PC recomendation for cd ripping

did a similarly big leap last year. from a 4 year old vista setup to a i7-3770 3.4 GHz with 16GB of premium RAM and a 2GB video card. MUCH nicer PC. noticed zero difference in SQ but ripping speed was waaaay faster (would guess 3x or more)

The best ripper of all is dbPowerAmp, and it is priced very low. It also uses the multiple cores of your processor to speed things up.

As for ripping to FLAC, use Level 5 or 6. This will net you files about 60% the size of the original with full fidelity...

-RW-

Dvdgreco, ripping is executing a console program, so laptop quality will effect the speed but not the quality of the rip,

But in the case of running JRiver to serve the data, the quality of your laptop is very important for sound quality. Basically a faster cpu, more RAM and disabling unnecessary services from startup will improve the sound quality.

Don't, that simple. Use the time to listen to music. Among the many cd players I have used, I've found that a Sony CDP-CX355 is a better alternative to ripping. I have two, so I can load 600 cd's and just enjoy the music. One of the units has been in continuous hourly use for 18,000 hours, still going strong. Enjoy the music.

PC shouldn't affect anything. The drive might, and having scratched or dirty discs certainly will. Use something that can give accuraterip results so you can monitor results. EAC can do this, as well as DB Poweramp. Also, you might want to embed album art while you are doing the rips. I didn't do this when I ripped my collection a few years ago, and wish I had. I don't know if JRiver has a similar feature.