What CD Drive to use with EAC FAST

Guys, as some of you know, I'm building a full blown audio server that will have super hi grade MP3s of all my Cd and CDRs, some 600 in all.

I'll be using EAC to Rip them, but I wish to buy the FASTEST Cd Drive out there to cut the ripping time down, as I have so many to rip.

What are your suggestions for a drive?

thanks!

Mikey

 

Any Lite-On drive, preferably their CDRW drives, if you can. Won't cost you much bread. Use "BURST MODE" for rips. Won't pay to use accurate in this case, because you're archiving them as MP3's.

Actually, if you're looking to go through many Cds fast, I would recommend Audiocatalyst (found at download.com) or maybe CDEX. www.cdex.n3.net/

EAC isn't vital to use. It would be too cumbersome to go through many Cds just for MP3 use.

 

Another for Lite-On drives. Best Buy often has them on super sale under the Buslink label.

 

Thanks guys.

I'll be using EAC for accuracy, as they will be 320k High Quality MP3 files, virtually identical to the Cd, just a lot less space than a WAV file.

 

Be sure to let us know how to access your server when it's up!

Good luck!

 

Mikey,

I'm also currently trying to archive my collection to MP3. I'm a little more relaxed about the sampling rate, though. I went with variable bit rate 160-320 and chose every other 'high quality' setting I could find. I started out using EAC but found it to be just too time-consuming when I compared its results with CDEX on-the-fly ripping. If you have not yet done any comparison tests between different tools and different sampling rates, you might want to before you jump in. I have a collection of over 6,000 CDs so I don't know if I'll ever get finished. I've found the part of the job I hate the most is putting in the extra effort to insure that the ID3 tags contain artist names and album titles that meet with my exacting, anal retentive demands. For me, CDDB and FREEDB don't usually cut it when it comes to these areas. Believe me - this DOES matter when it comes to letting the MP3 player of your choice sort your collection!

These days, hard drive space is pretty darn cheap, and I can understand and sympathize with your desire to use the highest bit rate possible.

I've found that even though I cherish my CD collection and would never part with it, having external hard drives packed with MP3s enables me to much better utilize my CD collection when I'm not home. Random play becomes so much fun - it's like having a radio station that plays ONLY music in which you are interested!

Good luck on your project. It will be a labor of love.

 

Hey! Set up a Shoutcast server. Just don't tell ASCAP about it.

As some lurkers know, I hate EAC with a passion--it's worth what I paid for it. But aside from that, I usually use the WAV extrator in any of my CD burning programs, and the TDK 16x10x40 drive I use will rip at up to 25x speed for audio. So what I'm saying is that I've found other software that will still utilize the drive's full audio ripping speed. It sure was a time saver when I had four Live365 streaming internet broadcasts going!

I have a Shoutcast server on my FreeBSD box, but can't run it very often since Comcast doesn't really like me to do that kind of thing. (Outbound speeds are capped at like 100k...so it's really a bottleneck.) It would still be neat, though, if I wanted to stream out some sound samples to some of my online buddies.

 

Why do you hate EAC? You are the first person I've encountered who has expressed their dislike for this program, so I'm curious...

Chris

 

I've been using EAC for maybe 3 years. I'd admit that it's not the easiest to set up, but it's fixed errors that I've had with used CD's and such. I'm a happy camper with it.

Also, I've been using MPC for maybe a year and a half instead of mp3.