From: Mark Bright <mark.bright_at_btopenworld.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 07:27:42 -0000

Sorry, I was not clear: The 37 minutes was for a full CD of 22 tracks (1
hour 19 minutes - Jools Holland; Big Band Small World), 18 of them came off
at 100%, a couple were 97%, it was one of the 97% tracks that I used for
quality testing. Based on the assumption; Use a track where it obvious that
some addition work has been performed.

The point I was trying to make is:
Yes EAC/LAME *may* be the best Quality ripper/encoder solution (It's the
best I have used) BUT that’s not to say it the BEST ripper for EVERYONE.

For My personal use, it is too slow, and the additional quality is not a
good enough reason for my usage patterns, and that may be the same for other
people. Many people want a solution that is fast, easy, and good enough.

A couple of years ago I was about to go shopping for a new CD player, with a
budget of £600 to £1000. I did not want to take too many 'Reference' CD's
with me, so I created a compilation of 6 or 7, tried and tested, reference
tracks. For this use, there was only one solution. To be sure I took the
test disc and a couple of the originals to a friends house and played them
on his system (VERY High End), and there was no noticeable difference.

Now id the discussion was "What is the BEST QUALITY ripper/encoder combo on
ANY platform..." I can understand your passion for this solution., but if
the question is "What is the Best Ripper/encoder for me?" Surely we are
talking "Horses for Courses"?

Mark

|-----Original Message-----
|From: owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
|[mailto:owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se] On Behalf Of Fred Maxwell
|Sent: 22 December 2003 22:41
|To: rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
|Subject: RE: EAC/Lame THE ANSWER !!!
|
|Mark wrote:
|> Last time I used it, it did work EXCEPTIONALLY well, but was really
|> difficult to configure etc. I tried the new version yesterday;
|> ripping one track that I know quite well, from a CD that I
|rate highly
|> for quality reproduction, with both Musicmatch and EAC/LAME giving
|> 160kbps VBR files.
|{snip}
|> As musicmatch completed the task in about 6 minutes, and
|EAC/LAME took
|> 37 minutes...
|
|Whoa! 37 minutes to rip and encode one song? Are you using a
|33mhz 486?
|As a test, I just ripped and encoded an entire CD in 13
|minutes and 30 seconds. That was 13 tracks over 55 minutes in
|total length and the encoding I used was the --preset extreme
|setting. Had I used a lesser setting of LAME (say 160kbps
|CBR), the whole thing would have been done in just over 7 minutes.
|
|While I appreciate the effort you went to in order to conduct
|a fair test, you only used one song from one CD. The beauty
|of EAC is its ability to do error-free rips. If the one song
|you selected read pretty much error-free anyway, then EAC
|would offer no real advantage on that song. A skydiving
|analogy: You do two jumps, one with a backup chute and one
|without. Both jumps go fine and you conclude that the backup
|chute, which doubles the size and weight of your backpack,
|just isn't worthwhile.
|
|Regards,
| Fred Maxwell
|
|
|
Received on 2003-12-23