spped of burning cd's

sda2mike
sda2mike Posts: 3,131
edited July 2010 in The Clubhouse
this has turned out to be a HUGE project! i though burning my 500 or so cd's would be a breeze. since i'm using the lossless format, it takes 4ever!

anyway, should i pick up a high-speed external cd-rom drive to cut down on the burn time?
my lap top i think is 4x and the old pc i dusted off, can't be much better

thanks
mike
Post edited by sda2mike on
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  • thuffman03
    thuffman03 Posts: 1,325
    edited July 2010
    If you computer is old, gettting an external cd will not help much. Better off taking the money on the new cd and putting it twards a new desktop or laptop.
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  • sda2mike
    sda2mike Posts: 3,131
    edited July 2010
    thuffman03 wrote: »
    If you computer is old, gettting an external cd will not help much. Better off taking the money on the new cd and putting it twards a new desktop or laptop.

    you're probably right...laptop is from 2004 and the old pc is a 2005, i think:eek: are there any specs i should look for?

    thanks
    mike
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  • John30_30
    John30_30 Posts: 1,024
    edited July 2010
    sda2mike wrote: »
    you're probably right...laptop is from 2004 and the old pc is a 2005, i think:eek: are there any specs i should look for?

    thanks
    mike

    That's not all that old. Just replace the cd/dvd burner in the PC with something you can get for $30 on sale. Better, leave the old one in, make the new one the Master. With CD burn rates to 48x and beyond, I'd still only go about 16x or 24x for accuracy.
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  • billbillw
    billbillw Posts: 6,726
    edited July 2010
    Lets get the terms straight, are you ripping CDs to your computer or trying to burn them from archived FLAC files?

    In burning a CD, it shouldn't matter what the source is (MP3, .wav, or .flac), the burn time is approximately the same and is based on the drive speed (8x, 16x, 32x, 48x, etc).

    Now, if you are ripping audio and converting file formats from .wav to .flac, that is dependent on the speed of your PC, and the speed of the drive.

    If your PC is from 2005, I'm sure it has at least a 32x CD burner if not a 48x and extraction times should be pretty much on par with current drives.

    If you are actually talking about burning, for Audio CDs, I stick with 16x at most. That is still ample to burn a CD in 3-4 minutes.

    Now, if you are having to convert files before burning, that's another story. Maybe some clarification is needed. Either way, an external drive probably won't help much.

    Whatever you are doing, it will probably be faster on the PC than on the laptop due to slower hardrive, memory and bus speeds on the laptop.
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  • sda2mike
    sda2mike Posts: 3,131
    edited July 2010
    billbillw wrote: »
    Lets get the terms straight, are you ripping CDs to your computer or trying to burn them from archived FLAC files?

    In burning a CD, it shouldn't matter what the source is (MP3, .wav, or .flac), the burn time is approximately the same and is based on the drive speed (8x, 16x, 32x, 48x, etc).

    Now, if you are ripping audio and converting file formats from .wav to .flac, that is dependent on the speed of your PC, and the speed of the drive.

    If your PC is from 2005, I'm sure it has at least a 32x CD burner if not a 48x and extraction times should be pretty much on par with current drives.

    If you are actually talking about burning, for Audio CDs, I stick with 16x at most. That is still ample to burn a CD in 3-4 minutes.

    Now, if you are having to convert files before burning, that's another story. Maybe some clarification is needed. Either way, an external drive probably won't help much.

    Whatever you are doing, it will probably be faster on the PC than on the laptop due to slower hardrive, memory and bus speeds on the laptop.

    yeah there is a big difference between the lapper and the pc....what i'm trying to do is: burn (store?) my cd's to a 1tb hard drive. from what i'm told, it's probably best to select flac..that's all i know, at this point..my burn time is around 10 minutes total.

    thanks for your help
    mike
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  • ShinAce
    ShinAce Posts: 1,194
    edited July 2010
    You are encoding the raw data of the CD into FLAC. This requires processing.

    You might have an option in the burning software to use a lower level of encoding. This will speed it up.

    What program are you using? Maybe someone has experience with it.
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  • falconcry72
    falconcry72 Posts: 3,580
    edited July 2010
    sda2mike wrote: »
    yeah there is a big difference between the lapper and the pc....what i'm trying to do is: burn (store?) my cd's to a 1tb hard drive. from what i'm told, it's probably best to select flac..that's all i know, at this point..my burn time is around 10 minutes total.

    thanks for your help
    mike

    Back to linguistics: you're not burning; you're ripping. Burning is putting information onto a CD, ripping is taking information from a CD and putting it onto your cumputer.

    What program are you using to get the info off of your CD's? All ripping/converting programs are not created equally. You should use EAC (exact audio copy); it's free and can yield perfect results. Download here:

    http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/

    FLAC is best.

    Use foobar2000 to convert from WAV to FLAC and for playback. Also free. Download here:

    http://www.foobar2000.org/download
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  • billbillw
    billbillw Posts: 6,726
    edited July 2010
    Yep, you are ripping, not burning. If you are going to flac as well, you are typically looking at two steps, rip to wav, convert to flac. Ripping is mostly dependent on the drive speed. Not a whole lot of improvement from 2005 to now on rip speed. Converting from wav to flac is dependent on system speed (CPU/Memory/Bus).
    I'd say 10 minutes total is not bad to rip and archive to flac.
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  • John30_30
    John30_30 Posts: 1,024
    edited July 2010
    sda2mike wrote: »
    yeah there is a big difference between the lapper and the pc....what i'm trying to do is: burn (store?) my cd's to a 1tb hard drive. from what i'm told, it's probably best to select flac..that's all i know, at this point..my burn time is around 10 minutes total.

    thanks for your help
    mike

    Dear Lord. 1,2,3.4.5.6.7....

    There's already a very informative thread started by Ricardo comparing dbpoweramp and media monkey for ripping & storing factors. EAC is also mentioned.
    Burning is not what you are doing.

    8,9,10........
    :o

    Yes, ripping 500 cd's to lossless, a newer, faster desktop would speed things up. But I wouldn't advise just going at it mass quantities at a time. It's processor intensive. YOu may burn something up.
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  • sda2mike
    sda2mike Posts: 3,131
    edited July 2010
    falconcry72 wrote: »
    Back to linguistics: you're not burning; you're ripping. Burning is putting information onto a CD, ripping is taking information from a CD and putting it onto your cumputer.

    What program are you using to get the info off of your CD's? All ripping/converting programs are not created equally. You should use EAC (exact audio copy); it's free and can yield perfect results. Download here:

    http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/

    FLAC is best.

    Use foobar2000 to convert from WAV to FLAC and for playback. Also free. Download here:

    http://www.foobar2000.org/download

    i use EAC...are you saying, i need to rip with EAC, then run another pgm to convert to FLAC? when i set up EAC, it asks about the format??

    very confused:p
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  • billbillw
    billbillw Posts: 6,726
    edited July 2010
    sda2mike wrote: »
    i use EAC...are you saying, i need to rip with EAC, then run another pgm to convert to FLAC? when i set up EAC, it asks about the format??

    very confused:p

    EAC usually needs a separate flac engine installed. They can work together and output FLAC.

    What extension do the files you are creating have? Are they .wav or .flac ?
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  • sda2mike
    sda2mike Posts: 3,131
    edited July 2010
    billbillw wrote: »
    EAC usually needs a separate flac engine installed. They can work together and output FLAC.

    What extension do the files you are creating have? Are they .wav or .flac ?

    i was wondering abt that..they are .wav....ok, so i'll go back to EAC set up and look for the flac addon

    thanks!
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  • ShinAce
    ShinAce Posts: 1,194
    edited July 2010
    Sounds like a slow hard drive. I don't think you can get it to rip any faster on that machine.
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  • billbillw
    billbillw Posts: 6,726
    edited July 2010
    sda2mike wrote: »
    i was wondering abt that..they are .wav....ok, so i'll go back to EAC set up and look for the flac addon

    thanks!

    FLAC is a stand alone program, not an addon. You will have to install it separately, then setup EAC.

    BTW. you can just run FLAC on the wav files you've already ripped. No need to go back and re-run EAC on the same discs. Just run flac, then delete the original .wav files.

    You will have some difficulty getting EAC and FLAC to work properly the first time. It takes some trial/error. If you can't get it to work, just rip the wave and convert to FLAC manually. Overall, it probably won't take much more time.

    BTW, expect some delays when converting from wave to flac. Might take you another 5-10 minutes per disc. That is where a newer PC would help.
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  • madmax
    madmax Posts: 12,434
    edited July 2010
    Silly question here. Why do you convert from wave to flac? I really have no clue.
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  • 98Badger
    98Badger Posts: 317
    edited July 2010
    Converting to flac saves hard drive space. With the prices of storage coming down rapidly, I don't even bother converting. I just rip files in WAV format.
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  • Ricardo
    Ricardo Posts: 10,636
    edited July 2010
    I am right now going through the same process. I have a Dell XPS 410 which is a couple years old. I am ripping into FLAC using dbpoweramp.
    Time was around 3 min average. I installed yesterday a second hard drive to increase storage capacity, and I was surprised by the increase in the ripping speed. I am down to two minutes for most CD's. I am not sure what's the original HD, but the new one is a Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM and 3 GB/s.
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  • sda2mike
    sda2mike Posts: 3,131
    edited July 2010
    98Badger wrote: »
    Converting to flac saves hard drive space. With the prices of storage coming down rapidly, I don't even bother converting. I just rip files in WAV format.

    so...i have a 1tb ext hard drive...if i go uncompressed, will .wav be fine? i have around 500 cd's.

    thanks
    mike
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  • billbillw
    billbillw Posts: 6,726
    edited July 2010
    sda2mike wrote: »
    so...i have a 1tb ext hard drive...if i go uncompressed, will .wav be fine? i have around 500 cd's.

    thanks
    mike

    Yes, CDs are less than 700MB each (usually much less). 500 CDs will take up less than 400GB
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  • ShinAce
    ShinAce Posts: 1,194
    edited July 2010
    billbillw wrote: »
    Yes, CDs are less than 700MB each (usually much less). 500 CDs will take up less than 400GB

    +1

    FLAC is an ideal, not a pre-req. .WAV is just fine
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  • sda2mike
    sda2mike Posts: 3,131
    edited July 2010
    ShinAce wrote: »
    +1

    FLAC is an ideal, not a pre-req. .WAV is just fine

    ok! one less step is cool:)
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  • John30_30
    John30_30 Posts: 1,024
    edited July 2010
    Ricardo wrote: »
    I am right now going through the same process. I have a Dell XPS 410 which is a couple years old. I am ripping into FLAC using dbpoweramp.
    Time was around 3 min average. I installed yesterday a second hard drive to increase storage capacity, and I was surprised by the increase in the ripping speed. I am down to two minutes for most CD's. I am not sure what's the original HD, but the new one is a Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM and 3 GB/s.

    Having that 2nd Drive allows the O.S. to cache temp files to your main drive and write to the 2nd. Call it a feature. ;)
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