Happy Camper
by Volker Weber
I am just about to finish a whole batch of CDs. And I am so happy that I did not waste money on the Windows iPod. Just for kicks I converted two CDs with Musicmatch - that is the software that comes with the Windows iPod. What a pain in the lower back ! Not only is Lucy, the iMac, almost 150% quicker converting CDs to MP3 than Charlie, the ThinkPad. They are both running at around 800 MHz and I am converting at 160kb/s. iTunes is also a lot less confusing. Final judgement: While Charlie was busy, crashing Musicmatch a few times in the process, Lucy just digested a stack of 10 CDs. Nope, Charlie is not done yet. OK, old man, I am not trying you again.
A friend recently told me, how much he likes Musicmatch. If only he knew. :-)
Comments
try Exact Audio Copy. It's free and you won't find a better CD ripper for windows
Thanks for the hint. Did that.
First impression: I don't get spammed like I do with Musicmatch. Second impression: Engineer at work. Needs somebody who can speak in a plain language and will design an interface that other people understand:
Third impression: This is as slow as it gets. :-(
I tried Musicmatch a couple of times (ie, through purchasing devices that "recommended" it) and found it pretty awful. I now use Audiograbber (http://www.audiograbber.net/) which ended up being the first piece of shareware I ever paid for. Its frequently updated, has FreeDB integration, and it supports most common MP3 codecs, and will do Ogg Vorbis as well if you so desire. It seems pretty fast, although I'm converting on a machine with Dual Xeons so it *should* be :p
I'm assuming that the iPod appears as a removable drive under Windows? - if so then something like CDex is pretty good for ripping audio and free too - you then just copy/move the files over (you could even set the destination as the iPod if you wanted)...
CDex can be found here >> http://www.surf.to/cdex (watch the Gator stuff - don't let that put you off!).
It doesn't seem too fussy about CD drives (I've ripped from a 8x P133 based machine, a new thinkpad and my desktop machines DVD drive - no problems, no skipping) and includes CDDB lookup etc.
Not sure how you handle playlists though - Hmmm...why don't Apple do the decent thing and port iTunes???
One more thought...comparing your Thinkpad to your iMAC is really not a fair comparison when doing anything CD Rom wise...
Thinkpad CD Rom drives are notoriously slow and unreliable - I think the're rated at 24x which of course is max speed, not the norm. On my main PCs DVD drive I can rip close to 3 times faster than my Thinkpad and the 'black slab' is a much faster machine processor wise.
Because they are in the Hardware Business? :-)
Re: Thinkpad vs iMac
Colin, you are right. This is not a controlled benchmark. These are just two machines I happen to work with every day. I am not even aware of the CD-speed of their drives. However, they should not be of any concern, since the compression to mp3 cannot outpace a 24x drive on the Thinkpad anyway.
Re: Other software
I will look into alternatives when I find the time and the need to do it again. So far I am very happy with iTunes. :-)
Just my five cents: For me almost the same is true as what Ross stated above. I'm using Audiograbber which I found after testing a whole bunch of CD rippers. Well, it wasn't the first Shareware I paid for but I cannot remember a Shareware I registered _that_ fast: immediately after the first test. And yes, it is fast - even on my old workhorse, a PII-233 <g>
I'm using Musicmatch on my PC... it seems to be the best of a bad bunch, but I may check out some of the others (never really got on with Winamp, and CDEX just crashes).
It's always a pleasure to come home and use iTunes. It JUST WORKS! And the burning is pretty fast, even on my ancient iMac.
Next time try http://www.poikosoft.com/easycdda.html
It's excellent.
Enough "try this" and "try that"! Anyone who's actually used iTunes *knows* there's no Windows equivalent!
You know, the only problem I have with iTunes is that it is way too expensive and requires too much hardware ressources.
Am I missing something? Friday, Heise Ticker? :-)
