I'm in the market for one of these for the sole purpose of DAE. I have an older computer so I dont want the newer 712 or 716's but i found a reasonably priced 708 on ebay. Does anyone personally rip with this drive or know anything about it and could tell me if it's a good drive for DAE? Thanks!

Using "EAC -usefua", I get consistent 8x rip speeds on PX-708A. The newer PX-760A only does 3x (secure mode).

Because of that, I've kept the PX-708A. Every once in a while, the PX-708A will rip a disc @ 20x but I haven't figured out why a few discs rip faster than others. (All the discs are brand new with zero scratches.)

Well...OK.

I used the 708 to extract my entire CD collection (about 1500 discs) using Plextools. I did a number of tests comparing the extracted files with files from other drives (mostly other Plextors) and extracts from EAC. After a month of this I was convinced that the 708 was performing perfectly.

Nearly all of my CDs are pristine except for the oddball disc I bought used.

95% of the time the 708 would breeze through a disc with no problems and at full speed, but occasionally would slow down to 8x for the whole disc, even if it appeared clean. (it seems that audiobook CDs always extract at 8x, can't figure that out).

And if it did have a problem with a track, it was *always* at the outer edge of the disc. Simply slowing down the drive fixed that.

There were a total of 5 discs that the Plextor couldn't extract. One of them was badly damaged. The others...well I have no idea why. They look spotless, but can't be read. They won't play on a regular CD player either.

My CDs now exist as lossless files (.flac) on 4 250G hard drives. I've been listening to them for 2 years and have yet to hear any problems.

I'll soon be replacing my 708 with a DL burner (probably the 760).

I still use my 708A to rip music, but I wouldn't use it for DVD burning. The DVDs I burned with it seem to be only readable in it. My BENQ won't read them, for example.

thanks to everyone who responded! This isnt as important but does anyone know how to test if a drive is able to write in the leadin/leadout tracks?

All you need to do is attempt to burn a disc using non-silent data in the area that you are testing.

Use a postitive write samples offset in order to test the ability to write in the lead-in and a negative write samples offset to test the ability to write in the lead-out.

I've seen it suggested by a few that EAC isn't capable of overwriting in the lead-out with any drive. I do own a drive that is capable of overwriting in the lead-in (at least enough to compensate for its +6 write samples offset).