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Multi-drive Ripping / Burning Support?

Posted by pudge on from the ripping-for-dummies dept.

jasonisnuts writes "I currently have a DVD-ROM (internal), a CD-RW (FW), and a DVD-RW (FW), and I also have a massive assortment of music CDs that I want to rip and catalog. Are there any free, shareware, or commercial utilities for Mac OS X that support ripping CDs from multiple devices at the same time and offer full CDDB/GraceNote support? And does this same utility or another offer burning to multiple sources in multiple formats? This will all be done on a Sawtooth 500MHz (upgrading soon)."

8 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Copy and Rename iTunes by teamhasnoi · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Then open them and configure each one for a drive - scratch that, just tested it and it doesn't work.

    If you are running Panther, you could try making two new users, run iTunes in each one and configure each for one of your drives (how, I don't know.. I don't have multiple CD drives - I would assume that the preferences would reflect multiple drives.) and rip away.

    That'd be one for you to try.

    Other than that - I got nuttin'

  2. use iTunes, and try this by datacide · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, assuming that iTunes meets your other requirements, this AppleScript may prove useful to you:

    http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts 02.shtml#ripcdsinarow

    I haven't used it; I saw it earlier today when grabbing another script from their site. My experience with other Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes has been quite positive. I ripped (in some cases, re-ripped...stupid LAME bug!) all 1500+ or so of my CDs last year, and I used a few of those scripts to make my life easier. Give it a look-through.

  3. Avoid iTunes by andfarm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    iTunes's MP3 encoder is quite old and does a bad job of encoding MP3s. LAME is much better; you could use it with some shell scripts to read AIFFs from the mounted CDs (they show up in /Volumes) and encode them with LAME.

    --

    TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.

  4. Re:iTunes perhaps? by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How about the import & eject feature?

    Can you import and eject from multiple drives simultaneously?

    Does anybody know?

    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  5. Re:Processor and ram by lullabud · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think he's referring to an overall system strain so in the case of there needing to be some resources immidiately available for when cd ripping might need to perform some corrections those resources might not be there. CD ripping is just one of those things where if you don't have enough resources on hand, and you don't have the sluggish jitter-correction option enabled (which would possibly defeat the purpose of ripping with more than one drive), you could end up with some errors in the form of audible pops.

  6. iTunes LAME plugin and multi-processor machines by leono · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 13048

    This Applescript plugin for iTunes is really nice. It installs LAME and is very easy to use (just select it from the iTunes script menu). However, it will only allow you to rip one CD at a time per processor, so unless he's got a dualie, this won't help the original poster.

  7. Re:How useful would this be? by MarcQuadra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not on a G4! Any self-respecting encoder on the Mac will be tuned for AltiVec, and the CD-ROM will easily be the bottleneck.

    People really underestimate the signal-processing capabilities of these processors. The machines might take their time at day-to-day application use, but when you need to encode video, apply effects, or generally do very multimedia-intensive stuff the G-series CPUs really take Intel and AMD to the cleaner.

    --
    "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  8. Follow up from the poster by jasonisnuts · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really would like to thank anyone who replied, and especially thank those who gave informative info! This is why /. is like crack frankly. On to business: Between late Monday night and most of Tuesday I was rearranging my room, cleaning, and ripping CDs. Although I know iTunes can be buggy with ripping MP3s, I've personally never had a problem or felt it lackluster, so I stuck with it and only it. So I went against those who recommended Lame and other options. On the advice of those who suggested iTunes I did what worked best and most easily; import and eject. I tried importing one CD, and dragging the contents of a second into the library or by invoking the import command and I could not get that trick to work, which saddened me. Sticking with import and eject I ripped CDs at 192kbps (except 165 classical songs which I ripped at 224 with "use error correction when reading audio CDs") and the disks did go sequentially. This batch weighs in at 54 discs, 593 songs. Of those 165 were ripped at 224, the others at 192. I was shocked that the encoding speed stayed very, very close no matter the CD or the drive, though the Pioneer DVR-106 was just a touch slower! On average I would say encoding on a 500 MHz G4 with 512 Mb RAM (100 MHz bus) to a Western Digital 80Gb 8Mb cache drive on an ACARD ATA 133 card was about 7.4X realtime. It varied between 6.2 and 8.9 depending on the disc, drive, and the area on the disc. The drives were a Pioneer 16X/40X DVD-ROM (internal ATA33), I/O DATA 52X/32X/52X CD-RW in an Oxford 911 enclosure (FW), and a Pioneer DVR-106 in an Oxford 911 enclosure (FW). How did it pan out? It took roughly 11 hours, 16 minutes to get 593 songs from 54 discs. Space required was 3.92 Gb for roughly 49 hours, 10 minutes worth of music. I am definitely satisfied, though I would like 1 Gb of RAM and a 1.5 GHz G4 (waiting for new 7457 cards). I'd like to see the speeds then! Thanks for your input!