I'm building a new system and would like to put in two drives - one drive exclusively for DAE using EAC (maybe PlexTools, which I've never tried), and a DVD burner. I want to use the DAE drive to archive my CDs in FLAC. The DVD burner I think I would use as my general-purpose drive. I've search the forum and have found some good information on drives, but a lot of it doesn't address the best two drive combination and some of it is from the fall of last year. I'm pretty much a newbie and value the opinions I see here. Comments and specific recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I'll probably use this system for years and I'm willing to make the upfront investment so price is not much of a concern - but no sense in paying more than I need to.
Thanks for your help.
--jd

My recommendation:

CDRW: Plextor Premium
DVDRW: Plextor PX-716A (alternatively LG GSA-4163B)

No doubt about it ...

The Premium has decent error recovery abilities with Plextools, is fast, overreads lead-in/out and has good CDRW writing quality (as has the PX-716A which is a capable DVD reader as well).

The LG 4163B, on the other hand, is cheap, writes good, has decent DVD error correction and has a 0 sample write offset (within EAC) so you can get 100% bit-true copies without anything missing from the lead-in or lead-out.

Thanks JeanLuc, but your reply has me rethinking my assumptions. I assumed that a simple cd drive would be better for DAE than a DVDRW and maybe that is a bad assumption. Please let me ask a few you a few more questions.
1) If you had this two-drive setup, would you only use the Premium for DAE or would you be indifferent and use the PX-716A also (and or the 4163B).
2) If I wanted to rip a bunch of CDs to FLAC for archive and at the same time to a lossy format for my portable players would you use EAC or Plextools.
3) If you were to use EAC, which of the three drives you listed were you prefer.

Thanks for your help.
--jd

JeanLu, I see Plextor also makes a PX-716SA. Since my MB supports SATA, I'm thinking this would be a good choice. Do you think this drive is identical to the PX-716A except for SATA? Does this drive have your stamp of approval?
Thanks.
--jd

Hardware-wise, the PX-716SA is, apart from its P-ATA-To-S-ATA bridge chip, identical to the PX-716A but there are a lot of reported incompatibilities between mainboard SATA chipsets and SATA optical drives (including the 716SA) ... see this thread for more details ... http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=120684

The Premium is a near-perfect drive for DAE in my opinion (and I own two of them, along with a 712A and a 716A) ... with using Plextools Professional, there hasn't been a single copy protected disc that I couldn't rip thus far and I could save many scratched CD's that none of my other drives could rip ... additionally, the Q-Check feature allows you to run quality tests on blank and recorded media which is a nice add-on. The 716A does allow Q-Check for CD/DVD as well so if you want to invest in a single drive only, the 716A is a highly versatile device.

Getting a pure CD-ROM would be a waste of money IMO (you'd better go for a DVD-ROM then).

I must confess that I like Plextor so my recommendations might be biased a little bit (you will get good DVD writig from e.g. BenQ and NEC as well) ... but if DAE is a serious issue, Plextor is a company you can bet your money on.

I use the Premium and the 716A for DAE (with Plextools or EAC) ... I am paranoid and perform a second extraction on a different drive every time to be sure that I got an accurate rip.



I would use EAC with MAREO since Plextools' encoding and filename feature is a pain in the arse ... Plextools are good to rip to images for CD copying or to rip to single-track wav files and to use an additional frontend for encoding.



I would use the Premium for single-track-ripping first ... 716A support isn't completely implemented in EAC (the C2 feature is missing) but a new version is on the way. In my opinion, the 4163B is good for writing audio and average on reading.

hell - I need to own a premium, but it is still 80€! that is pain in the ass....

The LG-4163B (as Jean Luc said) is an excellent, cheap DVD writer. It's media support is great and writes at a good speed. I haven't had a single problem with mine (or the older LG 4120B in my other machine). Lite-On and Sony's (same chipset, nearly same drive) 16x writers are dissapointing - they don't work very well on cheap media. There are also some nice models from NEC and Pioneer, which should be cheaper than the LG and as good.

Plextor drives are superb for DAE, but their DVD±RW drives have very limited media compatibility (no probs with Verbatim, TDK or Sony, lots with cheaper stuff) and average writing quality, I'd go for either a NEC (best features/price ratio, lots of cool third party firmwares) or Pioneer DVD±RW, jut my two cents.

Edit: grammar.

On a side note, SATA bandwidth for optical drives is overkill in my opinion, what's more the Plextor offering isn't native SATA but bridged.

Thank you all for your comments and recommendations. I ordered a Premium and a PX-716SA on Sunday after not being able to pick them up locally. I should get them tomorrow - can't wait.
Thanks again.
--jd