(mac) New imac slow to import cds...

[TonyDA]

Received my new i-mac today. All is well, apart from when I import a cd - each track takes between 50-60secs to import, which seems slow... Any ideas why? Is there a setting I can tweak, is this normal, or do I have a problem?

Any advice appreciated
Tony

[Ginger Tosser]

My MacMini is slow at importing CDs. Maybe it does some error correcting/rescanning? not really looked at any options.

[TonyDA]

I've set it up to import at a high bit-rate, so I'm wondering whether it's that. To be honest, I can't find any other options to do with importing cds!

[Fei Fong Wong]

Are you ripping & encoding through iTunes? If so, I'd say its probably normal. It depends on the length of the tracks really and what you're encoding them in.

[TonyDA]

Yep, through itunes - ripping them as AAC files, at 320kbps.

[egparadigm]

I hate iTunes... Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

Are you listening to the tracks as they're being ripped? That would slow it down, no doubt.

[Fei Fong Wong]

Doesn't seem particularly slow to me. On my Mac I rip with iTunes but encode with LAME through this script using -V0 --vbr-new

[Fei Fong Wong]

I hate iTunes... Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

On Windows its awful, on a Mac it works how its intended to. While I don't trust the built in encoder, I think iTunes on Mac is pretty solid as a music management app and audio player.

[egparadigm]

I used to use LAME before my ubuntu box died. What are the advantages of using it over the iTunes equivelent?

EDIT: I hate it because it has a default setting to copy music files to the iTunes folder, resulting in 2x the music files. I spent an hour last week deleting all the copies. Also, it lacks some features from my preferred manager Amarok. Luckily it's being ported to mac for v.2.

[CMcK]

The iMac and Mac mini use laptop disc drives which are slower than regular disc drives. That's the biggest bottleneck for importing music.

[Fei Fong Wong]

I used to use LAME before my ubuntu box died. What are the advantages of using it over the iTunes equivelent?

It's a better MP3 encoder, that's all. Note its an MP3 encoder and iTunes has multiple encoders built in, not least Apple's AAC encoder. You can read about LAME here if you're interested.

EDIT: I hate it because it has a default setting to copy music files to the iTunes folder, resulting in 2x the music files. I spent an hour last week deleting all the copies. Also, it lacks some features from my preferred manager Amarok. Luckily it's being ported to mac for v.2.

It has various settings to manage this behaviour though. You can set it to do what you want. Managing the library is default because it probably is the best thing for average Joe public who just purchased an iPod.

[egparadigm]

Yeah, I know, but it's a pretty silly default setting, IMO. I've never understood the crazy attitude most modern proprietary software has toward directory heierarchy. Thanks for the info, btw.

[TonyDA]

Thanks guys - good to know it's not a fault with the new machine!