best brand of cd-drive for ripping

[pls1]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

yeah, looks like I don't need to buy an automated disc polishing machine.
Phil

[bhoar]

Re: Update on Plextor 230A best brand of cd-drive for ripping

Looks like the PX-230 is a good drive for damaged discs, then.

-brendan

[pls1]

Update on Plextor 230A best brand of cd-drive for ripping

An update here.

Using dbpoweramp I've ripped about 500 classical CD's (which is 10% of my collection). These are from my personal collection and many are physically from the dawn of the CD era. The CDs have been ripped on new Plextor PX-760 or PX-755 drives with secure dbpoweramp settings.

Of these 500 CDs, about 50 had track(s) that would not rip for a total of about 100 tracks. Most CDs had visible scratches but some seem to be deteriorating from age. Doing a re-rip on my "best" PX-760 drive (where best was defined as highest number of C2 errors detected using Plextools Pro) I could get about 10% to rip on a second try.

Yesterday, I finished a dedicated IDE machine with a fresh XP install and PX-230A drives on the main IDE and an IDE/ATA card in th PCI bus with a second PX-230. These PX-230s are new surplus OEM.

The PX230 drives have been able to rip about 90% of the tracks that the PX-7xx could not. I re-ripped ten of the CD's that were successfully ripped on the PX-230 again on the "best" Plextor 760. Not one of them would successfully rip.

Phil

[Spoon-]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

Testing is not too easy, the best test uses the same CD which is just on the edge of recoverability and rip on multiple drives.

[Dude]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

I only tested the Premium 1 very quickly, it seemed average.

Still my original question remains: how can you actually see how good a drive is?
Where do you look at when ripping to determine it's good, average, not good, ...?

thx

[Spoon-]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

I only tested the Premium 1 very quickly, it seemed average.

[Dude]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

All good Plextor models (230a & 7xx have been discontinued) so grab them while the few stores have them,

Do you have an idea why they make worse drives for audio extraction now instead of making progress? :s

Premium2 is in most stores, but ct magazine tested it and it came out worse than average for reading audio.

What is your experience with the Premium1 for reading audio?

[Spoon-]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

All good Plextor models (230a & 7xx have been discontinued) so grab them while the few stores have them, Premium2 is in most stores, but ct magazine tested it and it came out worse than average for reading audio.

[Dude]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

is that 230a still in stores or is it a n old drive?

thx

[bhoar]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

The 230a is made by another company and the plextor label is applied.

In addition, Plextor modified (or had modified for them) the firmware (low-level software that runs on the drive hardware). Whether that modification simply rebadged the drive or also included functional changes, who knows...

-brendan

[EliC]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

The 230a is made by another company and the plextor label is applied.

[Dude]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

C2 support varies between drive models, some good some bad.

Let's say I buy a new cd-drive, is there a way to find out, as dbpoweramp user, how good the c2 support is? I don't really understand how you can see this.

By saying it is a non-real plextor that means the drive internals are not Plextor design, but from another CD drive.

So the 230a is sold by plextor and has 'plextor' brand but actually plextor uses components from other manufacturers to make this drive?

thx

[Spoon-]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

C2 support varies between drive models, some good some bad. I wouldn't say the c2 of 230a was the best, the drive is very good at reading through sratches. By saying it is a non-real plextor that means the drive internals are not Plextor design, but from another CD drive.

[Dude]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

Can Spoon confirm if Plextor drives (and also the PX-230) are the best choice? I would like to hear also the opinion of the developer

thx!

[Dude]

Re: best brand of cd-drive for ripping

that is the 230 only, and only in regards to C2 support, but does not support over reading or FUA and may not support HTOA.

So there are 'levels' of c2 support ?
if a drive has c2 support it doesn't mean it's identical to another drive's c2 support?

thx