Paul Bartlet

EAC/Lame, now I'm seeking help, new DVD drive

I've been using EAC/Lame for a few years now, with great results, the best in my opinion.
I just got a Plextor 712A DVD for xmas, and it's ripping slower than my old Plextor 12/10/32A (approx 3-4 years old).
Just viewing the extraction window, I'm seeing a max of about 7x with new drive, I got about 7-15x with old drive.
Is there some way to have EAC perform a speed test on the new drive. I had to play around with the Drive settings to get it working, but I don't believe it's working as fast as it should.

Plextor drives come with PlexTools, and I've read that it's very good at audio extraction as well. But I couldn't get CDDB working correctly (would display Album name, but tracks were not listed). Guess I should try a few tracks to see max speed.

But EAC/Lame been my friend for years, anything I may be missing on trying to get to perform a speed test on my new drive ?.
Currently, my CD-ROM (4 years old) is faster, somethings not right here.
Any suggestions, thx in advance.

\"When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the Master.\"

Scott L

With error correction on the disc drive should be spinning around 5x.

Paul Bartlet

ok so then the speeds I'm getting are normal. I was thinking maybe 15-20x. I can live with it as they do turn out perfect quality.

I've found a few settings that may help others useing EAC/Lame. So should anyone search this here, this should come in handy.

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Recommended encoder settings:
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--alt-preset standard (~190 kbit/s, typical 180 ... 220)

--alt-preset fast standard (~190 kbit/s, faster but potentially lower quality)

--alt-preset extreme (~250 kbit/s, typical 220 ... 270)

--alt-preset fast extreme (~250 kbit/s, faster but potentially lower quality)

--alt-preset insane (320 kbit/s CBR, highest possible quality)

For high quality on portable MP3 players, you may use --alt-preset medium (around 160 kbit/s). The medium preset is only available in the modified LAME3.90.3.


These are "presets" built into lame that you can use. There are more, just posted the more popular ones. An example of the compression line would be -
--alt-preset extreme --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --tt "%t" --ta "%a" --tl "%t" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" --tg "%m" %s %d -V %0

I was using this for a while. But I wanted higher bit rate, but not max of file size.
Took some searching, but found out how to get 320 max bitrate at vbr.

The used lame parameters mean:

* Join stereo (-m j)
* Variable bitrate (-v)
* Minimum bitrate (-b [bitrate])
* Maximum bitrate (-B [bitrate])
* High quality (-h)
* Quality setting for VBR (-V [arg])
* Strictly enforce the -b option (-F)

This kinda tells you whats being told to lame on how to compress your mp3s.
Mine is now like this -
--id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 -b 128 -F -B 320 -h -V 0 --tt "%t" --ta "%a" --tl "%t" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" --tg "%m" %s %d --V %0

-b tells it to use minimum of 128
-B tells it to use the max of 320
you can change these to whatever suits your needs best.

you can find the suggested versions of Lame here

You want either the newest (3.96.1) or where the original authors left off (3.90.3)
The newest being the fastest, I'm using it, works great.
The original being most true to the presets as they were made to do by original authers of lame. 3.90.3 is very slow compared to latest.

\"When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the Master.\"

Scott L

Keep in mind Mpeg-1 layer 3 is over a decade old. AAC and WMA are newer and more efficient but whatever works for you. From your posts I gather you're a bit of a quality freak, if you are ripping for storage on your harddrive you may want to consider the lossless formats (APE, FLAC, WMA lossless, Apple lossless). 50% space reduction and nothing is lost.