Until recently, I had just one CD drive and it happened to be my HP CD-Writer 9110i Plus, which maxes out at 32x while reading. To give the drive a break, and lengthen its life, I bought a Sony internal EIDE 52x CD Reader.

I am really surprised with how much faster EAC is at ripping with the new drive. Of course, the drive itself is faster but this is more then I expected.

One thing I have noticed is that EAC says the Sony drive supports C2 Error Correction. Could that have something to do with it?

Thanks!

Yes. C2 will speed up the ripping, but I would not recommend using it.

read more:


http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/showth...hlight=%2Ac2%2A


http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/showth...hlight=%2Ac2%2A

Thanks man!

np.

I will have to disagree with that based on my own recent tests -- with the disclaimer that the C2 "feature" should be checked thoroughly if you're going to use it. Do some rips using scratched CD's (with and without C2 checking active), then actually listen to the tracks for clicks/pops. If they consistently aren't any worse (or just aren't any) with "C2" active, then it's probably safe -- and it should significantly reduce wear and tear if you do a lot of rips, as well as speeding up ripping.

This still doesn't solve the problem I've heard about where the drive sometimes return the error correct and sometimes don't.

I read that C2 is supposed to be much more accurate if implemented correctly (previous 3 words are the key). Apparently, there's a chance (1/65535?) of EAC mis-detecting an error too, but the chance is supposed to be much less with properly implemented C2 (1:billion or something).

Anyway, I've never had a problem with it. It probably depends 100% on a particular drive. The author of EAC (Andre) says it's OK to use, and OK not to use... <shrug?>.

I would swear I could hear more clicks/pops on a really problematic track when NOT using C2, than when using C2. For that reason, I'm going with it at the moment. If I run into any serious issues (obvious failure to detect errors) I'll change my stance on it.