[rozzer1971]

Never really bothered with mp3's before due to the slow encoding rate with my Beige G3/266 but when my new iMac 800 arrives in the UK I plan to treat myself to an iPod as well.

I know transfer to the iPod via Firewire is lightening quick but how long does a G4 iMac take to actually rip a standard 12 track CD in the first place ? [using iTunes 2 of course.]

Cheers,

Roz

[ 02-05-2002: Message edited by: rozzer1971 ]

[gumby5647]

with the G4 chip it will be rather fast. depends on the bit rate too. (160 vs 128) i would expect your CD's to rip at 6 or 7X. not to shabby.

[mitchell_pgh]

Not being a troll, but have you ever seen a high end PC rip a CD? My friend ripped a whole CD in 3 mins! (NOT that I would trade my Mac for a Pee Cee)

Anyway, I think it was around 9x if I can remember from the Apple Store, but the one you get may be a little faster. It also deals with what your system is running etc. X vs. 9, ram etc.

[qnc]

yeah on my G4 566 oS 9 it is about 9x and the iPodis definately worth it

[Troll]

Man, my 400MHz G3 iMac just manages 2.9x!!!

9x is one giant leap for iMac-kind!

[jokell82]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
<STRONG>Not being a troll, but have you ever seen a high end PC rip a CD? My friend ripped a whole CD in 3 mins! (NOT that I would trade my Mac for a Pee Cee)

Anyway, I think it was around 9x if I can remember from the Apple Store, but the one you get may be a little faster. It also deals with what your system is running etc. X vs. 9, ram etc.</STRONG>

Are you sure this included MP3 encoding? Because I still have a PC (getting rid of it soon) and I haven't seen anything rip and encode a cd nearly as fast. If it had been just ripping WAV files from the redbook audio files, that I would believe.

[jokell82]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
<STRONG>Not being a troll, but have you ever seen a high end PC rip a CD? My friend ripped a whole CD in 3 mins! (NOT that I would trade my Mac for a Pee Cee)

Anyway, I think it was around 9x if I can remember from the Apple Store, but the one you get may be a little faster. It also deals with what your system is running etc. X vs. 9, ram etc.</STRONG>

Are you sure this included MP3 encoding? Because I still have a PC (getting rid of it soon) and I haven't seen anything rip and encode a cd nearly as fast. If it had been just ripping WAV files from the redbook audio files, that I would believe.

[lucylawless]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
<STRONG>Not being a troll, but have you ever seen a high end PC rip a CD? My friend ripped a whole CD in 3 mins! (NOT that I would trade my Mac for a Pee Cee)
</STRONG>

you can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true. facts schmacts.

so what's that about 20x? careful with those stats. I understand some mp3 encoders let you opt for extreme performance (performance = encoding speed here) at the expense of quality. You'll have to actually listen to those mp3's to make sure they're any good before you broadcast your results...

[pierce1979]

A G4 400 rips at about 5.0x, so I would guess these rip at 7-8x

The thing about ripping on PCs, they like to brag that that they can rip so fast, but the reality is they often gets pops and sound distortions from ripping so fast. Also, most of the ripping software on windows sucks and isn't free.

[JimmytheC]

On a 8600 w/ 450MHz G4 card, I was getting rates ranging from 3x to 5x in Soundjam under OS 9. (encoding at 192kbps) Just received my dual gigHz beast (woohoo!) and it's ripping CDs between 18x-21x (os X, iTunes 2, encoding at 192 kbps). 'Top' indicates I'm using ~150% processing capacity when ripping, which I'm assuming is relative to a single processor. Conversion rate drops when background programs are running (to 10-15x!).

--James

[omarv]

I always wondered about this. I worked with a 1.4 GHZ atholon chip PC and it would rip MP3's at about 24X using the included music match software, the settings were the same as on my g4 which could barely get 4x at the 128kbits setting. The pc mp3s sounded fine, no audible popping or irregular pauses. Can someone please enlighten us as to why this would be?

[TNproud2b]

If by 'rip' - you mean the act of reading the audio data from a CD to your hard drive - then it doesn't much matter how fast your CPU is. Ripping speed is fully a factor of your CDROM's performance...that is, how fast it can read the data. The best CDROMs can read (rip) a CD in a minute or so.

Here's my results...


Exactly one minute on a P3/500 running WinXP with a cheapie 32X max CDROM (7.7X avg). Ripped and encoded to .mp3 format in one step. The song was Tom Sawyer by Rush (4:33).

Used freeware encoder called 'CDEX' - simple interface allows conversion from wav to mp3 and vice versa on-the-fly.

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: TNproud2b ]

[omarv]

By rip I mean taking my entire 72 minute Pearl Jam CD and making it MP3's on the harddrive, the PC some how did it in about 3 minutes. I just want to know why the PC can do this faster than my mac. does it handle the data differently? I remember apple saying that they play the CD's digitally, not like PC's which do it analog, does this make a difference? I mean afterall they are doing the same conversion arent't they from the Audio CD format to MP3. I thought the conversion is what takes the longest, because this is where the processing must be done, a G4 should whip an athlon chip, right?

Well I will rest assured my new iMac g4 will do this faster than my g4, should it ever show up, that is.

[roders]

I don't been to be a troll, but my AMD XP1600+ can rip a CD in 3Mins easily too, the chips and motherboards are just more powerfull, it's as simple as that wether we like it or not, sorry guy's.
P.S Still lurrrv my Cube!

[raskol]

Yep PCs encode good sounding mp3s fast. It is as simple as that. Mhz helps! Actually unfortunately well built or high end PCs are just generally faster than Macs. Depending on the application PCs are faster. There are many exceptions e.g. Photoshop and other graphic intensive tasks. Aqua is a dog. It's purty but it ain't fast. But consider the alternatives and I still love Macs.

Pop the CD in press import and go make a sandwich, call your mom, or play with your kids. When you get back you still get to sit in front of the coolest computer with the coolest OS.

PC users will never admit they are jealous. They have to have something to cling to.

[TNproud2b]

Originally posted by omarv:
<STRONG>By rip I mean taking my entire 72 minute Pearl Jam CD and making it MP3's on the harddrive, the PC some how did it in about 3 minutes. I just want to know why the PC can do this faster than my mac. does it handle the data differently? I remember apple saying that they play the CD's digitally, not like PC's which do it analog, does this make a difference? I mean afterall they are doing the same conversion arent't they from the Audio CD format to MP3. I thought the conversion is what takes the longest, because this is where the processing must be done, a G4 should whip an athlon chip, right?

Well I will rest assured my new iMac g4 will do this faster than my g4, should it ever show up, that is.</STRONG>

Depending on the CDROM drive, reading a 72min CD could take anywhere from 72 minutes(1X) to 1 minute(72X).

Judging by this ancient P3/500, the conversion process from .wav to .mp3 isn't very CPU-intensive - it only takes a few seconds for each song. A dual Athlon would be eight times faster than this...

It's difficult to compare the speeds of different platforms when the CDROMs read-speed is the single most important factor.

I could beat your DP1000 at CD-to-mp3 encoding with a Pentium90 PC - as long as you let me use a Kenwood TrueX 72 CDROM.


Nearly all CDROM drives have built-in hardware for audio CD playback. They can decode the datastream and feed an audio output directly to a soundcard...bypassing the CPU. The option for 'digital' playback (utilizing the CPU, instead) is a checkbox away - under 'CDROM properties' in Windows.

But anyways...like I was saying, this is mostly a CDROM read-speed benchmark - not really a CPU benchmark.

PS. Most CDROMs list their 'maximum' read-speed...which never happens in real life. For example, my '42X max' drive will read an audio CD at about 7.5X overall avg. My 12/8/32X SONY CDRW reads an audio CD at 6X avg.


72min divided by 6x equals 12 minutes to read the CD.




[ 02-11-2002: Message edited by: TNproud2b ]

[mitchell_pgh]

I love that you just slip the CD in and walk away (when you have everything set up) I nabed 20CD's on my iBook when I visited my friend a few weeks ago...

[Parky]

I have just RIPPED a CD on my new iMac G4.

With nothing else running, it averaged about 9 to 10 times speed.

That's about 3 times faster than my iMac DVSE 400.

[omarv]

wow that's fast, now I'm even more anxiousto get mine.

[FozzieUK]

Forget ripping speed!!... when you have your tracks in, you have Track 1 , Track 2 etc....etc..... you need all those song titles and artists typing in.... How fast can you type them in on a PC? Just as quick as clicking on "get track names" in iTunes 2 ?....not!!. That is so good seeing it do that in seconds on a Mac.

[mitchell_pgh]

FozzieUK, I hope you are kidding... where do you think the CDDB came from? (yes, that's what iTunes uses) Ummm, Mac users helped, but it was thousands of PC, Linux, Unix and Mac people working together. The PC has had this for years...

[FozzieUK]

LOL..... sort of kidding.... just praising iTunes 2.... never used PC ripping software on my 1 Gig PeeCee..... just love the Mac.... blinkered!

[rozzer1971]

As the original poster, I'd just like to say thanks to all that have replied.

I'm pleased to report that I recieved a phone call today from Computer Warehouse, my UK dealer to advise that my new G4 iMac 800 has now arrived and is awaiting me.

Bloomin' annoying that I can't get there until Monday but thanks to the responses I've read, it has an iPod reserved along with it to keep it company until I arrive !

Thanks again.