My Lite-On CD writer died, and I replaced it with another Lite-On unit, a DVDRW LH-20A1P.

Imagine my disppointment when I found that the new unit ripped at about one eighth the speed of the old one. The original Lite-On would rip at 20-25x. The new one runs at 2.5--3x.

I have tried three versions of EAC: 0.95pb3, 0.95pb4, and the newest one 0.99pb1. All give the same results. I borrowed another CD/DVD burner (a Samsung, I think), and it was even slower than the new Lite-On.

I have tried ripping in burst mode so there is no error checking, and the new burner runs respectably at better than 20x, so it doesn't seem to be a hardware problem.

I just ripped a test CD:
Secure mode: 2.9x
Fast Mode: 5.4x
Burst mode: 22.2x.
Secure mode found two tracks that were 99.9% quality, the rest were 100%, so the CD was pretty clean.

So, the question is: Why is my new CD/DVD burner so slow compared to my old CD burner? Are the dual-purpose burners (CD + DVD) inherently slower?

Is there anything I can do in EAC's configuration to alleviate the problem, or do I need to buy a different (i.e. Plextor) burner?

tanstaafl.

have you tried ripping other cds? is it also slow ripping with foobar2000 or cdex?

When I upgraded my DVD-Writer earlier this year to a newer model I experienced unbearable slowdowns that I eventually traced to cable woes. Apparently the IDE cable that came with my motherboard (that I was still using) was only a 40 wire cable and I needed to buy an 80 wire to get the full speed connection. Once I did that no problems at all. I only mention it as if yours was an old writer it may have not needed an 80 wire connection and so would have run fine, only the newer would expose the problem. You can easily tell the difference between the two (the 80 wire on the bottom just looks like it has more wires within it) and as IDE cables are dirt cheap might be worth checking out.

Shouldn't be an issue. What should happen is that simply udma2 is used with a 40 wire cable instead of udma3/4. udma2 is fast enough (33MB/s IIRC).

Are you sure you were using Secure mode with your old drive when you were getting 20-25x speeds? Of the 6 drives I've used with EAC (two of which are Lite-On), all of them rip between 1x and 6x in Secure mode, depending on the CD, so your results don't seem unusual.

I've ripped with CD-ROM drives, DVD+/-RW drives, and a DVD/CD-RW Combo drive, and I've found no appreciable difference in ripping speeds between them.

From what I've read, some Plextors are capable of ripping in secure mode at much faster speeds, so you might consider that.

I agree that the switch from 40 to 80 pin IDE cable is likely not going to change anything. Optical drives don't use that much bandwidth anyway.

Yes. Only in secure mode do you get the error correction grid display and the percentage quality information on each track, and I always looked at that information. The slowdown occurs on all CDs that I try and rip.

tanstaafl.

Not having to use cache flushing and using C2 pointers together would easily explain the speed difference. You may also find that this new drive may cap the extraction speed on discs that it deems unworthy.

Just because both are Lite-On drives does not mean that you're comparing apples to apples.