Ripping CD's

FWIW my Unitiserve usually takes under 4 minutes to rip a CD to it's internal HD. 

Are you using a fully wired connection, and is this via a switch or your router?

Hi, it's hard wired but I'm using two Powerlines (TP Link 300mbps) 

I suppose the PL's are to blame? 

Maybe I should connect the NAS to my PC? 

My PC & outboard DVD drive can rip dBpoweramp fast rip in around 2 minutes,  that will give an AccurateRip verification.    Secure rip with 2 or more passes can take 5 mins

My old PC with its onboard DVD drive took longer

There's 2 issues here:

1 - The ripping speed - What are you using? Mac vs PC? How much RAM do you have and what's your processor speed?  What level of error checking have you selected within DBPA? I have a Dual Core iMac with 8GB RAM and a typical audio CD, ripped with DBPA takes about 6-7 mins with medium error checking

2 - The network speed, respond to Chrissu's Q above

Same as Mike to rip, about 5 minutes with secure rip - on average. I only want to rip once and I might as well do all I reasonably can to do it accurately. Transfer of a standard CD across my home network to a NAS is variable and probably averages out at 3 minutes. I rip DVDs and some BDs to stream from NAS to my telly and the ripping and transfer of CDs and DVD-A files seems lightening fast by comparison. It's all relative!

Mr Paws posted:

Hi, it's hard wired but I'm using two Powerlines (TP Link 300mbps) 

I suppose the PL's are to blame? 

Maybe I should connect the NAS to my PC? 

You could try connecting NAS to PC - not directly, but via a switch. Then you'll find out if your issue is due to your network, caused by the powerlines, or by your router.

Another thing which affects time taken to rip is the condition of the CD.  A CD which your computer finds easier to rip will go much quicker than a slightly damaged one.  However "damage" isn't always obvious and a brand new shrink wrapped CD from Amazon can be harder to read than a 10 year old CD thats been kicking around.  Not sure if this is how you do it, but personally I would rip the CDs to a local drive and then transfer the rips to the NAS afterwards (editing metadata, etc as required before transferring them to your NAS).

As a quick test, I just transferred 750MB across my network (approximately the same amount as a CD ripped to WAV or AIFF - FLAC would be less) and that took around 1minute from laptop to Vortexbox via WiFi.

Another question ... was that 15 minute each for the CD, or 15 minutes in total for both CDs?

Eloise posted:

...........    However "damage" isn't always obvious and a brand new shrink wrapped CD from Amazon can be harder to read than a 10 year old CD thats been kicking around.

Hi Guys, To answer a previous question my PC is a refurbished Dell Optiplex 755. The processor is Intel Core2vPro / 4GB RAM. 

My PC is located upstairs and my NAS is in the same room but dried in a shelving unit out of harms way . I have an Ethernet cable connected to a Powerline then another Powerline connects the NAS to the mains around Ten feet away. Downstairs I have another Powerline connected to my Wireless Router which is connected to a TP Link GB router and that's connected to my Naim Uniti 2. I hope this makes sense not ideal but necessary at the moment. 

I will soon get a switch so I can go straight to that and my NAS the run a Ethernet downstairs straight to my router.

yesterday i ripped two CDs taking around fifteen minutes and that means around seven minutes each. Then I sent the two files across to my NAS which took around five minutes and then I had to re-scan my NAS which took around fifteen minutes. So 7mins then say 3mins (one cd) then 15mins = 25mins seems a lot when you add it all up. I'm not that bothered but I just wanted to know if I could do this faster without having to buy a dedicated Vortexbox or Equivalent. In time I'd like to get one of the above thus saving the faffing about with dBPoweramp etc. 

The 15 minutes to rip the cd and copy it to the NAS seams slightly but not excessively long time.  The issue there looks to be the network speed over Powerline.

But 15 minutes to rescan on the NAS does sound a long time to me ... What is your NAS and what is the UPnP server?

At 5 mins per rip you will find that a unitiserve can pay for itself quite quickly.  2000 cds at a saving of 5 mins per cd is 10000 minutes. That is 200 hours? As I think an hour of my time is worth £50 I saved myself a lot of money by using it!

DOZEY this is one of the reasons why I used a US-SSD, the complete convenience. Manual ripping takes a while, plus the software needs learning, the US just rips for you and does all the metadata etc. But perhaps only worth it if you have a lot of CDs to rip of course.

+1 to ease of using a US. If only its rips were playable by other UPnP renderers in WAV, it would be the perfect product 

It baffles me that anyone would be willing to pay huge amounts of cash for 'convenience' when it is so quick and easy just to use eac on a PC.  Perfect rips on a bog standard PC that can be played on any other audio device with the press of a couple of buttons.  Too much is made of how much time it takes and how big a chore it is to rips CDs, you just set it ripping and do something you would have been doing anyway whilst it works in the background and then move it to your nas in batches, easy as pie.  I actually found it quite educational ripping mine because half the CDs I ripped I'd forgotten I had.  Buy a Naim device because it sounds great but surely not because it saves you 90 seconds to rip a disk to a format you can't use anywhere else. 

To be pedantic you can use it anywhere else but the tags are a bit rubbish. Well, OK, there aren't any. But they play.

At the time the HDX launched it was an excellent one box for everything solution which sounded good. I don't think the HDX, NS or US make so much of a case for themselves now - at least in my little universe. It's still good to have the choice out there. Better the US and its ilk exist than not. 

In situations where something like HDX or US are taking files from a NAS (or similar) and sending them to a Naim streamer, it is advisable to assess the sound quality using a NAS based server and removing the device from the playback chain. It costs nothing, is easy to do and is easily reversible. In my case it made a good deal of money for me which went elsewhere in the system because the HDX was a bottle neck.

Eloise posted:

The 15 minutes to rip the cd and copy it to the NAS seams slightly but not excessively long time.  The issue there looks to be the network speed over Powerline.

But 15 minutes to rescan on the NAS does sound a long time to me ... What is your NAS and what is the UPnP server?

The rip length depends on variables :

Spin speed of the disc - Newer tend to be faster, older slower (15x-30x is 'normal' range of me)

The length of the disc  - I've found it takes longer if it's a 70min cd and there are 5 or less cues i.e. classical

If the disc is in AccurateRip - I've had CDs, especially Score ones - where I must be the first to rip them, as a result AccurateRip does 2 passes.

One other thing is also to ensure the 'Multi-Core' processing is on as that will help encoding speed after it's ripped.

So for 2 discs 10-12 mins I would say is ok ( I'm not including Art and Tagging checking/clean up), to copy to a NAS, it should take a 1min per disc if you have Gigabit Network connection and the format is FLAC/WAV.

Re scanning your NAS would depend on the quantity of albums - not a direct comparison but it takes iTunes 45 mins to re scan my library ( all apps et al too )

I am using a Dell XPS Studio i7, SSD and 12GB Ram.

I rip direct to NAS. Over a wireless link.

Two things affect speed. If dBpoweramp decides that the disc should spin slower - I assume due to unbalanced disc. Or if the disc does not yet have an accuraterip profile.

I would say that normal - for a 60 min disc - is about 5 mins ( 60 / 30 * 2 ish).

There is no sensible reason to rip locally and then move to NAS unless you have network issues. My NAS is usually playing music at the same time and will also be copying itself to my second remote NAS (a country away) in real time.

Doing a rescan - minim restart -  takes 2 mins for 1400 albums.

Lots of interesting replies so thanks to all for taking the time. 

I used to stream my music direct from my PC but ultimately I wanted to take the PC out of the situation using it only for ripping CDs and other menial tasks. 

As many on here I started from scratch with help from friends who helped me to set up my ReadyNAS Duo Mk1 with Logitech Server. Once I'd purchased the NAS I installed a WD Blue 1TB HDD and off I went. A friend of mine at the time set up a music folder and media folder which I didn't really want but he said I could send pictures or video to that folder but I was always going to you use the Nas for music only. Anyhow, over time I've added around 985 CDs to the NAS so I've used up around 550GB on the HDD so it's a fair bit to scan I suppose.

In response to a comment asking why would anyone want to rip a CD then send it on to another device; well, it's actually quicker believe it or not. I've tried to send files direct to my NAS but it takes ages and ages to send so that idea went into the bin. 

I did have my NAS alongside my Uniti2 but it's a little noisy so I had to move it away in the end and putting it upstairs seemed like a good idea. 

Another member was asking what setting was I using on DBPA and I can confirm it's set to medium secure rip / recover errors and maximum 10x speed. My reasoning for 10x speed is the DVD drive on my PC doesn't like spinning much faster because it vibrates quite a bit and becomes quite noisy too so I reduced the rip speed to protect my CDs and the drive itself. I suppose there could be an issue with the drive ? but it does work well most of the time. 

I reckon I time I'll probably end up with a one box setup like a Unitiserve.

Record for a rip on HDX is 24 minutes for a copy of Wish You Were Here that was developing a milky lacquer. It succeeded.  On the PC using dBpoweramp it was longer than 40 minutes and shorter than 1.5 hours (I left it to get on with it) for a disc  from the Bolan At The BBC set which I believe had some sort of copy spoiler included. This also ripped fine. Eventually.

Mr Paws posted:

Another member was asking what setting was I using on DBPA and I can confirm it's set to medium secure rip / recover errors and maximum 10x speed. My reasoning for 10x speed is the DVD drive on my PC doesn't like spinning much faster because it vibrates quite a bit and becomes quite noisy too so I reduced the rip speed to protect my CDs and the drive itself. I suppose there could be an issue with the drive ? but it does work well most of the time. 

 

The vibration could be a symptom that the drive is on the way out. You should be able to get a newer internal DVD drive for about GBP20 that could reduce your rip time as it could spin up to 30x, it is a straight forward process to unscrew the drive and re plug cables if that sort of thing doesn't concern you. 

Also, is your NAS connected through a switch ?  That should help network traffic too. 

In qualifying my timing answers above, that's how my system is and I do a multi rip direct to my QNAP NAS, in both FLAC & MP3 formats.

Guy007 posted:

Mr Paws posted:

Another member was asking what setting was I using on DBPA and I can confirm it's set to medium secure rip / recover errors and maximum 10x speed. My reasoning for 10x speed is the DVD drive on my PC doesn't like spinning much faster because it vibrates quite a bit and becomes quite noisy too so I reduced the rip speed to protect my CDs and the drive itself. I suppose there could be an issue with the drive ? but it does work well most of the time. 

 

The vibration could be a symptom that the drive is on the way out. You should be able to get a newer internal DVD drive for about GBP20 that could reduce your rip time as it could spin up to 30x, it is a straight forward process to unscrew the drive and re plug cables if that sort of thing doesn't concern you. 

Sounds like your drive is faulty. It could be causing a lot of errors that require re-scanning, thus your slow times.

Regarding a possible fault in my internal DVD Drive I think this could be the case. Sometimes dBPoweramp doesn't 'see' the drive so I do a restart and all is ok but this could be a problem on my PC. My PC is a refurbished DELL and the DVD drive looks new to my eyes but I'm considering an external drive now or maybe another internal drive. I suppose an external drive will be the easier option but I'm not sure what to get.