Ripping & Encoding with Dual Core CPU....Questions

2006-02-27 05:48:12

I am ordering the parts for a new pc this week (long overdue).  The system will be a AMD Opteron 170 which is almost the equivalent of a AMD X2 4400 (dual-core) with 2gb 3200 RAM.  I was thinking about the possibilities in regards to encoding music to mp3/ogg/flac/wavpack and ripping discs. I have finally decided it is time to re-rip my entire collection & would really love to take advantage of the new setup if at all possible.
So my question is, can i safely rip and encode from 2 separate drives at once?  Both being Plextor SCSI 40max drives over the same SCSI chain.  Or just using one Plextor SCSI and one IDE Lite-On drive at the same time.  Is this safe?

What all are the benefits with ripping and encoding using these new dual core systems and how do you go about utilitizing them? or can you even?  Do you have to assign tasks to a particular processor or are they automatically assigned? I will be using EAC to do the ripping/encoding, at least until I take the time to more understand foobar2000's ripping & encoding capabilities.  Then I will see which I prefer.  Anyways, I don't see much information whatsoever regarding this on HA. So thanks for any help.

Ripping & Encoding with Dual Core CPU....Questions

Reply #1 – 2006-02-27 05:57:54

In EAC, tell it to queue up multiple encoder processes.  This will cause it to spawn mulitple instances of LAME, one for each track. 

Alternatively, if you're going to rip 2 CDs at once, just run two copies of EAC and then rip normally with each.

It doesn't matter how you configure the IDE/SCSI drives.  Audio extraction isn't fast enough to make that matter.

Ripping & Encoding with Dual Core CPU....Questions

Reply #2 – 2006-02-28 18:26:11

Well I can't speak for these off-brand rippers  but I've used Windows Media Player (9 and 10) ripping to VBR WMA Pro via the player on a dual core 3gHz Pentium.  I find that with a 48x drive, I really don't wait a whole lot of the time, there would be little if any value in actually running 2 CD readers. My machine does Beethoven's 9th in about 70 seconds or so, including spin-up time and all of that goo, and most pop CD's in well under a minute. It's on the order of "by the time you have the next CD in hand, you're ready to do it".

I was quite startled by this performance.  Best thing, too, is that you only use one PROC mostly, and you can still use the machine just fine while you're loading CD's.

Now if I could only load LP's that fast. (Yes, I know the physics, probably better than 99.5% of you youngsters, and yes, I know you can't do that. I can wish, though.)

Ripping & Encoding with Dual Core CPU....Questions

Reply #3 – 2006-02-28 19:55:46

1x lame use 50% cpu
2 processors (and no HT bull I mean 2 physical cores) = 2x lame and 2x EAC

what I would be more worried about is how fast your cdrom drives spin up.
the new lame compile with the fast encoding (standart) option is so fast on 1 core it takes no time to encode one album from wav to mp3.

ripping from cdrom should be your bottleneck.

PS: I got a 3800 X2 o/ced to 4400+ X2 speeds (plus a little due to the increased HT speed)