Comments on: Why can't I rip mp3s?

Question: Why can't I rip mp3s?

Ash3000 — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:35:43 -0800

For some reason, when I try to rip/import anything off a CD, all the audio on my laptop slows down to a choppy crawl.

In the past few weeks, I've noticed that any time I try to rip something off a CD, be it with iTunes or any other program, the audio on anything else playing turns into an indecipherably slow and choppy crawl, be it an mp3, a website or whatever. I use a Toshiba Satellite. Any obvious culprits?

By: pocams

pocams — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:42:23 -0800

My guess is that your drive has gotten into PIO mode instead of DMA. Here's instructions with screenshots for checking that under XP.

By: Ash3000

Ash3000 — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:50:01 -0800

Thank you for your help, but this doesn't seem to be the case - my transfer mode for the drive is 'DMA if available.'

By: fake

fake — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 07:30:20 -0800

Check again, it may be "DMA if available", but be in PIO mode. Windows has a very bad habit of forcing the drive into PIO mode after a certain number of errors.

Almost invariably this is the case. Sometimes you even have to go into the registry and change things to reset Windows' error counter.

By: chrissyboy

chrissyboy — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:53:25 -0800

Do you mean the audio on anything else playing simultaneous to ripping snarfs up?

By: Ash3000

Ash3000 — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:54:34 -0800

Yes, that's exactly what I mean - be it on the web, another mp3, a dvd, whatever - if it's playing while a cd is being ripped, the sound is worthless.

By: chrissyboy

chrissyboy — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:41:09 -0800

I've always been lead to believe that ripping / encoding was one of those things you should leave the computer to do on its own to be honest, otherwise there's a danger of glitchy encodes, read errors etc etc.

However, if you're saying it used to handle it ok, then maybe it's a hard drive issue? I know it's an obvious thing to suggest, but have you tried freeing up some disk space and doing a defrag?