Ripping speed issue

All,
I can get ripping speeds anywhere from 2x to 35x. when I first in stalled the CDRW the speeds would start at ~16x and progress as the CD was ripped to about 34x or so. Now I am seeing ripping speeds from 2x to 30-somethingx and they stay pretty much constant throughout the entire CD. If it matters, I am running WinXP Pro, Audiograbber 1.81, Yamaha CRW3200EZ (firmware v1.00) as IDE primary master (no slave), UDMA33, Aopen AX6B. Any ideas?

Thanks

Have you tried checking for a firmware update?

If you're doing a real-time Rip->Encode, Did you change encoders or encoder settings?