Wow. That is very disappointing news. I'm getting 14x with the dual 867 MDD. Would you mind trying it at 160kbps and 128kbps just to see if it can get any faster at those lower rates please? Maybe AAC encoding has a ceiling that no amount of additional processing power will help. k On Wednesday, June 4, 2003, at 06:32 AM, Julian Tracy wrote: > With the 1.2 Sonnet, and a 52X fire wire cdrw, AAC @ 192kbps - ripping > ranges from 14X - 17X. > > Julian Tracy