Well, I finally tried Ogg Vorbis (OV) with Audiograbber. ****Specifically, I used the embedded library file, libvorbis.dll, dated 19 JUL 02, that came with Audiograbber 1.83 and, man, was it s-l-o-w.
OV ripped track 1 at less than 3X and did not get above 5X thru track 12 so I aborted the rip.
I may look for a newer Ogg Vorbis release and give it a spin, but my goal is 320Kbps so that may not be time well spend - because I understand that OV is best at lower bit rates.
I also gave LAME 3.98.2 another go. ** This time, I chose VBR instead of CBR. **The difference, speed-wise, was immediate. First, track 1 ripped near 14X, in contrast, the same CD track ripped at under 8X at CBR. The 2nd track ripped near 16X and the 15th at 20X plus.
These speeds were a dramatic improvement over my previous experience (noted above) where LAME 3.98.2 took 2.4X a long as Fraunhofer IIS 3.4.0.0. However, the overall VBR “speed” results are still much slower than Fraunhofer. ****LAME peaked at 20X. In contrast, Fraunhofer peaked at over 32X. Since, to my ears, Fraunhofer sounds better than LAME, this speed factor is a HUGE negative for me.
After ripping 15 CDs, Fraunhofer averaged 115 seconds per CD at 320Kbps CBR. That is less than 2 minutes per CD - a seriously FAST rate, in my experience.
Thus far, that is my update.
Thanks again to everyone for your contributions to this topic.
CurlySue 
Preferred Encoder: FraunhoferL3 Codec Professional, version 3.4.0.0
Preferred Decoder: Fraunhofer L3 Codec Professional, version 3.4.0.0
Preferred GUI programs: Audiograbber 1.83, jetAudio 7.1.8.4006 Basic
Message Edited by CurlySue on 03-03-2009 09:17 AM
