I have been playing with MP3's since the compression format was first introduced. Anyone remember when mp3enc(dos) was the only option? Now there are literally a hundred rippers, encoders, decoders, etc... Audiocatalyst is the FASTEST ripper and encoder --- period. Combined with XING's encoder (professional is best) it encodes WAV -> MP3 at about 7x realtime which is amazing. 3min 30sec song takes 30 secs to encode. Ripping from CD depends more on your cd burner than anything (needs to support digital audio extraction). Audiocatalyst gives you the ability to connect to CDDB - internet database of all music cd's - to give you instant track titles for your mp3's. You can name your files based on author, genre, title, track# which is great for categorizing. You have almost 30 choices b/w methods of cd ripping based on your cd-rom attributes. Perhaps my favorite option is the ability to rip cd's at a variable bitrate opposed to the 128 constant most use. Variable bitrate means just that, when ripping, complex music parts are encoded at the best quality (160 bitrate) and less complex music parts at less; the outcome is music that sounds great and file sizes that are normally smaller. The ability to normalize the audio when encoding is great for keeping music volumes at a constant. Summarizing, AUDIOCATALYST is the best. Get it and use it if you give a damn about quality and speed.



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