RipNAS: DVD Drive Selection

[Spoon]

Much attention to detail has gone into the component selection for RipNAS, one important component is the DVD drive - quality of rips depend on the drives ability to read audio without errors. Many in our position might have selected the cheapest drive...not Illustrate, we tested all the main drives on the market. The testing process involved putting close to 1000 discs through each drive (the process was automated through the use of robot loaders) the end rips were compared to AccurateRip, this gave a good 'feel' for each of the drives and how they would perform with a variety of CDs. One CD is shown here which is a good representive test CD, has a variety of scratches and should be recoverable on good drives. To be open and transparent these are our findings:

Sony Optiarc:



This drive slowed to x0.1 ripping, took 2 hours to rip the last 2 tracks...

Panasonic UJ-875S:



Panasonic CW-8124:



Teac 224:



same drive with c2 pointers switchced on:



Our choice of drive is obvious.