Frustrated new IPOD user!

[jsl757]

Hi guys,
I just bought a 30gb ipod and I am having problems running it on my windows 98se platform. I downloaded ephpod and bought the macopener but I am in question about how to turn my CD's into mp3 files.
I downloaded CDex but the time it takes to encode one track to an mp3 is about 5 minutes. Is there any way to speed up this process? One CD would take over an hour this way. Should I be using CDex? I tried to encode a track to an mp3 using winamp but it took just as long and the quality of the sound was poor.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Jeff

[jsl757]

Sorry I forgot to mention I also bought a Firewire adapter to use the ipod with if that helps with any responses.

Jeff

[oldschooldj]

Your issue is really with your file ripping program, not the iPod. The iPod's not needed for converting your CD tracks into mp3s; ideally, you should be doing all your ripping work first, storing the mp3s on your hard drive, and then transferring those onto the iPod.

As far as the speed of the rip: The higher the quality of the file conversion, the longer it's going to take. Five minutes for a single track (assuming the track is 4-6 minutes long) is about right; some programs might be faster than others, but still, you're not going to get anything faster than 4-5 minutes. You can speed this up by going for a lower-quality bitrate, down to 128k or even 112k. That will make the mp3 file smaller. The sound quality will not be as pristine, but as long as it sounds good to you, that might not matter (all my files are at 128k, fine by me).

As far as programs, I used to use Cdex, I found it wasn't the greatest. Plenty of options for ripping software, whether you want something that's stand-alone or else integrated into you iPod management software. I use dbPowerAmp (or whatever it's called--I'm not at home so can't check), it works well for me.

[jsl757]

Thanks old school, I downloaded dbpower amp and it seems to work better than CDex. I thought it would be quicker because when I convert from mp3's to wav files it only takes around 10 seconds a song. Thanks for your help!

Jeff

[Randy_M]

I use EZ CD/DVD Creator 6 (kinda pricey, but I already had it) and rip at 160 kbps, and a 4 to 5 minute track rips in less than a minute on my P4 2.4 GHz machine.

[jsl757]

Thanks for the advice Randy. I'll look into that as well.

Jeff

[Randy_M]

Jeff,

It also has a really nice track library feature, and gets track info automatically from the Gracenote database (same one iTunes uses, I understand) that's really terrific.

Plus, it's got a pretty effective tag editor.

It'll probably cost you about $60, but it also has cd and DVD burner/copier, which is its main function.

Randy

[Anubis]

I used to have laptop running Win98SE and used Cdex. It only took about 30 - 40 seconds to rip a track at 160kbps. 5 mins seems a bit extreme to me.

What is the spec of your machine? My laptop was a PIII 600Mhz.

Also you shouln't need macopener unless you have a mac formated iPod.

[loGan]

Unless you are running an incredibly old machien with no RAM and a slow processor that ripping speed sounds much too slow to me.

I use CD ex and I do an entire Cd at 192 in less than 5 minutes, admittedly on a pretty fast machine.

Are you sure that you are ripping to compressed format? I do remember once with another ripper having to rip to mp3 via Wave for some reason and it took an absolute age. It seemed to rip to wave and then convert that file to mp3?!?

It could just be your slow machine but it is defintely worth taking at look at the configuration settings and checking that you are ripping directly to mp3. On my version of CDex this is the second button down on the right hand side of I remember rightly. The Icon looks a bit like a CD and a winzip Icon mixed up i think. Havent got CDex on this computer.

[mintcake]

Yeah, check your CDex settings in any case. I wouldn't pay for another piece of software when CDex does it so well. Five minutes isn't necessarily that long, depending on the length of the track you're ripping. My PIII-600 under Win98SE usually takes a few minutes to rip a track to 128kbps, encoding with LAME, especially if I'm running a few other programmes at the same time (which I tend to do). A whole CD will take 20-30 minutes.

You're just going to have to face the fact that ripping your CD collection to mp3 is going to take time, if you want to do it properly. Still, once you've done it you won't have to do it again.

edit - just realised I have CDex installed here at the office too. You need to go to 'Options' then press 'Settings' (or just hit F4). Click the 'Encoder' tag and select 'Lame mp3 encoder' from the drop-down menu where it says 'Encoder', and 128kbps from the drop-down menu next to 'Bitrate min' (this should be more than adequate). These were probably the default settings, but worth checking. See if this improves things for you.

edit2 - oh, and yeah he's right about macopener, you shouldn't need that with Win98SE, you can run the Windows iPod updater to convert your iPod to a WiPod, there's a helpful 'how to' here in case your machine tells you to upgrade to ME or something.

[revmike]

You did not need to buy macopener to use ephpod on a windows computer. If you didn't know that already.