Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: running more than one EAC at a time with best cd/dvd burners (Read 6148 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

running more than one EAC at a time with best cd/dvd burners

My dad has has hundreds of CDs/DVDs that he owns and wants me to digitize for him.  I have already ripped about 300 of them to 100% FLAC using my ASUS SDRW-08D2S-U drive via EAC.  This took me a while to do and I still have plenty more to do so I was thinking there has to be a faster way to do this.  Honestly, I tried to get my dad to do it himself by that failed miserably.  There are hundreds more to digitize, there must be better faster way to do this...  By the way, I have yet to digitize any of his DVDs

#1.
My first question is can I run more than one instance of EAC at a time? 

My computer setup is one that I built myself just a couple of months ago.  My motherboard is an ASUS Z87M-Plus, my processor is an Intel i5-4670 and I have 8GB of RAM.  I have about 3.08 TB of HDD space and 256 GB of SSD space.  Again, my CD burning drive is an ASUS SDRW-08D2S-U.  How can I do this or is this possible?

#2.
If this is possible and in fact a great idea, then I am guess that the only thing I need to order right away is more CD/DVD burners, right?  Should I get more ASUS drives exactly like the one that I bought?  Or is there some CD/DVD drive that is the 'best' that I have not heard about yet?  Cost is not an issue but I do not want to waste money at the same time.  If it is expensive, I would like it to be worth it in every single way and not only slightly better than cheaper alternatives.  Also, is two instances of EAC the max I can do or could I do three or four or more?  With my Asus drive, a modern CD in good condition with the average 10-12 tracks rips to 100% flac in about 30 minutes.  But if it's an older CD then it takes about 70-80 minutes.  Ripping three (or more) CDs to 100% flac in 30 minutes would definitely speed things up.

I asked someone I know that is good with computers but not necessarily audio ripping and he suggested to me to pose this questions to audio/audio ripping enthusiasts. (like I am doing now)  He also mentioned two other things.  First, he said he wasn't sure but in his opinion, when ripping to 100% flac using EAC, optical drives (cd/dvd burners) are optical drives.  Any drive will do and there is really no point in stressing out over which one to get.

Second, he said that I should be sure to ask the audio enthusiasts that if this idea is feasible AND very much worthwhile then will running more than one instance of EAC cause any problems for the audio output with respect to interrupts causing pops or breaks in the music?

Thank you.

running more than one EAC at a time with best cd/dvd burners

Reply #1 –
I did my ripping with a CD changer. Not sure if it is worth it for merely "hundreds" of CDs. (I ripped thousands.)

Quote from: qualto2 on
#1.
My first question is can I run more than one instance of EAC at a time?

I do not know (as I did not use EAC) but it should anyway be possible if you virtualize with "bare-metal" access to the drives. Make one virtual machine, copy it (... assuming a single-computer Windows license permits you to install ten of them on the same computer?), and let each EAC point to its own physical drive.

Quote from: qualto2 on
#2.
If this is possible and in fact a great idea, then I am guess that the only thing I need to order right away is more CD/DVD burners, right?  Should I get more ASUS drives exactly like the one that I bought?  Or is there some CD/DVD drive that is the 'best' that I have not heard about yet?

Generally - disregarding your intention to run multiple EACs - it is a good idea to have different drives, as they behave different on damaged CDs and this increases your chances of getting an accurate rip (or at worst, one with less annoying errors) upon re-ripping in another drive.

Spoon (the creator of AccurateRip) maintains a list over accuracy ratios per drive. However, you may not find the current drives there, as some manufactorers release new model numbers too often. You want one with the so-called C2 error handling, but your Asus has that from what I can see.

Quote from: qualto2 on
With my Asus drive, a modern CD in good condition with the average 10-12 tracks rips to 100% flac in about 30 minutes.

To me it sounds like a lot, but then I didn't use EAC. I used dBpoweramp, from the creator of AccurateRip, and in its secure mode (in the paid version) it checks AccurateRip after a first quick burst run; if it matches, then no more ripping is necessary. My EAC knowledge may be obsolete, but I think EAC only checks AccurateRip after it considers itself done. dBpoweramp's free version is also good enough when your rip has an AccurateRip match. You may achieve this by selecting mode upon ripping: first a burst, and if AR matches then OK; otherwise restart in secure mode and let it take its time.

Now this may be a solution to your problem in case multiple EACs are not feasible: One EAC, one dBpoweramp and one CUETools ripper - they all do AccurateRip verification. They differ somewhat in features though (for example, cuesheet support, handling of pregaps ("Hidden track one audio" bonus tracks ...) - and EAC (with plugin) and CUERipper also communicates directly with the CUETools database, which is way less populated than the AccurateRip database but which offers correction data, not only verification data; on the other hand, dBpoweramp has a stellar metadata selection, etc)



Quote from: qualto2 on
he said he wasn't sure but in his opinion, when ripping to 100% flac using EAC, optical drives (cd/dvd burners) are optical drives.  Any drive will do and there is really no point in stressing out over which one to get.

If your rip matches AccurateRip, then it is good - it doesn't matter which drive you used. (See below for a reservation.)
But different drives may have different chances of achieving this, see the list above.

Now for the reservation: If you really care about pregap audio - "Hidden track one" or "Hidden track 0", music in track 1 index 0 that on a normal CD player is found by starting at track 1 and rewinding, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_album...n_in_the_pregap - then some drives may not support this, and some of those might even pretend they do, only to return silence. HTOAs are not in AccurateRip, so AccurateRip can not check whether this is even picked up. (I don't know if the CUETools database does?)

running more than one EAC at a time with best cd/dvd burners

Reply #2 –
Quote from: qualto2 on
My first question is can I run more than one instance of EAC at a time?


yes. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/...iew/tips-specs/

Quote
You can open two instances of EAC, enabling you to read audio data from two different CD-ROM drives simultaneously. But make sure that you start both instances from different directories, otherwise some unanticipated side-effects could occur.


Quote from: Porcus on
Make one virtual machine, copy it (... assuming a single-computer Windows license permits you to install ten of them on the same computer?), and let each EAC point to its own physical drive.


that's quite an assumption....  it's certainly not allowed on anything earlier than windows 8. IIRC windows 8 might allow one virtual machine but you'd have to check your license agreement for that as i don't have access to it now.

edit: i had a quick google and i can't find any reference to windows 8 allowing virtualisation using the same license. i have no idea where i got that idea from. 

running more than one EAC at a time with best cd/dvd burners

Reply #3 –
dbPoweramp do a Batch Ripper for precisely this purpose just for information

running more than one EAC at a time with best cd/dvd burners

Reply #4 –
Quote from: marc2003 on
that's quite an assumption....


http://www.biggestlie.com/ 

I remember back in the day when I got Windows 98 bundled to my new computer, and I actually read the license. It forbid me to install another OS on that machine.  It takes a bit more time to partition  the HD and install both Red Hat and Debian when you have one middle finger raised ...

... nowadays a certain fruit company forbids their customers to install any non-approved piece of software. iDolate us!

running more than one EAC at a time with best cd/dvd burners

Reply #5 –
Quote from: qualto2 on
With my Asus drive, a modern CD in good condition with the average 10-12 tracks rips to 100% flac in about 30 minutes.  But if it's an older CD then it takes about 70-80 minutes.  Ripping three (or more) CDs to 100% flac in 30 minutes would definitely speed things up.


I just finished ripping several 100 pop/rock  CDs with EAC and LAME. The ripping phases never ran slower than 7x, and often ran up to 50x.  The compression steps finished in 5-10 seconds per track.

You can do the math, but my back-of-the envelope estimates says I'm talking something like 0.5 to 4 minutes for ripping a 30 minute CD with 12 tracks, and 1-2 minutes for the compression, giving a total of 1.5 to 6 minutes per CD. This sounds right because I did about 150 CDs in two approximate 4-5 hour sessions while multitasking another project which means I was not reloading CDs or calling on the song title CDDB in anything like minimum time. 

Your timings leads me to estimate 100 hours for 200 CDs. My numbers are about 10 times faster. I would expect FLAC to run at least as fast as LAME given the probable computational load for lossy compression versus lossless compression.  I would consider lossy compression to be more CPU intensive all things considered.

My system was a composed 3.2 GHz 8 core AMD processor on a M5A97 system board  running Windows 8.0 in 64 bit mode with 8 GB or RAM. I was using the 64 bit version of LAME. The target hard drive was a 1 TB 7200 rpm Seagate Barrracuda. The boot drive was a 256 GB Sansa SSD. This is BTW not my fastest system - that one has a newer 4 GHz processor and the boot drive is 2 each 256GB Sansa SSDs in a stripe set. The optical drive is a TSSCorp SH S223B right off of the OEM cheapie shelf at the local Micro Center.

Seems to me that you may need to invest in a new optical drive. I can't believe that this is an example of AMD being that much faster than Intel! ;-)

BTW, I did no regression testing to assemble this system. ;-)

running more than one EAC at a time with best cd/dvd burners

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Porcus on
I did my ripping with a CD changer.

^ I am not sure what the difference is between a CD burner like what I have and a ‘CD changer’ like you have.  I googled it but nothing useful showed up.

Quote from: Porcus on
Not sure if it is worth it for merely "hundreds" of CDs. (I ripped thousands.)

^ I just want this to be over with.  I am so tired of doing this already...  I’d pay someone $500 to do it for me if I had that kind of money to spare. 

Quote from: Porcus on
it should anyway be possible if you virtualize with "bare-metal" access to the drives

^ I’m not sure what that means but I can try to follow the directions you mentioned.

Quote from: Porcus on
Make one virtual machine, copy it (... assuming a single-computer Windows license permits you to install ten of them on the same computer?), and let each EAC point to its own physical drive.

^ I have VMware Workstation installed.  I will try that.  Should be simple, correct?

Quote from: Porcus on
To me it sounds like a lot, but then I didn't use EAC.

^ You mean it sounds like my drive is really slow?

Quote from: Porcus on
Now this may be a solution to your problem in case multiple EACs are not feasible: One EAC, one dBpoweramp and one CUETools ripper

^ Unfortunately, I am using EAC only since it’s what I have been currently using successfully time and time again.

Quote from: probedb on
dbPoweramp do a Batch Ripper for precisely this purpose just for information

^ Any way to achieve this via EAC?

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Seems to me that you may need to invest in a new optical drive. I can't believe that this is an example of AMD being that much faster than Intel! ;-)

^ The fastest time I have ever heard of digitizing a CD to 100% flac via EAC is ~20 min.  You did not digitize to 100% flac via EAC, correct?  (or did you...?)  If you did then that is absolutely amazing and please share with me what I need to purchase and I will order it from Amazon right away. 

Also, I posted my system specs.  How do they compare against yours?  Should I be able to achieve similar or better results given my criteria?  (via EAC 100% flac only)