Hello all,

This is my first post here on the forums so be easy on me. If this is the wrong forum for this topic i'm sorry, but wasn't exactly sure which forum to post it in.

Anyways, I was wondering what are some of the best cdrw drives for audio extraction? I was kinda interested in the TDK brand, but after reading some reviews at cnet im not that sure now.

I usually extract to wav and encode to mp3 format just to let you know.

Thanks

I would suggest you to take a look at http://cd-rw.org

The guys there have quite some knowlege on CDrw drives.

Regards;

Roberto.

Andre, the developer of EAC, has often suggested that the Plextor 24x [or later?] are the superior all-in-one drive for EAC [and rip at @10x in EAC secure mode which i think is VERY fast]...but that includes that fact that most [all?] use cache, which is not ideal...

The Plextor drives that i have seen reviews of also read both Lead-in and Lead-out, which makes them worth looking into simply because of this...not many others can do this...

check out this for info
http://www.ping.be/satcp/

and this for DRIVE FEATURES
http://www.ping.be/satcp/eacoffsets01.htm#-

I've had great luck with both Plextor and Teac brands. I'd suggest however, that if you're going to do a lot of ripping and burning, get a separate CD-ROM for ripping and CD-RW for burning only. I burnt out my Plextor 8/4/32 CD-RW in about a year by using it for both tasks. Currently I'm using a Teac CD540 for ripping and a Teac CD-W524E for burning. Rocks!

I tried using a friend's Lite-on 163 DVD drive for ripping. (16xDVD, 40xCD)

With Adaptec ASPI v4.60, I was able to obtain a minimum 16x(!) ripping speed in EAC in secure mode (the drive has accurate stream and C2 (which I haven't tested or enabled), and no caching). Even without ASPI, it rips at 10x-14x.

It's also not too expensive; $50 online. It also rips DVD's very quickly, getting transfers over 10MB/s on the inner tracks. It plays DVD video at 1x though, so it's very quiet. Overall, I highly recommend this drive if you need a separate CD/DVD drive, or even if you don't

With a drive that rips at speeds of 16x -24x, it's hard even for a dual-processor machine to encode MPC fast enough

this makes a great deal of sense, and i guess it is a blessing that my CDRW [Samsung 212] doesn't even have the capability of extracting digital audio correctly...otherwise it would probably be dead by now

if anyone has experience with a CDROM/DVDROM or CDRW drive that contains the following features, please let me know...i am in the market for a new drive, and i have a few favorites in mind, but i could use some advice...

+ accurate stream
- audio cache
+ C2 capability
+ Read/Write in Lead-in/Lead-Out
+ Read/Write CD-Text

a high secure rip [~10x or more]
if DVDROM, then RPC-1 or RPC-1-able
if CDRW, then CLONECD, NERO, and EAC compatible

so far, i only know of one drive that meets MOST of these "requirements", the Plextor CD-RW PlexWriter 12/10/32A (PX-W1210TA) with firmware <1.05

The LTD-163 drive I was talking about has a patch to deactivate the RPC-2 here, making it region-free. I haven't tested it myself, but according to some firmware forums, it works.

Actually I would prefer to have a regular cdrom for ripping like you guys suggest. I would like to have something that rips fast and secure under eac. Currently I have a "Creative" cdrom drive, but it sucks bad and causes errors all the time. I use a HP cdrw for my burning needs. The reason I was asking about cdrw's is TDK has one that rips "AUDIO" at 40x :eek: , but i'm not sure how well it would work with EAC and all.

BTW, thanks for the replies

Nero (the company, or at least some of their developers) has some nice, free tools for getting info on CDROM, CD-R and DVD drives... including speed checks, overburn testing & lotsa nice stuff.

Also information (a database) of various drives & writing/ripping speeds, etc (which might be useful in deciding on a cd-rw drive):

http://www.cdspeed2000.com/

Really great site, terrific software. Another way to access the downloads directly is here:

http://209.15.164.79/go.php3?link=download.html

You can't go wrong with the plex...... Simply the best due to the extra error correcting circuitry..... That's what i run and it,s great

Well, you could if you didn't want to pay a $50 premium over other burners (for doing essentially the same thing). I dunno, i paid $87 (pre-shipping) at Newegg for my AOpen 24x10x40, and i had an AOpen 6x4x32 before that. Never a single coaster, their burners have top notch buffer underrun protection.

Gee, thanks

Well, actually the best advice I can think of is that get a Plextor. They never let you down.

I agree with you, except in the area of price. It's not quite like paying more for better sounding speakers... you may or may not have a better experience with a Plextor, but you will certainly pay more. Yes, they are the best burners, without question... that wasn't the point i was trying to make .