Review: Best burners for reading/burning audio CDs, Bonus: CD-R media test Options

[Anansi]

Have not tested those (as they are not important to me). If anyone can point to a commercial audio cd that has !=NULL audio samples right upto the last 768 samples, I want that CD.

I have to admit to being new to this level of high quality ripping but im on a budget constraint with bitperfect quality requirement (if all goes well by tomorrow my exam season is over and the odd hundreds of cds I own are going to be ripped flac and burned into dvd+r or a nas, and hopefully that will be the last I will see of them for the next 3 to 5 years of being away in college in some cramped rented room where every inch of space matters a whole lot (wich made me get the ideia of investing on a domestic low power nas, a laptop a replacement for my iriver-h140 (the original got mugged) some sort of network attached player hooked up to the nas and maybe a discount dell tft as a tv replacement or something to plug a video player to , a bed a blanket and a if there's enough money left an irex illiad or some other device (saving some space by discarding book cases ) and getting all the cultural benefits of home stuffed in a rented room a couble of meters wide or inside a backpack and a 1998 citroen saxo ;)or worst case cenario in a tent and showering at the local swiming pool ), so getting it done right the first time is very but very important
(translation expect a whole festival of new threads on the perfect linux ripping rig, (something wich can handle almost a thousand in two months), budget scalable silent nas solutions, budget networked multimedia player and speakers for closed spaces, tips on how to store the original cds in a couple of years (im guessing tupperware and mothballs are a stupid idea ), basicly the zen guide to digital audio setup , like i said everything is on a budget priority of function over form, well anyway that will be something for those other threads I just figured It would be civilized to explain my eagerness to get information wheter or not the px-230 fits in the specs ,and what other alternatives I should be looking for then )in looking for, my apologies for the ranting and thanks for all the help guys

[funkyblue]

Hey Guys,
Just received my PX-230A direct from the USA. (I live in Australia)
Well it's very fast, maxed out at 51x in burst mode! It is faster that my now dead Premium Drive.

I have not had any issues ripping CDS200 tracks so far.
EAC detects it as caching (even with the new command), offset is 738+ and it cannot read into the lead out. (Get timing problems and Accurite Rip, tells me the last track i not accurate)
Also, the read command is different (MMC1) to other Plextor drives I have had.

Any tests people wish me to do, please let me know.
Cheers

This post has been edited by funkyblue: Jul 21 2006, 01:48

[greynol]

EAC detects it as caching (even with the new command)

Do you mean -usefua?

EAC detecting that a drive caches audio data after using this switch does in no way mean that it will not work properly.

Any tests people wish me to do, please let me know.

Anansi and I mentioned a couple of things:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....&pid=413842
I'm not expecting and answer for C2 accuracy though a confirmation that EAC detects that the drive can report C2 error information would be nice.

You might also see what spath's cache explorer has to say about this drive on your system regarding caching and the force unit access command.

Thanks for the update funkyblue!

I hope you don't mind that the drive can't overread. I still don't think that's such a big deal considering what a good job it does ripping. Hopefully you have space in your system to also include a drive that can if this is really important to you.

This post has been edited by greynol: Jul 21 2006, 02:11

[funkyblue]

I really do not appreciate your condescending comments~!, you don't need to be like that! Thats your opinion.

[greynol]

I really do not appreciate your condescending comments~!, you don't need to be like that! Thats your opinion.

IMO overreading is not as important as the ability to rip accurately. I'm sorry that you wish me not to express it and I'm sorry you get so easily bothered.

[Anansi]

I really do not appreciate your condescending comments~!, you don't need to be like that! Thats your opinion.

IMO overreading is not as important as the ability to rip accurately. I'm sorry that you wish me not to express it and I'm sorry you get so easily bothered.

off-topic, then what is overread good for?, back on topic Funkyblue thanks for all your help , but please do checkout cache explorer if you find the time it does seems to contracdict EACS cache analisys wich in itself deselves a closer looker since it could be a software bug in one of two very important pieces of software so I would seem something well worth looinkg into,
thaks for all your help you'be been great

[greynol]

off-topic, then what is overread good for?

In the case of the PX-230A, it reads 738/44100 seconds earlier than the commonly accepted standard.

EAC will compensate for shift by delaying the data by 738/44100 seconds. This is no problem until you reach the end of the disc. Some drives will not provide data past what they consider the end of the last track, the area that is known as the lead-out. When the drive cannot overread into the lead-out and depending how EAC is configured, it will either cut the last track 738 sample pairs short or it will pad the last 738 sample pairs with silence. For discs where the last 738 pairs of stereo samples are silent, this makes no difference. When they aren't silent they cannot be recovered.

I have met a few people who believed that offset samples would be missing from the end of every track. Hopefully you can see from my explanation that this isn't the case.

Some drives read later than the commonly accpted standard. In this case EAC will read data early and the beginning of the first track will have to come from the lead-IN.

[Anansi]

ok so what does reading into the leadout provide?

[greynol]

ok so what does reading into the leadout provide?

In the case of the PX-230A, it would allow you to recover the last 738 samples of the last track if they aren't silent. Because the PX-230A cannot overread into the lead-out, the last 738 samples of the last track will always be silent. All this assumes you've calibrated your drive to the accepted standard using read offset correction, of course.

[Anansi]

ok so what does reading into the leadout provide?

In the case of the PX-230A, it would allow you to recover the last 738 samples of the last track if they aren't silent. Because the PX-230A cannot overread into the lead-out, the last 738 samples of the last track will always be silent. All this assumes you've calibrated your drive to the accepted standard using read offset correction, of course.

and how many albums out there would suffer an improper rip from that?

[greynol]

In the case of the PX-230A, it would allow you to recover the last 738 samples of the last track if they aren't silent. Because the PX-230A cannot overread into the lead-out, the last 738 samples of the last track will always be silent. All this assumes you've calibrated your drive to the accepted standard using read offset correction, of course.

and how many albums out there would suffer an improper rip from that?

It depends on the age of your discs. Most discs released in the last 10 years will not be affected by a lack of overreading. And of those that are affected, we're talking about extremely low level signals; usually nothing above -80dB, -70dB tops. With your music cranked to the level of a jackhammer, the level of this noise is no more than background noise in the common home.

This post has been edited by greynol: Jul 21 2006, 23:13

[Anansi]

In the case of the PX-230A, it would allow you to recover the last 738 samples of the last track if they aren't silent. Because the PX-230A cannot overread into the lead-out, the last 738 samples of the last track will always be silent. All this assumes you've calibrated your drive to the accepted standard using read offset correction, of course.

and how many albums out there would suffer an improper rip from that?

It depends on the age of your discs. Most discs released in the last 10 years will not be affected by a lack of overreading. And of those that are affected, we're talking about extremely low level signals; usually nothing above -80dB, -70dB tops. With your music cranked to the level of a jackhammer, the level of this noise is no more than background noise in the common home.

but it won't be bit-perfect now will it
and btw on ther other side what do I gain from lead-in overreading=

[greynol]

but it won't be bit-perfect now will it
and btw on ther other side what do I gain from lead-in overreading=

If the track is offset-corrected, no, it won't be bit perfect.

Overreading from the lead-in is useful for extracting the first track that begins too early from a CD that was poorly mastered. I mentioned an example of this here.

And, of course, it is useful for drives that require a negative offset correction though there aren't that many.

[audioaficionado]

Hey Guys,
Just received my PX-230A direct from the USA. (I live in Australia)
Well it's very fast, maxed out at 51x in burst mode! It is faster that my now dead Premium Drive.

Any tests people wish me to do, please let me know.
Cheers

Thanx for sharing. Since I've become aware of this drive, I've really been wanting to buy one to see if it a better DAE ripper than my TSST TS-H352A and rips faster too. I can get one at Newegg.com for under $50 shipped. Except for our current president, it's great to live in the USA

That new soon to be released version of dBpowerAMP has me intrigued. Spoon really likes this Plextor drive.

[Ragnarok]

How does the Pioneer 112 compair with the pioneer 111 the the NEC equivlents in the read qualty stakes. I noticed that the Pioneer rips the HTOA which is awesome. I'm looking for a new drive because My current NEC 3520 sucks for reading discs as soon as there is any little poxy little scratches, but it burns great.

Also considering an LG, but i hear that the newer LG drive are much slower in EAC than the old and now hard to find LG GSA-4166B, but LG's read the HTOA and have a +0 read ofset which opens up many more options for software to burn audio cd's.

A Plextor would be nice but they obviously are expensive even when second hand.

This post has been edited by Ragnarok: May 29 2007, 13:11

[Waywisher]

Hi All, this thread seems to have been quiet for some time.. so, hoping this is the place for it, here goes..

Background: I'm nearing the end of ripping my cd collection to FLAC via EAC (using offset, wiki settings etc. on an XP pro machine). I've currently got two drives, a Sony DVD RW DW-G120A and an older Sony DVD-ROM DDU1612. The 1612 seems to rip faster and so this has been the primary drive. The vast majority of CDs have ripped fine. Some rips have produced errors on a couple of tracks (not just at the start or end of the CD) and a couple have produced read/sync errors for the entire CD. Some of this population have subsequently been ripped fine with the G120A drive, some haven't. I'm now down to some CDR copies (so that we could have a CD in each car, and subsequently the original has been lost or scratched too much) that are approx. 10 years old - these are resulting in a much higher level of errors/failed rips.

I'm not sure whether the failed rips are down to the ageing drives, or rubbish media.. ideas?

Anyway, I'm now considering the purchase of a new drive and think a few things might be of help to others out there using EAC (especially UK versions):

1) Are there currently any manufacturers that are considered better than others, like Plextor? Best, okay, rubbish?
2) Is it better for ripping purposes to go for a CD-RW drive rather than a combo drive?
3) Are there any drives that are generally accepted to be the best? Top end, middle & budget?
4) Any other thoughts & suggestions?

Thanks for reading this far!
Cheers

[Sebastian Mares]

1) Plextor stopped manufacturing own units. At least their BD drives are rebranded LG devices, don't know much about their DVD drives.
2) No.

Currently I am using a Samsung unit that was rather cheap (almost 30 €) and am happy with it. I also have good experience with Pioneer drives.

[westgroveg]

Pioneer use the best optics & hardware, LG/Lite-on technology is on the lower end, but I would prefer a drive that doesn't cache audio data & has decent C2 (you have to test) you can get fast ripping with EAC using Test & Copy which is very secure, I had a drive with good C2 (at least EAC liked it) and didn't cache I was getting speeds of 17x but before I started enabling C2 I did a lot of C2/non C2 cross checking, EAC + drive combination needs to be proven.

Oh and Sony drives are rebagged Lite-on's.

Oh, oh and and, for damaged CD's Plextools is much faster & better at recovering than EAC, you know I had a pretty tight Plextools guide writen up but it was deleted from the server and I never made a back-up, haha, what a bitch

This post has been edited by westgroveg: Oct 15 2008, 01:54

[dreamliner77]

Oh and Sony drives are rebagged Lite-on's.

Sony's are now rebadged Optiarc's (Sony/NEC collaborative)

[francesco]

i can't believe plextor was so worse

[Juan C.]

Oh and Sony drives are rebagged Lite-on's.

Sony's are now rebadged Optiarc's (Sony/NEC collaborative)

The model AD-7190 is a rebadged LiteOn .

[Waywisher]

Thanks for the replies..

Looks like I'm heading for a Pioneer. Does anyone know if there is much difference, and if so which is better for ripping, between the DVR-216BK and the DVR-215BK? I assume the 216 is a newer version of the 215? I think I read somewhere that someone preferred the 215 though... ?

Cheers in advance

[knucklehead]

Thanks for the replies..

Looks like I'm heading for a Pioneer. Does anyone know if there is much difference, and if so which is better for ripping, between the DVR-216BK and the DVR-215BK? I assume the 216 is a newer version of the 215? I think I read somewhere that someone preferred the 215 though... ?

Cheers in advance

This might be of some use:

115

116

I assume these are just the US numbered versions of the same drives.

[alexn]

Hi everybody

My Plextor Premium is dead (bummer!), and, as luck would have it, I have a bunch of old CD-Rs (audio, not data) going bad which I need to extract.

Reading over this discussion has been instructive, but I'm still confused.

Which is a *CURRENT* CD/DVD drive excellent at DAE? By "current" I mean one I can buy now, new, in a store or on-line.

For instance, cdrinfo.com gives good marks to the Plextor PX-755, but Plextor no longer makes it, and none of the retailers I know have it any longer. BenQ drives are supposed to be good, but it appears BenQ doesn't market its drives in North America or Europe. And so on. I have a Pioneer 116 (also an older LiteOn and a Pioneer 112) but I want something better.

Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

[happyman]

Hi everybody

My Plextor Premium is dead (bummer!), and, as luck would have it, I have a bunch of old CD-Rs (audio, not data) going bad which I need to extract.

Reading over this discussion has been instructive, but I'm still confused.

Which is a *CURRENT* CD/DVD drive excellent at DAE? By "current" I mean one I can buy now, new, in a store or on-line.

For instance, cdrinfo.com gives good marks to the Plextor PX-755, but Plextor no longer makes it, and none of the retailers I know have it any longer. BenQ drives are supposed to be good, but it appears BenQ doesn't market its drives in North America or Europe. And so on. I have a Pioneer 116 (also an older LiteOn and a Pioneer 112) but I want something better.

Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Any takers on alexn's question?

I'm in the market for an external burning/ripping drive, any suggestions? It is now mid-2009. Times have changed since 2006.