imzu Posted August 24, 2005 Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 (edited) I'm a SonicStage 3.1 user, transferring a typical CD to ATRAC3plus 256 takes me about 15 ~ 20 minutes. I read somewhere else on the forum that one guy is doing this in 5 minutes on average. My PC is a PIII 800Mhz 512Mb running Windows XP Pro SP2. I have the 'classic Windows' view and 32-bit colour turned on. What are the best ways to improve performance?Things I have done already:- no background on my desktop- closed down programs that stick around in the system tray/background (Picasa2, Anti-Spyware, Google Desktop Search)- not running any programs while conversion happens, and if I do, I am usually running Mozilla Firefox and windows explorer only- Done 'Optimize My Library' feature in SS- Deleted temporary files (via SS and Windows XP)I feel my memory capacity is enough and that the CPU power is a big factor in those ATRAC conversion operation, correct?Will I benefit from an upgrade to 3.2? Or is that a bigger resource hog? I will upgrade for increased stability/speed but I don't have a use for the new ATRAC3plus bitrates. Edited August 24, 2005 by imzu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted August 24, 2005 Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 I'm the five minute man you speak of.You've taken some good steps here. What kind of hard drive do you have? If it's IDE, then that's a probable bottleneck. I would recommend for superior Sonicstage performance (and a faster computing experience overall) you look into a SATA hard drive. I employ a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 hard drive in a 250gb flavor, and it has a very unique feature not found in hard drives these days -- 16mb cache, compared to the 2-8mb found within the majority of other IDE/SATA drives. I have no doubt this contributes greatly to the speed of my Sonicstage rips.It's possible that your processor is also holding you back. I employ a 2.4ghz Athlon 64 (socket 754) processor and use Windows XP 64-bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky191 Posted August 24, 2005 Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 I'm using a Dell P4/3GHz with 512MB and it tales only a couple of minutes for me too. I'd say processor speed is whats mainly holding you back. As encoding its primarily CPU intensive. You could upgrade the CPU with something like a Powerleap adapter and a 1.2-1.4Ghz Celeron. But to be honest that would cost you halt the price of a new budget PC. Might be tricky to get working aswell, if your not PC savvy. Consider picking up a cheap machine from somewhere like the Dell outlet. Try to get the fastest CPU you can buy. Thats what I did. By the time I added a new licence for XP, a warranty, a bigger HD etc, I couldn't have built a machine any cheaper. Of course if you have access to another PC somewhere else you could rip the CD's there and import them back into SS on your PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imzu Posted August 24, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 (edited) You've taken some good steps here. What kind of hard drive do you have? If it's IDE, then that's a probable bottleneck. I would recommend for superior Sonicstage performance (and a faster computing experience overall) you look into a SATA hard drive. I employ a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 hard drive in a 250gb flavor, and it has a very unique feature not found in hard drives these days -- 16mb cache, compared to the 2-8mb found within the majority of other IDE/SATA drives. I have no doubt this contributes greatly to the speed of my Sonicstage rips.It's 60Gb Maxtor DiamondMax, I think it has a 8Mb cache, IDE. There about 21Gb free, the rest is taken up by Linux Fedora Core 4 dual boot.It's possible that your processor is also holding you back. I employ a 2.4ghz Athlon 64 (socket 754) processor and use Windows XP 64-bit.←Woah 64-bit processing, very nice. There's no doubt SATA will improve my overall PC experience, but I feel that CPU power is what is holding me back. I would hazard a guess you have at least 1Gb of 64-bit quick RAM too. Both you and that Sparky chap are running high-end CPU machines and you're both not tapping your feet waiting for CD encodings.512Mb is the limit of my mobo and more RAM = better performance is a general rule of thumb. I got this PC back in 2001/2002 so it's probably time for an upgrade soon. Like some forum members who are waiting for 3rd Gen Hi-MD, I will probably wait for the next big processor release so i can save up for and pick up something really quick.Thanks Edited August 24, 2005 by imzu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daijoubu Posted August 27, 2005 Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 You may want to try an alternative MP3 decoder (if your "CD" is in this format)mpg123dsf:http://f23.aaa.livedoor.jp/~kanetuki/download.html Direct linkShould be a little bit faster since it use a tad bit less CPU IIRC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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