CD Drive Recommendations

[Monk918]

Spoon et al,

I have been desperately seeking a PX-230A as it appears to be the drive most recommended for quality CD ripping.

Should I not be able to locate this drive, can anyone suggest a second recommendation for a very high quality drive?

Thank you..

[Monk918]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

The response is deafening. Thank you to all 68 people who read my post.

I guess I'll head over to a different board with some people who actually know what they are doing and will help out someone just starting out.

[bhoar]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

Spoon has recommended the PX-708a. I've got some PX-716a units that appear to work well.

-brendan

[Spoon]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

It is difficult to recommend CD/DVD drives when then typically have a sales life of 6 months...

[Porcus]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

The response is deafening. Thank you to all 68 people who read my post.

Well would you really want to read my "hah, I'm about to go over to the post office to pick up my recently-eBayed PX-230A!", would you? In that case, you are welcome :D

[Monk918]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

I'm back... (I know... who cares?)

Sorry for my impatience and frustration exhibited in my last post. Thanks to the responses. The good news is that I have located a NOS PX230A. Of course I'm paying an arm and a leg for it.

So, for my next newbie question: What are the proper SecureRip settings on DBP for this drive? C2, cache, number of re-rips, etc. Time is not an issue, concerned more with quality.

Spoon, how do you have your settings on yours?

Thank you all again.

[Spoon]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

C2 on, leave the cache at 1024KB and have 1 min ultra pass with finish after 1 clean pass.

[austinrip]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

FWIW, I just ordered a Samsung SH-S203B drive and am going to regsiter DBPowerAmp shortly as well. The drive will be going inside my Dell Inspiron 530. Thankfully, it already came with a SATA drive, so I'll just swap them out.

I read on this message board, as well as a couple others, that the SH-S203B drive is great for bit perfect rips. I have hundreds of CD's from the mid-80's to the early 00's. I'm planning on dual encoding to FLAC and MP3.

[Monk918]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

Thank you Spoon.

:smile2:

[ivok]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

Hi there,

I've got the same question: what cd-player recommendations are out there. I currently have a DVDRAM GSA-H66N and would like to add two more to speed up the ripping of some hundreds of CD's. Needless to say that I'm for quality more than for speed.

Any concrete advices?

thanks,
-ivok

[DeVerm]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

Hi there,

I've got the same question: what cd-player recommendations are out there. I currently have a DVDRAM GSA-H66N and would like to add two more to speed up the ripping of some hundreds of CD's. Needless to say that I'm for quality more than for speed.

Any concrete advices?

thanks,
-ivok

Well, I really like the external Sony ones, although they have other brands drives inside. The DRU-810 never had a single problem even though it doesn't support C2. The DRU-840 (current model) is good too. I had trouble with the external GSAxxx but it was the housing/controller, not the drive.

For internal, I think Spoon tested the TEAC as very good for the upcoming ripNAS. I actually think it doesn't matter much which drive or how expensive because when a dirt-cheap drive rips cd's with an accurate-match everytime, it's results are as good as the most expensive one. Problem-CD's can be put aside and later ripped on the top-drive in your stack.

cheers,
Nick.

[funkyblue]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

The 230a is suppose to be good.

I wonder why it is so hard for a manufacturer to make a decent drive for ripping? Surely they would see a market?

Is adding features like leadin/out, No Caching and Good C2 really that difficult to do? Lite-On could do it, and then all the new drives would support and we would have something to recommend.

[LtData]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

Why spend money on developing a good CD ripping drive which will cost more than normal drives when only a small amount of people will purchase the drive? That's probably the reasoning.

[bhoar]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

I've seen mentioned here and elsewhere that the Samsung SH-203B units are good. Those are SATA and I've been wondering if anyone has any experiences, good or bad with their older brother the PATA SH-202B, particularly the SH-202B/BEBN units which are the lightscribe capable ones?

I am thinking of converting more than a few of the Kodak Kiosk robots from the Teac CD-RW drives to the SH-202B/BEBN DVD+-RW units to expand the possible applications, but I want to make sure the SH-202B units are rated well enough in the audio-extraction capabilities and reliability areas.

-brendan

[funkyblue]

Re: CD Drive Recommendations

I can get a SH-S223. Will try that one.