Specing a High Quality Drive

[EliC]

Spoon,
I know you looked into having a drive manufactured for the RipNAS system. Wondering if you would have any interest in specing (sp?) out a high quality CD ripping drive. I think there is a descent market for this and this market is willing to pay a premium for the drive.

High Quality C2
HTOA
Overreading into Lead in/out
Cache disabling

what other dream features would make a high quality drive??

[bhoar]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

Spoon,
I know you looked into having a drive manufactured for the RipNAS system. Wondering if you would have any interest in specing (sp?) out a high quality CD ripping drive. I think there is a descent market for this and this market is willing to pay a premium for the drive.

High Quality C2
HTOA
Overreading into Lead in/out
Cache disabling

what other dream features would make a high quality drive??

I'd suggest this list:

- High Quality C2
- HTOA
- Overreading into Lead in/out
- Relatively small offset
- 0KB Cache *and/or* Cache disabling
- Can perform 48x-52x DAE
- A CD-only (or CD-R/CD-RW only) drive *and/or* dedicated CD laser
- Reliable
- Works with robots (tray extends, compatible with robot drivers)

Also, I suppose it would be OK if the overreading only worked into one of either the lead-in or lead-out, as long as it was in the "right direction" based on the drive offset.

-brendan

[EliC]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

Would a dedicated CD laser be helpful?

I doubt anyone would manufacture a CD only drive.

For robots I guess you would want both an IDE and SATA version available.

[bhoar]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

Would a dedicated CD laser be helpful?

I doubt anyone would manufacture a CD only drive.

For robots I guess you would want both an IDE and SATA version available.

A dedicated CD laser means that the reading "spot" would be appropriately sized for the land/pit of CDs. There's been some discussion (on cdfreaks?) that a DVD laser is reading a much smaller area which means it may be more susceptible to damage ("noise") that a larger spot would average out over the area. I don't believe there's been a scientific analysis of this...maybe there has been?

I do know that early era Plextor combo drives used two separate lasers.

The other way to go, of course, is to get a CD-only drive. Teac still makes them, perhaps some other companies do.

And for robots IDE is still generally easiest, but there are high quality low-cost IDE<->SATA bridges available.

-brendan

[EliC]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

I am also interested in the PureRead feature that Pioneer offered on the DVR-a15j. Unfortunately I have never seen any reviews of the feature and cant find the drive anywhere. Its supposed to change the angle of the laser, as well as the laser power, for different reads if one angle can't get a good read (at least that what I read somewhere).

[bhoar]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

I am also interested in the PureRead feature that Pioneer offered on the DVR-a15j. Unfortunately I have never seen any reviews of the feature and cant find the drive anywhere. Its supposed to change the angle of the laser for different reads if one angle can't get a good read (at least that what I read somewhere).

I wouldn't be surprised if PURE READ type behaviors are actually somewhat common in drive firmware these days. Some other drives also automatically change speed and retry the physical read when errors are encountered.

I wouldn't put too much hope into this feature being anything more than that, with a marketing spin.

In my experience, Pioneer drives haven't been very good at DAE.

-brendan

[EliC]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

agreed regarding the pioneers. Just sounds like an interesting feature. Dont know if it is all marketing hype or not. Benq I think made the plextor 230, so they clearly CAN do very good c2. Just add in the missing features. Maybe if there is a dedicated CD laser and a read cannot be made an attempt to read with a dvd laser could be made.

[EliC]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

Curious, would the ability to disable drive interpolation (the process of the drive hiding errors) improve a drives DAE abilities?

[Spoon]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

Yes - you would get more randomness in the bad data.

[EliC]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

Yes - you would get more randomness in the bad data.

That is a good thing, or are you saying that in a sarcastic manner?

[Spoon]

Re: Specing a High Quality Drive

No it is good, as a secure ripper needs changing bad results.