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Thread: Multiple instances of CD-Ripper: Performance questions

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Jan 2016
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    Germany
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    Multiple instances of CD-Ripper: Performance questions

    Peace.
    I hope you will excuse if my english is not perfet since I am from germany.

    My usage of CD-Ripper:
    I use the CD-Ripper in a rather strange way, opening one instance of the programme for each of my 7 optical drives (3 installed in my tower and 4 connected via USB 3.0 to S-ATA adapters externally).
    Why? Because I am a mad man with more CDs than you can handle with standard solutions. That is the reason why I think my questions will not affect a lot of people. Nevertheless, here they are.

    1)
    Since I use an Intel i7 5820K which has 12 threads it is quite a shame to see that the CD-Ripper only uses one to four of them.
    Each of the 7 instances of the programme starts by assigning the encoding of the first ripped track to cpu0, the second ripped track (if the first is still encoding) to cpu1, etc..

    Worst case:
    Assuming I started ripping the same CD (7x "Yes - Fragile" for example) in 7 identical drives at the same time they would therefore finish the first track after the same amount of time.
    Then, they would all assign the encoding to cpu0, leading to 1 thread encoding 7 tracks simultaneously, while the other 11 threads would be idle at that time.

    Would it be possible to integrate something like a thread-offset configurable for each instance of the CD-Ripper? For example instance 1 assigns encoding tasks to cpu0 - cpu11, instance 2 to cpu2 - cpu11, instance 3 to cpu4 - cpu11 etc.?
    In my case with the 6 cores and 12 threads that would lead to a better load balance and the first few threads would not be overloaded whilst the other cores mostly chill.
    Binding each instance of CD-Ripper to one specific thread would also be fine for me. My 6 cores run at 4,2GHz and therefore almost always finish encoding the previous track before the drive finishes ripping the next.
    In my experience the programme becomes a little bit unstable if more than lets say 4 encoding tasks at a time are done by core0. It then needs more time than usual to detect newly inserted CDs and to obtain the related metadata.
    Or could the instances surveille/communicate with each other and assign encoding tasks only to threads which are not already used to encode? That would be best.

    2) My seven instances of CD-Ripper change their window positions under windows 10. Sometimes the first instance (drive "I" in my case) which used to be left in the task bar, suddenly is in last position at the right, where drive "O" used to be.
    The amount of switched window positions increases with the number of ripped CDs, which sometimes puzzles me a bit (handling this many drives simultaneously is mad enough without them switching positions). Are the reasons for this behaviour known?

    3) This one intermingles with question 1. Is it possible to create for example "special desktop links" which open a specific configuration of CD-Ripper?
    Example: link 1 opens CD-Ripper scanning drive "I" and encoding with cpu0 - cpu11, link 2 scans drive "J" and uses cpu2 - cpu11 and so on.

    PS: I do not want to sound unhappy or something like that. I LOVE CD-Ripper. I used to rip my CDs with Mediamonkey and only a single drive.
    Today I rip more CDs in a day than I could possibly have ripped with Mediamonkey in a week. And the quality of the rips is equal/better.

    The performance of the programme and its reliabillity are outstanding and yet not perfect.
    In a perfect world I would have 7 desktop links of CD-Ripper. Each opening the programme scanning a specific drive, encoding with specific threads, not switching their window positions in windows even after 100 ripped CDs in a row.

    PPS: If my problems are too special or not important enough, just let me know. I am already doing a fine job with the setup I use today.
    Last edited by 655321; 01-20-2016 at 05:29 PM.

  2. #2
    Administrator
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    Apr 2002
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    43,854

    Re: Multiple instances of CD-Ripper: Performance questions

    The CPU is not tasked when ripping, if ripping to lossless, a simple dual core CPU could handle 10 CD drives ripping to FLAC. However 6 drives is the maximum I found you could run at the same time, because of internal I/O issues, this was about 3 years ago, perhaps things have moved on.

    Check out batch ripper, it was designed to rip as you are doing now.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Jan 2016
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    12

    Re: Multiple instances of CD-Ripper: Performance questions

    Thanks for the reply. I just tried Batch Ripper, but could not find a way to manually edit the metadata and cover art of each Drive/CD before ripping, which so far makes the programme useless for me. I take a picture of the cover of each and every CD, manually assign it to the belonging CD and edit the metadata to fit my own nomenclature and high standards. The last time I ripped CDs only using unedited metadata of others was in 2005 in iTunes. And that was no good. Fast, but no good. If the Batch ripper had an interface in which I could edit the metadata and cover of each CD like in CD-Ripper and then click "rip" for each CD manually, it would be perfect for me. Enlighten me if I did not see that option.
    PS: Aren't 400 free metadata entries from AMG a little few? I sometimes rip that many CDs in 3 days though I am just a private user.

  4. #4
    Administrator
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    Re: Multiple instances of CD-Ripper: Performance questions

    There is an option in batch ripper 'Manual Input and Review' which will do as you ask.

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Jan 2016
    Location
    Germany
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    12

    Re: Multiple instances of CD-Ripper: Performance questions

    Thank you. I found the option. Did not notice it within the metadata options. I will try if that method works for me.

  6. #6

    Join Date
    Jan 2016
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    12

    Re: Multiple instances of CD-Ripper: Performance questions

    Here I am again. I ripped ~250CDs with Batch Ripper since I last commented. Having all my drives in one UI is nice, though it has some disadvantages. I often stumble upon CDs which contain 2 albums. In CD Ripper I then just uncheck the tracks of the second album, rip the first, use the Track Number offset to get the first track of album 2 as track 1, change the metadata and rip that as well. In Batch Ripper I have not found that option or the option to rip/re-rip just specific tracks.
    Sometimes one track of a CD is interpolated while the others are checked with Accurate Rip or are Secure. I normally then re-rip those tracks with another drive to see if the result is the same. Batch Ripper as far as I know only allows me to rip entire CDs which would be a waste of time to see if a single track is faulty. I tried to rip such Tracks using CD-Ripper while Batch Ripper was still running. Batch Ripper then looked up the metadata and if I clicked away the metadata window, the CD would be ejected (unfortunately I did not find an option to set my drives to manual unload) or startet ripping if I clicked "Okay". I could just let the metadata window for that CD open and wait until I finished re-ripping the CD in CD-Ripper or pause the entire batch ripping process to prevent Batch Ripper from meddling with the CD. In both cases the simple task of re-ripping a single track prevented me from adding more CDs to the ripping process for the time it took to re-rip the track. It is a shame that it is not possible to pause single drives. With that option I could just "pause" the concerned drive, open CD-Ripper, re-rip the track and meanwhile continue to rip on with Batch Ripper.
    Though Batch Ripper is faster than my old setup using 7x CD-Ripper in the optimal case that no tracks are ripped faulty and that there are no CDs which contain more than 1 album, the average ripping speed is slower since I often have to pause the entire ripping process in order to rip single tracks or CDs with 2 albums correctly.
    I therefore switched back to my old setup using CD-Ripper.

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