yes you're quite right actually but I also can't seem to locate any information on it being a rebadged unit (well I can find claims of a rebadge) can anyone point out to specific facts that state its a rebadge (you have indicated some info, do you own one and have tested it, otherwise where did you get your info (sharing is good (and also spath's cache explorer seems to disagree with some of your statements ), I can't seem to find any real test results on it anywhere and the few info I find seems to be contradictory, thanks in advance for all the help
(btw lacking that is there any good affordable drive wich can overread lead in/out and htoa? ) (the px-230 seemed liked a good candidate specially considering the c't review but I can't confirm those keys features ) (btw if it is a rebadge who is the oem manufacturer?)

BenQ/Philips ... regarding the drive's read offset and outer dimensions

He is talking about CD specs ... every track on a CD (and therefore a complete image, too) must consist of a whole-numbered multitude of audio frames (with one audio frame representing 588 audio samples).

The method of adding silent samples (according to your drive's write offset) to an image will cause the drive to pad silent samples at the end of each track/the image file until a whole-numbered multitude of frames is reached - only these can be written to disc (Feurio! allows you to control this behaviour btw). Thus, the last track will indeed be longer.

But this isn't the point here ... the point was about preventing the drive from not writing data from the original image due to the lack of overwriting ... and the method of adding samples ensures that everything is written to disc ... at the expense of some extra silence at the end.

I see your point JeanLuc.

What exactly can Feurio! do about this? Will it allow you to burn partial frames?

Feurio! just lets you choose whether to pad silence or to adjust trackmarks accordingly IIRC ... but the last track will always be padded.

I don't know exactly anymore because I stopped to use Feurio! (I actually bought a licence!) at the time the regular updates ceased. Modern drives aren't supported out-of-the-box anymore so you basically have to adjust everything by yourself in trial-and-error-procedures ...

Best CD burners are TEAC (every model) !

Shoot, I have a burner that will overwrite its write samples offset and it's not a TEAC.

LG makes drives that have no write samples offset.
(Edit: No, my burner's not an LG either )

You must be talking about some other criteria?

Ah, now I got it. I thought that if the image you want to burn is compliant with the red-book standard (has to, since the image comes from a CD) and then you add 30 samples of silence to overcome the write offset, the burner would truncate the last 30 samples and the data written will be identical with the one from the source. So, if you add those 30 samples, then the burner (or is the application?) will add additional 558 samples of digital silence?

You actually have to shift the data to overcome the offset if the burning software isn't doing this already, but yes 558 samples will be padded to complete the last audio frame.

The LG GSA-4167B is based on a Renesas R8J32007FPV chipset, while the LG GSA-4166B is based on a Panasonic MN103SA6GSJ chipset.

and does the drives read offset match that of a benq or does its size match that of a philips, you keep working on the assunption that it must be a rebadge therefore I should look for those details but I have yet to see a statement that goes something like "ah this drive has x feature/size/offset therefore its a rebadge" all I have been able to find so far is statements that the drive is a rebadge and therefore must lack certain features not a real reviews of its actual features,( just an assumption that it can't have certain features because it must be a rebadge and... a bit of circular reasoning going on there...), wich is what Im looking for so if anyone can point me in the proper way please let me know, thanks in advance

more to the point does anyone here actually own one?

I should have mine tomorrow...Why does it matter if it is a rebadge? It has been proven as one of the best for Audio reading. If it does the job very well, does it really matter?

my point exactly It seems the whole rebadge issue has become the dominant aspect whenever one adresses the drive but no actual discution on its features has been made, btw funkyblue when you get yours tomorrow would you kindly test it for for htoa and overreading lead-in/out capabilities (pretty please) if those features turn up positive Im ordering myself one too
(on a side note to all who seem so keen on the rebadge = pure evil ) if it should be so crappy, then what were the c't people smoking during their reviews hey? are we to then just dismiss their analisys completly? (one could argue such magazines can be bought off but why then would they preffer the cheapest plextor over the Uber expensive plextor premium... ??? )

(hell I hope its a rebadge maybe then I can just get a cheaper unit from the oem and flash its firmware )

c't is widely known as being incorruptible and one of the only remaining thourough and rather reliable PC magazines around. A rebadged drive is not bad per se. Don't forget that the firmware makes a big difference too, even though the hardware might be shared among different brands. Plextor Premium 2 doesn't have any mythical superpower, it is normal that other drives can be better in certain aspects.

Nobody is saying that it's bad, it's just that if it isn't a real Plextor drive, chances are good that it won't support overreading or reading pre-track 1 data.

I understand what you mean but the problem is I can't find a single review anywhere that
a) confirms its not a real plextor and therefore It should't have those features or
b) that it doesn't have those features and therefore must be a rebadge

(btw why can only real plextors have htoa and proper overread (I can understand the historical argument that only true plextors have had this, but other than that is it some secret uber patented technology no other manufacturer could ever aquire? ), the few threads I have seen here on its features as of now remain limited to its cache and even that seems to be disputed, one would expect that a drive already a few months old should have been reviewed by someone somewhere

I have run 1000's of cds the last few weeks through many different drives, the PX-230A so far comes out tops (have a PX708a and Nec to test). It is a quality drive.

Just visit the Accuraterip Drive Offset Database and you'll see ... besides, the PX-230A is based on an ALi chipset whereas every single one of Plextor's own productions is based on Sanyo chipsets.

so can you post some sort of review please? does it indeed not overread or handle htoa?

What does EAC say about audio caching with this drive?
What is the C2 accuracy?
Will any of the three modes of gap detection work when set to secure?

EAC says yes to Cache / Accurate Stream / C2.

Gap Detection Mode C always works. A, B or both should also work. It's rare that A and B don't work.

The question is whether any of these modes will always work with the detection accuracy set to "Secure".

There are drives that will hang with the accuracy set to "Secure" in any mode.

on a side note how does one test for overread in linux ? (or in windows (wine) btw? )

>EAX says yes to Cache

I am 99% sure this drive does not cache.

>so can you post some sort of review please? does it indeed not overread or handle htoa?

Have not tested those (as they are not important to me). If anyone can point to a commercial audio cd that has !=NULL audio samples right upto the last 768 samples, I want that CD.

And what does Feurio! say about the drive?


Just about any CD that is AAD that has not been recently remastered will do the trick especially if it was released in the 1980s.

But forget about that. It's very easy to make your own CD that has HTOA and non-silent samples at the ends to test with, even with drives that can't overwrite since their write offset is only a fraction of the read offset. This should not be a problem.

Edit: punctuation

I have to admit to being new to this level of high quality ripping but im on a budget constraint with bitperfect quality requirement (if all goes well by tomorrow my exam season is over and the odd hundreds of cds I own are going to be ripped flac and burned into dvd+r or a nas, and hopefully that will be the last I will see of them for the next 3 to 5 years of being away in college in some cramped rented room where every inch of space matters a whole lot (wich made me get the ideia of investing on a domestic low power nas, a laptop a replacement for my iriver-h140 (the original got mugged) some sort of network attached player hooked up to the nas and maybe a discount dell tft as a tv replacement or something to plug a video player to , a bed a blanket and a if there's enough money left an irex illiad or some other device (saving some space by discarding book cases ) and getting all the cultural benefits of home stuffed in a rented room a couble of meters wide or inside a backpack and a 1998 citroen saxo ;)or worst case cenario in a tent and showering at the local swiming pool ), so getting it done right the first time is very but very important
(translation expect a whole festival of new threads on the perfect linux ripping rig, (something wich can handle almost a thousand in two months), budget scalable silent nas solutions, budget networked multimedia player and speakers for closed spaces, tips on how to store the original cds in a couple of years (im guessing tupperware and mothballs are a stupid idea ), basicly the zen guide to digital audio setup , like i said everything is on a budget priority of function over form, well anyway that will be something for those other threads I just figured It would be civilized to explain my eagerness to get information wheter or not the px-230 fits in the specs ,and what other alternatives I should be looking for then )in looking for, my apologies for the ranting and thanks for all the help guys

Hey Guys,
Just received my PX-230A direct from the USA. (I live in Australia)
Well it's very fast, maxed out at 51x in burst mode! It is faster that my now dead Premium Drive.

I have not had any issues ripping CDS200 tracks so far.
EAC detects it as caching (even with the new command), offset is 738+ and it cannot read into the lead out. (Get timing problems and Accurite Rip, tells me the last track i not accurate)
Also, the read command is different (MMC1) to other Plextor drives I have had.

Any tests people wish me to do, please let me know.
Cheers

Do you mean -usefua?

EAC detecting that a drive caches audio data after using this switch does in no way mean that it will not work properly.


Anansi and I mentioned a couple of things:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....&pid=413842
I'm not expecting and answer for C2 accuracy though a confirmation that EAC detects that the drive can report C2 error information would be nice.

You might also see what spath's cache explorer has to say about this drive on your system regarding caching and the force unit access command.

Thanks for the update funkyblue!

I hope you don't mind that the drive can't overread. I still don't think that's such a big deal considering what a good job it does ripping. Hopefully you have space in your system to also include a drive that can if this is really important to you.

I really do not appreciate your condescending comments~!, you don't need to be like that! Thats your opinion.

IMO overreading is not as important as the ability to rip accurately. I'm sorry that you wish me not to express it and I'm sorry you get so easily bothered.

off-topic, then what is overread good for?, back on topic Funkyblue thanks for all your help , but please do checkout cache explorer if you find the time it does seems to contracdict EACS cache analisys wich in itself deselves a closer looker since it could be a software bug in one of two very important pieces of software so I would seem something well worth looinkg into,
thaks for all your help you'be been great

In the case of the PX-230A, it reads 738/44100 seconds earlier than the commonly accepted standard.

EAC will compensate for shift by delaying the data by 738/44100 seconds. This is no problem until you reach the end of the disc. Some drives will not provide data past what they consider the end of the last track, the area that is known as the lead-out. When the drive cannot overread into the lead-out and depending how EAC is configured, it will either cut the last track 738 sample pairs short or it will pad the last 738 sample pairs with silence. For discs where the last 738 pairs of stereo samples are silent, this makes no difference. When they aren't silent they cannot be recovered.

I have met a few people who believed that offset samples would be missing from the end of every track. Hopefully you can see from my explanation that this isn't the case.

Some drives read later than the commonly accpted standard. In this case EAC will read data early and the beginning of the first track will have to come from the lead-IN.

ok so what does reading into the leadout provide?

In the case of the PX-230A, it would allow you to recover the last 738 samples of the last track if they aren't silent. Because the PX-230A cannot overread into the lead-out, the last 738 samples of the last track will always be silent. All this assumes you've calibrated your drive to the accepted standard using read offset correction, of course.

and how many albums out there would suffer an improper rip from that?

It depends on the age of your discs. Most discs released in the last 10 years will not be affected by a lack of overreading. And of those that are affected, we're talking about extremely low level signals; usually nothing above -80dB, -70dB tops. With your music cranked to the level of a jackhammer, the level of this noise is no more than background noise in the common home.

but it won't be bit-perfect now will it
and btw on ther other side what do I gain from lead-in overreading=

If the track is offset-corrected, no, it won't be bit perfect.

Overreading from the lead-in is useful for extracting the first track that begins too early from a CD that was poorly mastered. I mentioned an example of this here.

And, of course, it is useful for drives that require a negative offset correction though there aren't that many.

Thanx for sharing. Since I've become aware of this drive, I've really been wanting to buy one to see if it a better DAE ripper than my TSST TS-H352A and rips faster too. I can get one at Newegg.com for under $50 shipped. Except for our current president, it's great to live in the USA

That new soon to be released version of dBpowerAMP has me intrigued. Spoon really likes this Plextor drive.

How does the Pioneer 112 compair with the pioneer 111 the the NEC equivlents in the read qualty stakes. I noticed that the Pioneer rips the HTOA which is awesome. I'm looking for a new drive because My current NEC 3520 sucks for reading discs as soon as there is any little poxy little scratches, but it burns great.

Also considering an LG, but i hear that the newer LG drive are much slower in EAC than the old and now hard to find LG GSA-4166B, but LG's read the HTOA and have a +0 read ofset which opens up many more options for software to burn audio cd's.

A Plextor would be nice but they obviously are expensive even when second hand.