Current Drives vs Plextor PX-230A

[fadersup]

I'm in need of a quality burner and have found a PX-230A new but it's $200. I searched thru the 2011 drive accuracy but the drives all seem to be
out of stock.

Anyone have a recommendation on available drive or would you just pay the extra dollars for the 230A?

Thanks in advance for you response.

[hoju]

Hey,

As someone who's recently bought a PX-230A I thought I'd throw in my 2c. I can't tell you whether you should buy it or not, but I can tell you about my experiences.

I started looking casually for a PX-230A around the start of 2011, but didn't really put much effort in since I figured they'd be so difficult to come by. I started looking more seriously from November because I had a couple of discs with defects (disc 3 of Bossypants (Tina Fey), and disc 2 of Extravagenza (Split Enz)) that none of my other drives would rip securely (3 LG, 2 Pioneer, 1 Lite-On, 1 TSSTcorp).

Basically, my options were either to try to get a PX-230A or buy more copies in the hope that they would be from a different batch and free from errors. I did have one disc that was scratched (disc 1 of It's Too Late to Stop Now (Van Morrison)), but it had recently been re-mastered and re-released anyway, so that wasn't a big problem.

Although I only had two discs with issues it seemed like a long shot to buy additional copies in the hope that they would rip ok. Less about cost, more about it being a PITA.

I did eventually find the PX-230A listed as being in stock at one store, so I went ahead ordered it. After hearing nothing for about a week I contacted the store to find out what was happening. They cancelled the order and apologised as the drive wasn't in stock. Same thing happened a second time. I got lucky the third time, although it wasn't cheap; $80 for the drive, $120 shipping to Australia.

When I first tested it on my main PC, it had problems detecting C2 support accurately. It would detect C2 pointers immediately after starting the test irrespective of what disc I was using. I tried it on a different computer and it worked fine. It ripped both discs I had problems with, and it didn't even need to re-rip individual bad frames. It did have problems with the scratched CD but the scratch is pretty deep so I guess it's not surprising. I think it's down to the IDE chipset used on the motherboard, but I've ordered an IDE/ATAPI to USB bridge so it shouldn't be a problem anymore.

If you're using dBpoweramp to rip then it follows that you probably care about accuracy. Was it worth the money? Yes. Would I buy one again? Absolutely.

Hope that helps and sorry for the length




Hoju

[fadersup]

Thank you for all the information Hoju. I went ahead and bought the new one. There were refurbished ones for around $120 but didn't seem like it was a good way to go. A little on the expensive side but I guess you know that one.

Cheers,

Dave

[Porcus]

Off memory, with quite a few details omitted:

I have ripped some 7000 CDs, thousands of which bought 2nd hand. Almost 95 CDs contain one or more track that -- even after 3 different drives including a PX-230A either returned Insecure, or even worse.
- 56 have one or more «Insecure» track, but nothing worse
- nearly 40 (number a bit uncertain because a couple have later been replaced) had failed to rip with secure mode, and are ripped in burst mode in an attempt to get at least something out of the track -- some futile.
- including in these numbers are a few defective-by-design discs (copy protetction), which by accident found their way into my home. Although, those which actually have verified without problems, are not included here.

There were probably at least twice as many troublesome ones after 2 drives. I kept track of about 100 troublesome ones -- the lower number is in part due to not being from the entire collection, only the initial ripping sessions, and part were so obviously damaged that I did not have any hope of rescuing them with any drive, and then there were a few marked as defectives-by-design. The latter two groups were just disregarded when I counted.

About 25 (i.e. 25 percent) of the troublesome-but-plausibly-repairable ones, came out «Secure» or «Accurate» using just another 3rd or 4th drive. Different drives behave slightly different, so this is no surprise -- indeed, rather than hunting down an expensive mythic PX-230A, one could buy quite a few other drives.

Of the seventy-something I then put the PX-230A to the test on, about half of the tracks came out as corrected. (It was usually only made to rip single tracks.) Not only is that twice as many as the 1 out of 4 on the «just another drive», but it only got the ones that were still bad. Pretty impressive. And on the ones that still remain in Inaccurate or worse status, I suppose they have fewer errors. At least one CD was rippable in burst mode, but unlistenable -- is now tolerable.


It was seemingly not much better than the average drive on CDs which were simply manufacturing defects, though. This is hardly unexpected.


Worth the $80 I paid? Certainly. But that's for the troublesome part of 7000, more than average scratched. Had I only had a few hundred discs, all in good condition ...? Hardly.