Ripping with Exact Audio Copy - what are acceptable speeds?

So seems like my LG drive has the problem of it getting stuck in slow mode. As I previously said it starts at a fast speed, but always with the second track it slows down and stays slow for the rest of the rip.
I've found some old rips done with my old computer which had a Samsung SH-222BB drive. The log files show they were ripped in Secure mode. Also with speed reduction enabled. Seems like these were done a lot faster!

So I guess I can assume it's my LG drive that has problems with the "Allow speed reduction" setting.

 

The reverse.
If your LG reduces speed to almost real time playing, it does a better job in speed reduction than the Samsung drive.
Not to be mistaken for a better rip.

 

Some drives are like that. They go down to a slower speed and then won't automatically go back up to a faster rip speed.

If your drive is behaving like that then disable the "Allow speed reduction during extraction" option.
Also try setting the drive to a fixed speed in the dropdown list above the speed reduction setting.
Current selects whatever the current speed of the drive is.
One of the fixed speed options will set it at that speed.
Experiment with different speed settings to find what works best with your drive.
For example, my Asus drive works best at 32x even though it supports 40x and 48x.
The 32x speed is more reliable and reads through scratches and errors better than the faster speeds. Which makes 32x work better for burst mode rips and keeps it from re-reading as much during secure mode rips.

To set a speed you'll need to have a CD in the drive. Then the dropdown list will populate with the speed options that the drive supports.

 

If you want to rip quickly in secure mode, then you absolutely MUST HAVE a drive which doesn't feature a cache. Caching drives will slow down your ripping process by at least a factor of 10.

 

OK, in some weeks I ripped all my CD's again. And some interesting things. Recently I bought myself an external optical drive (Pioneer BDR-XS07TUHD) for my laptop which doesn't have a built-in optical drive. I used this external drive on my regular desktop too for ripping. It did it very fast, all in secure mode. Everything went fine.

But for 10 CD's EAC reported a reading error or synchronisation error. This I found weird because all these CD's only have been played once or twice or so and just ripped at the time I bought them. So they could not have been damaged. Also they were from different years and pressing plants so no connection there. I tried to rip them all twice. Only one was a rip without errors the second time.

Now some other CD's I am ripping again with my built-in LG optical drive (the 'slow one') and it seems that drive rips them perfectly!

 

Check to see if the Pioneer drive is configured to "Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out". And disable that if it is set.
Some drives will have synchronization errors, especially at the end of the rip, with some discs if that option is set.

That option is in
EAC >> Drive Options... >> Offset/Speed tab

EAC maintains different drive options for each drive. So to check the settings for the Pioneer drive you need to plug it in, turn it on, and then launch EAC, then check the Drive Options for that drive. And then disable the Overread option for the Pioneer drive if that is set.

Also try disabling the C2 error setting in the Extraction Method tab for the Pioneer drive if C2 error is set.

 

Both were disabled. I've run through the whole configuration process when first installing the Pioneer drive.

 

synchronization errors (particularly at ultra-fast ripping speeds) could be down to anything from your HDD not being fast enough to keep up with the rip, to your CPU being bogged down by some other process while ripping, or RAM issues, etc… it just means the drive read the part of the disc it was reading later than EAC expected it to. If your computer is slow and hanging on something, the rip will, invariably slow down.


None of this matters. It’s the end result that you’re after. Was it accurately ripped? Doesn’t matter if it got to that point in 30 seconds or 30 minutes. A synchronization error doesn’t mean there was an issue or actual error with the rip, it just means that the rip ended up taking longer than it should have at the speed the drive was reading the disc.

 

In most cases the tracks that showed errors weren't accurately ripped.

And in some cases also showing a message in the log file like: 'Suspicious position 0:03:46'

 

Are you matching the speed rating of your blank discs to the speed of the drive? I'm guessing that your two drives have different speeds, but you're using the same blanks for both. If the drive is 16x, use 16x blanks; if 24x, use 24x blanks. Even if that doesn't solve your problem, it's best practice.

 

I don't see how blank discs should help me? I just configure EAC with regular audio CD's. Speed is automatically adjusted by EAC and the drive itself.

 

All is now correctly ripped. Either with the Pioneer Drive or for the ones that gave errors on the Pioneer I ripped them with the LG drive and that went fine.

Only thing having troubles with is the Minimum-Maximum live CD by Kraftwerk. But I read online that might have to do with the copy protection.

 

OK. Tried again ripping the Minimum-Maximum CD with the Pioneer Drive. Went perfect this time.

 

Getting a drive that rips well is the luck of the draw, as far as I can see. I had an LG slimline USB drive that was awful; multiple errors on even new and clean CDs using dBPoweramp. I bought a full size external LG DVD writer with its own external power supply and it ripped over 1000 CDs, mostly in a single pass with no errors.

Having ripped my entire collection now, I only rip new CD purchases, so just use the full size LG BD drive on my tower PC. Again, most rips are perfect first time. If that drive breaks I can swap it out easily enough; it's the second one I have had in this particular PC. I keep the old drive and the internal drive in my old MacBook as backup drives for those odd discs that misbehave. I had a handful of CDs that were too badly damaged to generate an error free rip, mostly from being played in the car. The errors were inaudible in most, and I got used copies to replace the others.

When you find a good drive, look after it!

 

Hey Guys. I wanted to ask - how much time should rips take when done on (S)ATA to USB brigde either with ATA or SATA internal drives connected that way?

 

Whatever the traffic will bear, as long as the result says "accurate."

 

I know but surely it is better to set up EAC so it will give accurate rips in 30 minute than in 60

 

I use "maximum speed." That's what I meant; set it for the max, and reduce only if the rips are not good.

Decent drive and disc in decent shape shouldn't even take anywhere near 30 minutes.

 

Depending on the drive, it often does in secure mode - especially if it’s a drive that caches data. Whereas the same disc can be ripped accurately using the same drive in burst mode in about 3 minutes. Guess it’s down to priorities. I’m fine ripping in burst mode since I understand this doesn’t degrade the rip in any way, so I don’t need a drive that rips particularly fast in secure mode at the expense of other features.

 

Maybe I'm just used to dbPoweramp. Although I still have EAC on my desktop, I haven't used it for a long time.

 

I timed some rips on the first page of this thread. The times I posted are in the range of what should be expected with a good drive. All of my ripping drives are full size drives in USB enclosures. I have an old Plextor that is ATA and in a USB enclosure. The rest of my ripping drives are all SATA in USB enclosures.

A reasonable drive should be able to do burst mode rips in around 3 minutes and secure rips in around 7 minutes.

I've used some laptops and all-in-one computers with a built-in slim CD drive and some of them can be really slow. Like 30 minutes or more for a burst rip and over an hour for a secure mode rip. Drives that slow are not practical for ripping. Find a better and faster ripping drive.

 

I tried one old LiteOne ATa internal with USB bridge and burst mode took about 20 minutes. However I have "drive is caching audio data" checked and maybe it was unnecessary. I need to take this drive out again and detect if it indeed caches. I suppose that to get your time results the drive as to be non-caching one, right?

 

Non-caching is better than caching. But a drive with audio caching doesn't have to be slow.

I just did a test rip using my USB connected Plextor PX-891SAF-R. It caches audio data. It's not slow. It's fast enough for me. There are faster ripping drives.
I ripped a classical music CD with 75 minutes of audio
Burst mode (excluding time to detect gaps): 2:12
Secure mode (excluding time to detect gaps): 7:49

 

I wonder what made my liteon so slow. I need to test if I can switch the cahcing off. But maybe because it is old and ATA it just will not get faster...BTW do You know how much USB interface time affects this? My USB bridge is 2.0 so maybe I need to buy 3.1 one...

 

Indeed. If ripping software detects a C2 error and decided to re-read the CD (dBpoweramp and EAC will do thuis up to 80 times to conjecture up the best value), re-reading the cache 80 times will of course yield exactly the same value
I believe dBpoweramp "knows" this and bypasses the cache.
Anyway, the trick is of course to use burst mode, read the whole at max speed.
If the MD5 matches the accurate rip database, the rip is right. If not, fall back to e.g. secure mode.