I'm trying to figure out what cd-rom drive that was ever produced is the best for digital audio extraction. I currently use a Plextor PX-230a, and it works well. Except for the audio-caching "feature". So I suppose the criteria should be: no audio caching, excellent C2 reliability, accurate stream (do any drives not have that?), and what else?

Are cd-rw drives better or worse than just plain cd-rom drives, and how do dvd drives figure into the picture?

I know that the Samsung OEM drives that came with my computer aren't very good, at least compared to the Plextor.

So far, I think one candidate could be the Plextor 40 Ultrawide. But I haven't been doing DAE very long, and don't have experience with too many different models.

Any thoughts?

Excellent correction capabilities and 0 read / write offset are also good. If a read offset is there, the drive should be able to overread its offset into the lead-in or lead-out.
I know that older LG DVD-RAM drives don't have a write offset, but new ones do.

Oh, and as I stated in another thread, my Mitsumi CR-4802TE does not support Accurate Stream.

My favourite (when summing up all the facts) is still the PX-40TSi ...

The good:

·No caching = ultra-fast
·Reliable CU reporting (CU meaning uncorrectable C2)
·Overread I/O
·Reads every copy protected CD and interpolates correctly with CDS
·Build quality is far better than anything that is produced today
·Reads discs with extreme jitter where even the Premium or various LiteOn drives fail
·EAC speeddown during re-reading on errors isn't as slowish as encountered with various IDE drives

The bad:

Has some problems with severe disc damage (scratches) ... other drives definitely do perform better in that area.

I wish Plextor would have decided to produce a PX-52TSi ...

Can we really even determine that one specific drive is better than any other?

I've always been happy with my Plextor PX4012A. It has AccurateStream. It caches, but as with most other Plextors, caching can be disabled. It is C2-capable, but who knows how reliable that is. All of the same can be said for many Plextors.

Plextor UltraPlex 40max SCSI (I prefer the external model)

>Can we really even determine that one specific drive is better than any other?

Yes you could, you could take every result submitted to accuraterip (the scratched cds should be distributed evenly across drives) then run accuraterip on every result to see which drive is the most accurate.

If I had more time I would do this and draw up lists, but far too busy atm.

Hmm. Interesting idea with AccurateRip. One more question. Obviously the 40tsi isn't produced anymore and if someone was interested in getting one they'd have to find one used. Is this a good idea? I mean, are used drives worth it, in general. The reason I'm wondering is because you can find all sorts of things on ebay...

Oh I forgot to ask how do you disable audio caching? Besides EAC's method of overreading and using Plextools, and if -usefua seems to have no effect, of course. Man I wish -usefua worked.

Last year I picked a lot of 3 UltraPlex 40max SCSI drives new on eBay (internals), still wrapped in plastic & unused. My main external drive crapped out, so i just opened it up and swapped one of the internals into the Plextor SCSI enclosure. $52 shipped for all 3. Not a bad deal at all and a couple to spare.