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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Px-230a seems very hard to find in US. Anyone has a source? And how about PX-240a ?? Thanks, -- Ham
Px-230a seems very hard to find in US. Anyone has a source? And how about PX-240a ?? Thanks, -- Ham
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
I managed to snag a 230a on ebay for cheap, but don't see any others on ebay right now, unfortunately.Comment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Dakesh Computers ebay store has 30 NOS 230 available. That where I have purchased all my various models of NOS Plextors. They aren't cheap but they have most models available and i've made multiple orders from them.
PhilComment
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Re: Update on Plextor 230A best brand of cd-drive for ripping
If you have a reliable reference for the 755 and 760 not being "real" Plextors would you be able to provide it?
The 755 and 760 models on an IDE machine execute all the advanced functions in Plextools XLPro so I think these are "real" Plextors. Those models that are generally acknowledged as rebadged, do not execute the advanced functions in Plextools XLPro.
C2 detection works on these machines in dbPoweramp and of the about one hundred test discs so far that were a match in AccurateRip AND did not have excessive C2 errors (as measured by the Plextools ProXL), these discs ripped as "AccurateRip: Accurate..." on the first or second pass. So I'm not too concerned about the PX-760's as my original baseline. cdfreaks also included these as "real' in a thread on the subject.
It is where the result is: No AccurateRip match or a pressing mismatch AND some kind of damage where I'm concerned about the accuracy of the rip and will re-rip on drives with other chipsets. In particular since I know the 230 will provide a "Secure" rip for most of my discs that were "Errors" with the 760's, my thinking is that the 230's will provide a better second rip. Only for mismatched CRCs between the 760s and 230s will I need an additional tie breaker. I have four other models, each with different chipsets, that received high scores in reviews by cdrinfo for their CD reading and CD error correction functionality.
Based on my results so far, I probably have 3000 or so discs NOT in AccurateRip that will require ripping on two different drives. I don't really know how many mismatched CRCs. I'm analyzing my logs now and will run some tests tomorrow.
I might have 100-300 seriously damaged discs in my collection of 5000 plus . Probably 50-100 will be rotted (which I can detect with the PlexTools ProXL combined quality tests) and unrecoverable not to mention irreplaceable.
So maybe 50 to 100 discs will need a third or fourth ripping where I need to break the ties. After about two months of playing around with several hundred discs, I have a better idea of how this works and will set up more formal logging and QC. We will see.
PhilComment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Has anyone tried the external USB version of the Plexwriter Premium (10 out of 10 according to CDRLabs.com)?
Has anyone tried the 240A (2007)? How does it compare to the 230A?Comment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
I am doubting CDRLabs testing of (certain) drives for DAE, their review of the PX-708a:
States it does not support c2, when it does. Also their audio reading test seems not to test the drives too much, many drives score top results, so there is not differentiation.Comment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Yeah cdrlabs give too many drives high marks but it seems that any drive that doesn't get a high mark is probably best avoided since those of us not in the business will not likely have a wide sample of drives or the tools to test them. For anyone with a very large CD collection, the cost of buying the right drives to rip our collection is a very small cost compared to the costs of the thousands of CDs and the time investment to get an accurate rip.I am doubting CDRLabs testing of (certain) drives for DAE, their review of the PX-708a:
States it does not support c2, when it does. Also their audio reading test seems not to test the drives too much, many drives score top results, so there is not differentiation.
My own testing of about 10 models of drives, on their ability to read damaged CDs, showed that the Plextor 7xx and re-badged Plextor 230 drives have been able to read all but the most damaged and rotted discs with consistent check sums. So far, I have not found a drive that will read these discs if the best drive of each Plextor model won't. So as far as "best" for my project I'm done with the drive selection. However, the "best" of four different PX-760 drives is still a little "worse' that the "worst" of four different PX-230s at reading damaged discs.
It is just a pain, if you are paranoid, to rip twice when the CD is in NOT Accurate rip or when there is only 1 entry. I have seen anomalies when the album has a single Accuraterip entry. An example is Monteverdi Madrigals Book Four on the small Opus111 label. All but one track matched as accurate(1) and the one track that was labeled not accurate was in the middle of the CD. Multiple rips on my part, on different drive models, always give the same Checksum on that track so I am convinced the accuraterip result for that track is wrong.
I not complaining about dbpoweramp, I think it is a great product, now that I have some experience with it, or Accuraterip for that matter even though it is of marginal use to me given my obscure collection.. It's just a lot of work to preserve your CD collection and I'm glad I didn't try DAE before 2008.
PhilComment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
I can confirm the praise for the P230A. I have a three Plextors in on PC now, P230A and PX-760A on IDE and a PX-712 on a SATA channel. The P230A beats these and a few others I have used to rip hands down. Thanks for the recommendation Spoon.
I just finished building a PC with new X38 Intel chipset, CPU Duo E6850/3GHz and 3.0 GBs RAID 0 local disk. I am ripping FLAC and the path in CDGrabber is a ReadyNAS+. Had all kinds of trouble getting Vista 64 to work at first with dbPoweramp. BSOD and always pointing at the Video driver at first and actually punted back to XP. Once I built out RAID 0 using the Intel Matrix storage software and got all the PCI IDE controller driver updated I went back to Vista 64 which was a struggle but now the performance is 3x what XP was doing. Now I can rip a typical CD and have the FLAC on the NAS in 3 to 4 minutes tops. I have seen the app report ripping speed of as high as x49. I am using the LU - Service add on. In burst mode because the drive never has a problem.
No I don't work for Microsoft... I rather don't like them but the music server is my most important app and I could not get a Linux solution going like this.Last edited by Kurt_S; March 01, 2008, 05:02 AM.Comment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Joni Mitchel's Blue just finished in 2:10 elapsed time. Sweet!Comment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Can anyone expand on the interface types, and if there is any known reasons to steer towards one or the other?
..I am sort of notebook bound and my experience ripping tracks to files using the in-built DVD/CD/Writer has been workable but I am thinking that I should look for a USB or Firewire chassis and pair it up with a bonafide CD reader.
Similarly, interface type aside, is there any arguement for/against using a CD reader Vs. CD-R/RW drive? (I dunno if even plain jane CD reader only can still be found
)
Lastly, unless it'd be best for another topic -- is there any major compelling reasons to not use multi-format capable drives for low duty ripping only?
Thinking about perhaps a USB/1394 1-4-ALL drive now that Blu-Ray has apparently been embraced as the latest VHS.Comment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Spook:
First consider how many CDs you plan to rip and whether most are in AccurateRip. If almost all are in accuraterip and you are getting "Accurate" matches I wouldn't worry.
If you have thousands of obscure CDs then you should consider alternatives since in that case ripping everything as "Burst" mode as Kurt S is doing would not be prudent because you will get errors on some of your tracks. How many depends on the condition and age of the physical CDs in your collection .
If you want to build an external setup, you should take a look at the thread I started called "Plextor No C2 support" for the hassles I had getting error detection to work. I still have not been able to get C2 support on any firewire interface (including the Plextor firewire drives). Now I could just be doing something stupid but I haven't gotten any suggestions that worked, so I have given up on firewire.
What does work is what Kurt S uses (assuming your existing media software doesn't conflict) and your drivers are up to date. Getting the conflicting software off your machine and getting the right drivers will work but this might be a frustrating task.
What i did was install an add-on IDE or eSATA card connected to drives in an external enclosure. I've built two identical machines where one uses an eSATA card and the other an IDE card. They both work fine with dbpoweramp C2 error detection and any combo of drives.
Wikipedia will give you the interface descriptions but roughly speaking, IDE is the older physical connection with flat ribbon cable and a published limit of 18 inches of cable. The eSATA limit is just under six feet. for a laptop you could get a PCIMA to eSATA card for about $40 and connect to the external drive that way.
The connectors at the drive end can be a little tricky using eSATA and you might need an addonics IDE to SATA board on the back of your drive. As to which models use which interfaces here is an example JUST for most Plextor drives. If there is not an SA or UF suffix on the model number it uses the IDE connector. UF is the external model of USB or Firewire while the SA suffix uses the SATA interface. If you want a specific interface you should always check the mfg website and gent an EXACT match on the model number.
If you are lucky your collection is in AccurateRip and you can forget about all this and enjoy your music.
PhilComment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Nice post pls1 and good advice.
I really think the fast RAID 0 is probably most responsible for my performance jump of 3x but I would like to hear opinions. What ever I did most certainly like it. I know I have more wrestling with Vista to do but at least now I can support the "all feet in" direction I took with new tech for my hifi.Comment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Kurt, i can't prove it but my guess is it's getting the drivers right. I use XP and it's as fast as what you report for Vista.
I've got an overclocked XP Quad core with reasonably advanced performance monitoring and the ripping or encoding won't use much more than 50% of a core or significantly load my Raptor systems disk, where as on a dual core P4 at similar clock speed, ripping and encoding can use 100% of a core.
The dedicated IDE or SATA add on card gives a faster rip for me than the MOBO IDE/SATA (insert your own speculation here). However, since most of my CDs are not in accuraterip and therefore need ultra-secure mode, burst speed doesn't really mean much in terms of elapsed months. Usually I['ll run two or three instances of dbpoweramp at the same time. I'm pushing 1000 cds ripped and at least 4000 to go. My biggest time drag is getting the meta-data/tags right on my classical CDs.
PhilComment
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Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping
Thanks for all the advise!
I'm probably setup okay with exception of a true CD-R drive. The MP3 CD-R made in the DVD-RW seem to have problems playing back in my other equipment.
Heh, I know what you mean. I don't have that many CD but the few classical I've done so far have cost me hours to get tagged as I want.Comment
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