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Riptastic! can handle as many compatible changer drives as you can attach to your system.
No manual intervention is necessary on your part during ripping (totally unattended).
Note that CDs are ripped sequentially, not simultaneously—it will rip one CD at a time.
When a CD is finished, it will go on to the next CD.
So, for example, with 7 Nakamichi drives you would be able to rip up to 35 CDs unattended—load them up and rip while you sleep!
The process proceeds like this:
- Rip CD 1 from changer 1
- Rip CD 2 from changer 1
- Rip CD 3 from changer 1
- Rip CD 4 from changer 1
- Rip CD 5 from changer 1
- Rip CD 1 from changer 2
- Rip CD 2 from changer 2
- and so on...
No manual intervention is necessary, which actually is how Riptastic!'s batch rip mode works regardless of whether you're using changer drives or not.
Here's some tips to achieve the best experience with Riptastic! and changer drives in general:
Start the batch rip after the first changer-full of CDs have been inserted, so that ripping can proceed while you're loading the remaining CDs in other changer drives.
In order to use changer drives with Riptastic!, you will need to be running Windows 2000, Windows XP, or better.
Riptastic! will work with any number of compatible changer drives, even if you don't have enough free drive letters.
If you run out of drive letters, just mount the drives to file system paths instead of drive letters.
In order to use SCSI changer drives with Riptastic!, your SCSI controller needs to support multiple LUNs.
Customers have had mixed results with SCSI towers.
If the “tower” is just a case that holds a bunch of drives, e.g. a glorified SCSI extender, it should work.
However, some towers work by using a single SCSI address and exposing the drives as LUNs.
Since compatible changer drives already expose LUNs for each changer slot, a tower of this type will not work with such changer drives.
If you're uncertain, try attaching a single compatible changer drive to the tower.
If it appears in Windows as multiple drive letters (one for each disc slot in the changer), then the SCSI tower is compatible with your changer drive.
But if it appears in Windows as a single drive letter, then the SCSI tower is not compatible with your changer drive.
Depending on your SCSI controller, typically you can put a maximum of 7 drives on a single SCSI bus even without a tower.
If you use a tower, use the shortest cables possible and terminate the SCSI bus properly.
You can try Riptastic! for free before you decide to order.
The evaluation version is not limited in functionality, but the evaluation period is limited to 30 days and 300 minutes of ripped audio.
Click here to download.
Here's some tips to achieve the best experience with Riptastic! and Nakamichi drives specifically:
Use the SCSI version of the Nakamichi drive—the IDE version does not work with Windows 2000 and Windows XP, to the best of my knowledge, because Nakamichi does not have a driver available for this.
The Nakamichi drives are advertised as 16x speed drives, however that's the rate for data CDs.
In fact, reading audio CDs is limited to 4x speed.
This is a limitation of the drive itself and all ripping software is subject to this limitation.
Other customers who use the Nakamichi drives have obtained best results with a CPU of 1 GHz or faster.
There's a shortcoming particular to the Nakamichi drive that if you try to eject a CD from a drive when any other CD in the drive is currently busy, it will halt the current operation in order to eject the CD.
So you don't want to eject CDs from a changer that's working.
However, you can change CDs in any other changer drive without a problem.
For example, say you had only 2 Nakamichi drives, you could achieve continuous non-stop ripping with someone sitting at the computer like this:
- Start ripping on changer 1.
- When all 5 CDs in changer 1 are done, ripping will proceed automatically to changer 2.
- When changer 2 is busy ripping, swap all 5 CDs in changer 1 with new CDs.
- When all 5 CDs in changer 2 are done, ripping will continue with changer 1 again as Riptastic! has detected new CDs.
- While changer 1 is busy ripping, swap all 5 CDs in changer 2 with new CDs.
- and so on...
(This principle works so long as you have 2 or more changers.)
For the above reason, when batch ripping with Riptastic! and the Nakamichi drive, make sure the “Eject when finished ripping” option is disabled.
Note regarding compatible changer drives:
We do not have any direct experience with changer drives other than the Nakamichi MJ-5.16.
Therefore, we cannot guarantee that any other changer will work with Riptastic!.
There's nothing to prevent Riptastic! from working with any changer drive, however,
so long as each changer drive in question consumes a single SCSI ID and exposes each changer slot as separate LUNs.
One way to tell if this is the case is to connect the drive and see how it appears in Windows.
A changer drive that appears in Windows with a separate drive letter for each changer slot should work with Riptastic!.
A single Nakamichi drive, for example, will appear in Windows as 5 separate drive letters (assuming enough free drive letters).
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