Hi there!

As you might have seen here I'm up to buy a new CD-/DVD-drive to put it in an external case. Or maybe I'll install it on my PC if I can figure out that there might be problems with an USB connection. Anyway...

My question is now, which drive to choose. I had ripped some CDs with EAC in the past (for my DAP), but never really cared about all these features and to configure every little detail in EAC. But now I want to archive my CD collection, what means I want to do this only once and I want to do it correctly. Due to this I've read a lot here in these forums, because here might be the place, where you can find the real experts. But, as I've said, I'm new to this and so there are still some questions which I couldn't answer myself while just reading here. And yes, I've read the thread about "the best burners...", but honestly I couldn't exctract much info out of it.


I want to buy a new drive for ripping. Which features I have to take care with?
Can you generally say that CD-/DVD burners are better or worse than CD-/DVD-ROM drives?
When you choose safe settings in the drive options in EAC (safe mode with accurate stream on, caching on, C2 off) and EAC produces no errors, does it then matter at all which drive you use? Aren't then all drives the same?


For now that are the questions I'm interested most by now.
So can anybody gibe me some hints about that?


Thanks in advance!

No. It doesn't depend on the type of drive, it only depends on the specific model. In each category there are good ones and bad ones for ripping.




No. As you can read in several threads about this topic, some drives read non-optimal CDs very well while others have big problems. The main degrading factors are scratches, copy protection, bad burn quality (errors and jitter) and errors due to media aging. Some drives can read scratched discs very quickly, others need hours. Some drives handle a copy protection fine, others can't rip the same CD at all.

It's on you to select a drive which has the best capabilities for audio CD ripping (search the forum about it). With that you lay the foundation for mostly perfect rips. Then you can even rely on the AccurateRip plugin with EAC to check with the online database if it's a perfect rip, and use Burst Mode.

Perhaps my question was not precise enough, sorry for that. Let's try it again...

Well, most of my CDs are 'optimal': without scratches, without copy protection, original and not burned. I mean, under such optimal conditions all drives recognized by EAC should do the same job, or not?.


On the other hand it seems clear to me that under non optimal conditions (e.g. scratched CDs) some drives might do a better job then others.

Here it's mostly the ripping speed that will vary greatly (even though i personally restrict the speed to 24x via Nero Drivespeed). But as soon as you have the tiniest scratch, you will be glad if you bought a better-performing drive in that regard. Extreme example: 1.2 mm scratch, Plextor PX-230A processes it in half a minute with 100% quality (EAC secure), NEC ND-4551A reads for 1 1/2 hours with 50 errors.

So, I've searched a lot in this forum and other sources which drive to choose. And a narrowed it down to these:

LG GSA-H42N
LG GSA-H22N
Samsung SH-S182M
Samsung SH-S182D


Which one would do the best job?

I wouldn't get those, try to find the one mentioned by CiTay Plextor PX-230A on eBay or something. As it seems both NewEgg and ZipZoomFly are no longer stocking them. Good Luck.

Well, I've heard not only good things about the PX-230A. So I decided, to get an "up-to-date" drive with DVD burning abilities.

At the moment I tend most to the SH-S182D because it seems to be very accurate even with scratched CDs.
The only question is about the offset of this drive. As you can see on CDRLabs.com and CDFreaks.com it seems to have an offset of 0. Is this possible, or can somebody who owns this drive can confirm this?