Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

[BugsBunny]

I've a lot of old plextor SCSI CD drives around and doing some testing the PX-W1210S drive performed very well with problematic discs. Until recently I used Plextools to rip audio CDs and now want to use dbpoweramp instead.

The big problem I have with dbpoweramp is that I cannot select the drive speed. Only maximum is avaliable.
In contrast Plextools allows me to select the drive speed:

I can slow down the drive with plextools but during ripping a CD on each track dbpoweramp resets the speed to maximum and I have to slow it down with plextools again.
Since I use the drive for problematic discs it's essential that I can select lower speeds. How can I set the speed in dbpoweramp directly?

[Spoon]

Re: Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

This plextor has a proprietory speed command, one we cannot realistically add support for (given the numbers who use this drive).

[BugsBunny]

Re: Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

Thanks for the fast reply!
Two questions:
1) Do all SCSI Plextors have a proprietary speed command? (Since I have almost all here @ home) Maybe the PlexWriter 40/12/40S has not?
2) Is there any posibility to not let dbpoweramp reset the drive speed after each track? So I could set it once with plextools and then rip with dbpoweramp. (btw Using Ultra Secure)

[Spoon]

Re: Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

These early plextors were around before the MMC command set became a standard. We do not set the drive speed on these drives, it is the drive its self.

[BugsBunny]

Re: Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

Just tested the PlexWriter 40/12/40S and the same problem. Seems as if the drive speed of no Plextor SCSI drive can be set in dbpoweramp :(
The PlexWriter 40/12/40S was the last SCSI drive by Plextor.
It's a pitty since these drives are such fine drives for DAE...
Maybe all of these drives use the same kind of drive speed setting? Maybe it's then worth to implement it in dbpoweramp?
I've almost all Plextor SCSI drives here and I would be willing to do beta testing if a drivespeed support for these drives would be integrated into dbpoweramp...
Now the only way is to sit beside and manually slow down the drive with plextools during the extraction process after each track.
Maybe this could be done via software somehow? Send a macro/message to Plextools to slow down the drive, if it can't be implemented directly?

[bhoar]

Re: Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

Spoon

It might be worth looking into supporting the plextor speed controls if you agree that they are good DAE drives - if only because a lot of old duplicator robots use them and the batch ripper could give them a second life without necessarily requiring any hardware dissection other than externalizing the two wire serial port connection.

BB

You could probably create an autoit script to use the plextools program to reset the drive speed every few seconds. It would be harded to reset it before each track though.

-brendan

[BugsBunny]

Re: Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

About 1% of the drives in the accuraterip database are Plextor SCSI drives. Maybe 1% is not that much (would be 10 out of 1000 people) but these drives also have got a unique set of features almost no other drives offer for DAE:

http://www.daefeatures.co.uk/search.php

Someone doing a lot of DAE should seriously consider one of these drives, given that they are available cheap on ebay. And a PCI SCSI controller also costs nearly nothing.

Resources on the internet are also available how to set the speed for these drives. For an experienced programmer it should probably take a few hours to implement this into a software.

I recently bought dBpoweramp Reference R13 and do like it a lot. Acurraterip support / Perfect Meta are some "killer" features to me.
Such a professional DAE software should really consider supporting the drive speed setting of one of the best DAE drives ever made.
I also do get very good results for bad CDs or "defective by design" CDs with these plextors.

I'm planning to re-rip my entire CD collection again converting it to a lossless format. But I'm in a conflict as doing DAE with dbpoweramp and Plextor scsi drives is very annoying having to slow down the drive with plextools after each track manually.

I hope for an answer, either a definite "No we will not support this feature in future" or "(Maybe) we will add support to drive speed for Plextor SCSI drives in future version of dbpoweramp" so I can decide on how (which software/drives) I am going to re-rip my collection.

[BugsBunny]

Re: Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

Guess no answer means "this feature will not be supported in future".

In the meantime I've found a (not perfect) alternative.
With "CD Bremse"

http://www.cd-bremse.de/cdbremse.htm

it's possible to slow down the Plextor SCSI drives as well
and activating

"festgestellt" will more or less lock the drive to the selected speed.

More or less because still after each track or when re-reading bad sectors the drive still speeds up for a second or so until it is slowed down again automatically.

Perfect it probably could only work if the drivespeed setting would be implemented into dbpoweramp directly...

[Spoon]

Re: Drivespeed Plextor PX-W1210S

There are probabbly only a handfull of people who actively want it. Back in the day obviously it would have been supported if the Ripper was around when this drive was new.

You might be able to use a DSP effect which is run before conversion to set the speed.