ripping speed: what adds more to it?

[Unregistered]

I wonder what is the most important thing when taling about ripping speed, between processor speed, speed of the cd reader, memory, software or else.

Today I ripped with with 7 different pcs at my office and I got stunningly different results, from 20 min for the latest pc to 4 hours of one of the oldest.

I just wonder if the main part of the ripping process is the reading from disk one or rather the calculating activity of the codec, for if the first one hypothesis was true I guess the cd reader quality would be the most important aspect, while if the latter was to be the most valuable tools would be processor speed.

I am using vorbis, variable bit rate, and also noticed that ripping to mp3, 128 (while vorbis is 160 vbr) takes less time, by far.

BTW, I use slow, accurate speed option, but what exactly does it mean? How does it work?

Thank you.

[Spoon]

When going to Vorbis, compressing it takes most time - on mine a 3 minute track takes about 1m 20s.

Some formats such as Monkeys audio encode very fast so the speed of the CD drive is important there.