[CUBE] New macs & processor upgrades

[Thubten Kunga]

The bottleneck in ripping CDs to MP3 files in iTunes is not the 
processor. While the processor's speed is a factor in the overall speed 
of the rip, the fundamental variable before that is the reading speed 
of the CD drive. By using a high speed external CD-RW drive, you will 
realize much faster rips. I use a cheap LiteOn 40x12x48x drive ion an 
ADS Oxford 911 FireWire case. It rips while reading the data @ 48x. 
Thus the ripping speed in a 500 MHz cube is in excess of 7x almost all 
the time. The same holds true for other Mac models. So Alan is correct 
that the external CD-RW ripping is the way to go with any model Mac. 
Even the newest Towers only provide a maximum CD reading speed of 32x 
from either the Combo drive or the DVR-105 SuperDrive. The above 
external Lite On drive reads 150% faster.

k

On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 12:22  AM, Alan Thompson wrote:

> do you have an external CDRW drive?  i rip with this, and its 
> performance is much better.  i have a que!fire firewire external cdrw, 
> and ripping with it is much better while trying to do other things on 
> your cube.  if you have an external cdrw drive, try it.
>
> --alan
>
> On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 10:02 PM, Michael McPherson wrote:
>
>> (with only a few exceptions...multitasking
>> is poor when ripping CD's from itunes, for example).