Retail Pack . I followed this guide for setting everything up: How to setup Exact Audio Copy for FLAC ripping - captainrookie.com .


Now I just did a little test with two regular redbook CD's.

First one was Slint - Spiderland (https://www.discogs.com/Slint-Spiderland/release/5824195). That one took around 43 minutes to rip. Log file:

Second was Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Ragged Glory (https://www.discogs.com/Neil-Young-Crazy-Horse-Ragged-Glory/release/599644). That one took around 1 hour to rip. Log file:

I noticed that when test reading and copying the first track it spins up quite noticeably. After that it spins a lot quieter. Is it maybe 'getting to know' the disc as to know how it is best read? Or something like that?

Are these acceptable speeds or not in secure mode?

Thanks for any input and/or experiences.

 

That's a little bit slower than I've experienced. With the same settings, most of my rips take about 1/3 to 1/2 the time of the disc. But some take less time and others take 3/4 of the playing time.

This is if there isn't some kind of error; in which case it can take much longer.

 

Even if the disc looks pristine, careful cleaning may speed up your rip dramatically. Always worth a try.

 

I don't know if it's the discs. Recently ripped a new, sealed copy of Bowie's Buddha Of Suburbia. Ripping time was around an hour or so. Album length is around 55 minutes.

Could another drive give faster times?

 

I rip with 2.5x to 6.4x and everything is OK. All tracks return "Accurately ripped" in CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6 log. EAC control the speed.

 

Some drives are just sloooooow in secure mode, particularly if your particular drive caches the audio. Most do. 30-40 minutes is not uncommon.

If you have a drive with no cache, you can basically rip in secure mode at burst mode speeds. It’s nice but not a must for me. None of my primary drives are cacheless. There are other features that are of a higher priority to me, especially when you consider that burst mode is absolutely fine for the vast majority of discs.


You can rip in burst mode and be totally fine, and you’ll benefit from *much* faster speeds with any drive. Just be sure to keep a close eye on the resulting log. If you get accuraterip and/or CTDB matches on your results, then the rip is as perfect as can be. It’s the end result that matters, not how you got there.

 

It almost sounds as if the CD disc brake is on.
Some believe you get better rips if you rip them with the same speed as needed for normal playback.
Maybe a likewise option is available and activated in EAC.

Anyway, downloads the trial version of dBpoweramp and check what happens.
I expect a total time between 3 to 5 minutes.
If not, clean the lens, try another optical drive, etc.

 

So I followed@Vincent Kars advice and tried ripping the Slint CD with dBpoweramp. It did the job indeed in a couple of minutes. Also when enabling secure mode in dBpoweramp.

I am really wondering then what EAC does to slow it down so much.

 

EAC can be really slow with certain drives but you have to look at the settings too. The fastest I was able to rip a disc in Secure mode with EAC was about 10-15 minutes, depending on length, with a fast drive and playing around with settings. dBPoweramp can do the same thing, also in Secure mode, in less than half that time. It's one reason I moved over to dB permanently.

 

Some drives are going to be really slow with EAC secure mode rips. It's due to the way they handle the audio data cache. And other reasons.

A good drive for EAC ripping should be able to do a secure mode rip in around 7 minutes or less.

I recently did a ripping speed comparison with a Plextor PX-891SAF-R in a USB enclosure.
Mickey Hart: Planet Drum on Rykodisc
50 minutes of music on the CD

EAC secure mode took 05:45 plus the time to detect gaps
EAC fast mode took 02:00 plus the time to detect gaps
EAC burst mode took 01:47 plus the time to detect gaps

Gap detection:
52 seconds in secure
40 seconds in accurate
33 seconds in inaccurate


A good strategy for ripping with EAC would be to rip in Fast Mode first and then only switch to Secure Mode if the CD isn't in AccurateRip/CTDB or AccurateRip/CTDB detect errors.

If AccurateRip and CTDB say the rip is good then it is good. A Fast Mode rip is just as good as a Secure Mode rip if AccurateRip and/or CTDB say it's good. Why waste time doing Secure Mode when you don't have to. A good ripping drive is one that can get good rips in Fast Mode or Burst mode most of the time (depending on the condition of the discs).

 

That is what I understand the way dBpoweramp works.
It starts with burst mode, verify against AccurateRip and if not accurate falls back on secure mode.

 

I also ripped it in dBpoweramp and disabled Accuraterip so it purely ripped in secure mode. This gave the same result: around 5 minutes or so.

 

dBpoweramp uses a sort of hybrid secure rip mode.
If the CD is in AccurateRip then it uses the AccurateRip data to verify the rip while doing the rip. If it reads a sector that doesn't agree with the AccurateRip data then it goes back and does a physical read of that sector again, like a secure mode rip would. It's able to get a verified rip at burst mode speed as long as the disc is in AccurateRip.

If the disc isn't in AccurateRip then the dBpoweramp secure rip mode will re-read sectors like a traditional secure mode rip and be slower.

 

Ham Sandwich

Thanks for the clarification

 

I think dBpowramp may still use AccurateRip for the first pass of a secure mode rip even if you disable AccurateRip in the Ripper Options setting page. I'd have to do some testing to find out what dBpoweramp is doing in that scenario, or go to the dBpoweramp forum and ask Spoon.

I disabled AccurateRip and then went to the Secure Mode options page and saw it was still using AccurateRip for the first pass. So I suspect it will use AccurateRip for secure mode even if you disable AccurateRip for the rest of the program.

 

A way to test dBpoweramp ripping without AccurateRip would be to find a CD that isn't yet in AccurateRip. That means finding an obscure CD or getting a new release that isn't yet in AccurateRip. It generally takes a few weeks for a new CD release to get listed in AccurateRip (it seems new AccurateRip submissions get updated in batches every couple of weeks). So if you get a CD on release day you've got a few weeks to use it to test how dBpoweramp handles secure mode rips without AccurateRip.

 

dBpoweramp shows this after ripping my disc. It seems it doesn't use AccurateRip since it shows a cross.

Log also shows AccurateRip: Off,

 

That should be a bit perfect rip, though I have no idea why you would turn off Accurate Rip. That album should be in the AR database.

 

I know it is in the AR database. This rip was for testing purposes to see if AR is really turned off and excludes it as the reason why secure ripping with dBpoweramp goes faster than with EAC.

 

Go to the dB forum and ask your questions. The developer will answer himself. No guesswork or speculation necessary.

 

One thing to try if EAC secure rips are slow is to disable the "Allow speed reduction during extraction" setting and set the drive to a fixed speed instead of "Current".

Sometimes a drive will get stuck in a slow speed setting and won't go back up to a fast speed. Disabling "Allow speed reduction during extraction" will force the drive to the fast ripping speeds. Do a rip like that. The rip should go faster. Then enable "Allow speed reduction" and the next rip should also be fast.

With some drives there seem to be conditions where the drive gets stuck in slow mode for rips. Disabling "Allow speed reduction" and starting a rip will force the drive back into fast mode.

Also worth trying some of the fixed speed modes instead of leaving it at "Current" speed.
Sometimes with some drive setting a fixed speed instead of Current gets good results.
I have a drive that I've found to read through scratches better at a fixed "32X" speed instead of it's max of "48X" or "40X".
Experiment with scratched discs to find the speed it seems to rip more accurately at.

 

This thread got me to do a ripping speed test using my Asus DRW-24B3ST drive using the same Mickey Hart "Planet Drum" CD as I used for the Plextor drive. I did a quick ripping speed and accuracy test with the Plextor drive after I bought it. But never bothered to compare the same CD ripped using my Asus drive.

The Asus drive is a model DRW-24B3ST that's now about 10 years old think. I can't remember what year I bought it. I do remember that I bought it at a local Fry's. I went there looking for an Asus drive to try as a ripping drive. Just because I'm curious about such things and wanted to try an Asus. And that's the one they had. That was the extent of how I researched exactly what drive to buy. Please don't regard my choice of this drive as an endorsement of it being best. I only regard it as being good enough for ripping for my needs. Which is good. But not best.

Here's the ripping times for the Asus DRW-24B3ST ripping the Mickey Hart "Planet Drum" CD released by Rykodisc. 50 minutes of audio. Ripped using EAC version 1.6.

Burst Mode 32x: 02:25
Fast Mode 40x: 09:04
Secure Mode 40x: 04:39
Secure Mode 32x: 05:35

An interesting result is that "Fast Mode" with this drive is not exactly fast. Fast Mode actually took longer to rip the CD that secure mode did. Fast Mode in EAC isn't really designed to be fast. It is designed to be an alternative to Secure Mode for drives that don't behave well with Secure Mode.

Another interesting aspect with this Asus drive is that in previous ripping tests I had already determined that 32x speed was optimal speed setting for burst mode rips. Go faster than 32x and the rip was more likely to have errors. And sure enough, on this test rip I tested a burst mode rip at 40x and the first track failed the AccurateRip. So I didn't include the 40x burst mode speed in these results. With this drive I consider 32x to be the 32x ripping setting to be the fastest speed setting to get reliable results. So in regular use with EAC I have the drive set at 32x speed for both secure rips and burst mode rips. Even though the drive is capable of 48x ripping speeds.

 

I also just did a test rip of the Micey Hart CD using dBpoweramp. With AccurateRip disabled. To find out how dBpoweramp does secure style rips when AccurateRip is disabled.

dBpoweramp didn't use AccurateRip for the first pass even though the settings page said it would. Apparently the settings page isn't smart enough to change its settings if you disable AccurateRip.

The rip did a regular rip on the first pass then went straight to Ultra Secure ripping mode of the second and third passes. Never using AccurateRip to reduce or optimize the number of ripping passes. I have ultra secure mode set to do three passes minimum. And six passes max.

The dBpoweramp rip of the Mickey Hart CD took a little over 10:30 using the Asus ripping drive.
The Asus drive took only 04:39 to 05:35 in secure mode using EAC.
So disabling AccurateRip in EAC meant that the rip took over twice as long as a secure rip using EAC.
Lesson here is that dBpoweramp is optimized for ripping using AccurateRip to help speed up the rip. Keep AccurateRip enabled when using dBpoweramp.

Here's a screenshot of the rip of the Mickey Hart "Planet Drum" CD. You can see that AccurateRip was not used and that it was using Ultra Secure mode for the 2nd and 3rd passes. Ripping time at the time of the screen shot was 10:24. While EAC in secure mode managed to rip the same CD with the same drive in 04:39 to 05:35.

 

How fast do those FLAC files burn to CDR from the same ripping CD source device? They take just as long?

While on the subject thought I'ld throw this out there about my experience ripping to CDR from my 2010 MacMini hard drive.

I've also had unusually long writes off and on to CDR (24x/not Max) burning CDR's in iTunes of songs I've worked on in Audacity on my 2010 MacMini. This is what sped it up for me. And this doesn't rule out system differences as the cause but it's all voodoo tech anyway unless one is a computer programming engineer.

I first shutdown my MacMini and unplug it for about 30 seconds and plug it back in and restart. Before this I have all the files gathered in their own folder ready to be dragged and dropped into iTunes and burned to CDR (IOW no individual songs scatter about in separate folders on the same or different back up hard drives.) It took about 25 to 40 minutes compared to an hour or more before I did this and sometimes iTunes would hang for a very long time showing a burn progress bar that never moves forward and then later indicates an error or something wrong with the disc.

And in regards to CDR burn errors with Philips brand I did notice visual artifacts within the inner spindle area of the reflection medium like weird shiny burnished bubbles that can only be seen tilting the blank CDR disc in the light. Never had a dirt issue on any CDR brand blank disc. Got a different CDR from the same Philips stack that didn't have these artifacts and it burned with no errors or slow downs.

This may or may not work but thought I'ld just mention it.

 

Interesting. I disabled "Allow speed reduction during extraction" and EAC ripped it in secure mode in 15 minutes. Like you said, I enabled it back after that and again it took 45 minutes.