Is Lame's encoding slow?

Hi.

I'm just curious if this is just me. I use KAudioCreator to rip/encode music CD's to MP3 files (mostly at 160 Kbps). I don't know what it uses for ripping, but I choose lame (version 3.92) for encoding.

Now, it looks to me like lame takes just as much time to encode one song as Windows Media Player 10 does to both rip and encode the same song. As the result, WMP 10 takes less than half the time KAudioCreator does to rip and encode an entire music album.

Given that the hardware for my Windows XP isn't as fast as that for my Linux, I find this tendency a bit disturbing. I wonder if there's any way to tweak lame, or KAudioCreator itself, to speed up the process?

TIA,
Dai

You can re-nice the process.

See:
man nice
info nice

The GUI front ends just call the command line tools (and hide the error messages), so I use the tools directly in order to understand the process.

Here are some good links.

How about CD copying, ripping and burning? I can't figure it out.
# CD burning copying ripping info
Is it configured and what is the device? Command this to find out:
cdrecord -scanbus

# Recomended GUI front ends for CD burner
XCDRoast
K3b - CD/DVD Kreator for KDE
Adding an IDE CD-Writer to Linux
Linux DVD HOWTO
CD Writing HOWTO
Burning CDs on Linux
# Burn an ISO to disk
cdrecord driveropts=burnfree -v speed=<burning speed> dev=<your device> /path/to/foo.iso ; eject

# New command for kernel 2-6?
cdrecord driveropts=burnfree -v speed=8 dev=ATAPI:1,1,0 /home/fancy/gnuwinII_August_12_2004.iso ; eject

# Burn from disk to disk
cdrecord driveropts=burnfree -v dev=<your device> speed=<burning speed> -isosize /dev/cdrom ; eject
# ISO information
isoinfo -i -d /dev/cdrom
# Generate an ISO from a directory.
mkisofs -vrTJUV "Label" -o foo.iso /path/to/directory

cd /home/fancy/iso
mkisofs -vrTJUV "Bibles" -o Bibles.iso /pub/downloads/WindowsStuff/Books/Bibles

mkisofs -vrTJUV "Games" -o Games.iso /pub/downloads/WindowsStuff/Games

mkisofs -vrTJUV "Downloads" -o downloads.iso /pub/dlcd

# Generate an ISO from a CD
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=foo.iso
# cdparanoia - search for a drive with reporting of autosense:
cdparanoia -vsQ
# Rip a complete audio CD with cdparanoia
cdparanoia -B "1-";eject
# Convert wav files to oggvorbis
oggenc somefile.wav
Linux MP3 CD Burning mini-HOWTO
# Convert mp3 to wav with lame
for i in *.mp3; do lame --decode $i `basename $i .mp3`.wav; done
# Burn a CD from wav files
cdrecord driveropts=burnfree-v -audio -pad speed=<burning speed> dev=<your device> /path/to/*.wav;eject

cdrecord driveropts=burnfree -v -audio -pad speed=8 dev=0,0,0 /home/fancy/naomisfancy/1st_cd/*.wav;eject

cdrecord driveropts=burnfree-v speed=0 dev=0,0,0 /home/fancy/iso/Bibles.iso;eject

# Copy CD using cdrdao
cdrdao read-cd --device <your device> --read-raw --datafile mydata.bin -v 99 mydata.cue
cdrdao write --device <your device> --overburn -v 99 --speed <burning speed> mydata.cue

Thanks for the reply.

Does "nice" change the scheduling priority of a particular process once and for all, or do I need to run "nice" each time?

I agree that using comand-line tools without the GUI frontend will help you better understand the process. The down side is that it's a pain to run lame as a command-line tool, with all the different arguments regarding the meta info of the songs.

Each time or whenever launched.