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For many years, I had a Samsung SH-S203N DVD burner and a LG WH16NS40 BD-RE drive in my main PC, and most of their use is in ripping thrift-store CDs. Everything seemed normal, and I was just merrily using Windows Media Player to rip to FLAC.
The LG started acting funky (wouldn't seek... seems to work again after opening the drive and sliding the head mechanism back and forth), so I ordered a Piodata DVR-221D+ to replace it. It seems like buying a new optical drive in 2023 is a joke-- almost all the drives on the market seem to be made by one firm (Vinpower) under different badges, and it seems like there's no real premium offering. If I wanted to spend $50 on a better drive, I couldn't.
I noticed a few of the more recent ripped albums from the Piodata sounded harsh and staticky in parts. The ones ripped on the Samsung are fine.
I noticed even playing some CDs direct in WMP was similarly defective.
Of course, I already painted the drive to match my themed case, so there goes my RMA options. :/
Fine, my bad, I bought a stupid drive. So I ordered three used LG GH24NSC0 drives ($8 or so each) figuring they had a decent score in the AccurateRip league tables.
Now I have a total of four drives with similar clusters of symptoms:
* Ripping will produce wrong AccurateRip checksums (tried with multiple software, i. e. Cyanrip on Linux).
* Software that tries to calculate the offset index doesn't work well if at all. The LG drives are documented as having an offset of 6, but if I even get an offset through those tests, it's something like 16 or 20. It will frequently kvetch that common commercial discs can't be used as a key disc.
* Software that tries to rip accurately will grind to extremely low speeds (1x or less) even on fairly clean, healthy discs.
I could see one drive being bad, coincedence. But four? From two different manufacturers, two made in 2015, one in 2017, and one in 2019? That would require Capacitor Plague levels of industry-wide failure.
I could see if the discs were really marginal, below what the drives could handle, but I'm getting errors on an assortment of discs, from old thrift-store finds to ones I bought new a couple weeks ago. It seems like the Samsung and old BD-RE at least rip *better* -- they run more smoothly and at least sometimes get accurate rips.
Is there some common wisdom I'm missing-- you have to turn some magic knob to convince modern optical drives to read CDs properly? I feel like there must be a tiny variable resistor I should be adjusting according to a badly scanned service manual. Or should I just grab some SATA-IDE adaptors and break out my old Plexwriter Premium?
The LG started acting funky (wouldn't seek... seems to work again after opening the drive and sliding the head mechanism back and forth), so I ordered a Piodata DVR-221D+ to replace it. It seems like buying a new optical drive in 2023 is a joke-- almost all the drives on the market seem to be made by one firm (Vinpower) under different badges, and it seems like there's no real premium offering. If I wanted to spend $50 on a better drive, I couldn't.
I noticed a few of the more recent ripped albums from the Piodata sounded harsh and staticky in parts. The ones ripped on the Samsung are fine.
I noticed even playing some CDs direct in WMP was similarly defective.
Of course, I already painted the drive to match my themed case, so there goes my RMA options. :/
Fine, my bad, I bought a stupid drive. So I ordered three used LG GH24NSC0 drives ($8 or so each) figuring they had a decent score in the AccurateRip league tables.
Now I have a total of four drives with similar clusters of symptoms:
* Ripping will produce wrong AccurateRip checksums (tried with multiple software, i. e. Cyanrip on Linux).
* Software that tries to calculate the offset index doesn't work well if at all. The LG drives are documented as having an offset of 6, but if I even get an offset through those tests, it's something like 16 or 20. It will frequently kvetch that common commercial discs can't be used as a key disc.
* Software that tries to rip accurately will grind to extremely low speeds (1x or less) even on fairly clean, healthy discs.
I could see one drive being bad, coincedence. But four? From two different manufacturers, two made in 2015, one in 2017, and one in 2019? That would require Capacitor Plague levels of industry-wide failure.
I could see if the discs were really marginal, below what the drives could handle, but I'm getting errors on an assortment of discs, from old thrift-store finds to ones I bought new a couple weeks ago. It seems like the Samsung and old BD-RE at least rip *better* -- they run more smoothly and at least sometimes get accurate rips.
Is there some common wisdom I'm missing-- you have to turn some magic knob to convince modern optical drives to read CDs properly? I feel like there must be a tiny variable resistor I should be adjusting according to a badly scanned service manual. Or should I just grab some SATA-IDE adaptors and break out my old Plexwriter Premium?
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