I just installed the latest release of hoary, the .rc. verson, over my .preview. install.

My impression of ubuntu has been good so far (based on my lazy, spoiled windows experiences ), with the exception of some problems with mplayer and xmms, noted elsewhere...

I am using the default Sound Juicer to rip some ogg's, but it just seems excruciating slow. I'm currently ripping Eric Clapton's From the Cradle and the Sound Juicer progress dialog says "Estimated time left: 325:53 (at 0.2x)"

What's up with that and can I fix it?

Thanks...

I've heard it helps if your CD-ROM is using scsi emulation. If u aren't already, there are plenty of ol tutorials to show how

try
$ sudo hdparm /dev/hdx <- or whatever your drive is
to see if dma is on
if it is off, do
$ sudo hdparm -d1 /dev/hdx

So... that seemed to work this morning. It didn't work last night, but I was only seeing out of one eye last night.

Now, if I could just make that permanent. Ah... /etc/hdparm.conf

Thanks...

Well, I gues I spoke too soon. That didn't work.

I ran the 'hdpam -d1 /dev/hdc' and then ran 'hdparm /dev/hdc' and the dma was set to 1.
I then started ripping and it went pretty fast. I thought that was the solution. But, I came back later and the next cd looked like it was going to take 350 minutes to rip!

So, I rebooted. The dma is again -not- set to 1 and this first cd rip is going fast again. Then, that one finishes. I eject it. Put in the next cd. Then I have to kill off 'cd player' since it launches automatically and I haven't yet figured out where to disable that. Then I start extracting this next cd's files and try to rip them and it slows to a crawl. The Progress dialog says:
Album Progress, Estimated time left: 12:04 (at 3.5x) (or something similar to that)
but then it slowly but surely starts changing and it's now at 25:37 (at 2.4x) and it's stll slowing down, now 27:47 (at 2.2x), etc.... After about 10 minutes or so, the first song was still only about a third of the way through the rip.

Maybe it has something to do with that 'cd player' launching itself?

Well, I discovered where to disable the automatic startup of gnome-cd (cd player), when an audio cd is inserted: System/Preferences/Removable Drives and Media

So, I disabled that and rebooted. I was able to rip 3 cd's at what I assume is a reasonable speed. Then, just to test, on my next cd, I didn't open sound juicer. I opened cd player. It figured out the name of the cd I was trying to play, but wouldn't play it. I opened amarok and tried to play it there but got some error (I'll have to revisit that later) and it wouldn't play the cd either. So, I was unable to even play a CD! So, I started up juicer again and pressed extract, but it never even started extracting the first song.

So, I tried logging out and back in. No change.

So, I rebooted again. Now juicer is working again. Apparently, off in the linux la la land of my system (can you say registry ) the audio apps get into a fight and then refuse to come out and play together.