Hello. I'm an intermediate user at best, and there's a lot of discussion here that I did not understand, so I have a few questions. My task is to rip my enitre CD collection (1500 CDs) about which I got excellent format and storage advice in the General Audio forum. My questions here are about the actual ripping process.

Please forgive me for these simplistic questions because my understanding and expertise are limited and I want to make sure of the best steps before I undertake a long and expensive project. Thanks.

1. The FAQ pinned here shows that my Lite-On SOHR 5238S CDRW drive is classified as not being a match with EAC. Does that mean I should use CDex instead? Or will EAC still work better even if it isn't optimal on my drive?

2. I have tested synchronized mode and secure mode. My rip speeds are averaging Secure: 9x, Synchornized: 25x. With 1500 CDs to rip, I am wary of secure mode speed even though I do want the best quality. My CDs are all in great condition (hardly any have scratches) so am I losing anything by ripping them in synchronized instead of secure?

3. If I were to buy Easy CDDA Creator, how would the quality of my ripped WAVs compare if they were ripped at say 12x vs. 48x? What I mean is, is there a "sweet spot" for rip speeds where I won't sacrifice too much quality for speed? Or can I go as fast as possible if my CDs do not have scratches?

4. And finally, does burn/ write speed also affect the longevity and quality of burned CDs? (I will be using Taiyo Yuden). I have been told that a faster burn doesn't write "as deep" so the CD can wear out faster. Will I get a more flimsy CDR if I burn at 48x as compared to 12x?

Thank you!

That dosen't mean that your drive dosen't work with EAC. It only means that your offset correction value, and your drives overreading capabilities dosen't match. Offset correction is usefull for comparing rips done with different drives, or for avoiding generation loss when making several generations of copies of copies, or for using AccurateRip. I'm not using offset correction, since i'm not doing any of the above...

There are 2 non-secure read modes : Fast mode is burst mode + sector synchronization, and is for non-accurate stream drives. Burst mode is a non-secure read-mode for accurate stream drives. Since your drive has accurate stream, then don't use fast mode. If you want to use a non-secure read mode, then use burst mode... For secure ripping you have a couple of choises...You could use secure mode without C2, or secure mode with C2 + test & copy, or burst mode + test & copy...

The ripping speed can have an influence on extraction in non-secure read modes, but if you use a secure read mode, then it's not a problem...

That depends entirely of which drive and which media is used...

-Martin.

Your writing is not "burning deep" or shallow, it is making a chemical change to small areas in a dye layer. This results in a different reflectivity than the background, thus creating areas can be later detected as different from the background. Possibly some smaller amount of dye than optimum is changed at very high speed; I've never read anything about that possibility.

What I have read is that faster writing requires more laser power. This causes more intense heating of the dye layer and subsequent sputtering: boiling off small amounts that condense on and contaminate the surrounding background. This apparently causes more problems for audio encoding that for data encoding due to the different error correction schemes. Current dye materials don't work so well at very low speeds either, but the lowest error rates occur at 8X in the tests I've read about. I also read that writing audio is limited to 25X maximum, at least in some of the Plextor drives, but I've never had a fast enough one to experiment with.