I'm a relatively new member of this forum, but I've been an audio enthusiast for over 50 years.

I'm also a relative newbie in the Head-Fi digital world.

What I've learned is that there seems to be a seemingly endless series of upgrades in almost every area.

I've been using the disc drive on my Apple to rip CDs to Apple Lossless. It dawned on me that the disc drives on computers must be considered by enthusiasts to be low performers, not designed to yield the highest quality rip. So, I'm guessing that there are better drives than the computer when one is ripping a CD. True?

If so, what devices are recommended and what is the cost range?

Thanks.

Quote:



Computer disc drives are generally better than Audio CD drives, some of the better Audio CD Player manufacturers use CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives as they are more accurate. There are some disc drives that are better than others but with decent ripping software and reasonably clean CDs you should get a rip with a very very small number of errors from most computer disc drives. Remember that you will not even hear these errors anyway. If your internal drive is iffy you can always replace it or get an external drive but even an external will be functionally identical, it will be an internal drive with an external interface.

There is a better place to find advice on CD-R DVD-R hardware technology....
CDRLabs.com - Optical Storage News and Reviews - these chaps do serious technical tests on CD-R hardware including error rates.

IMO the software you use to rip is more important if your cd drive is half decent.
Max
This is a very nice bit of software. I recommend using the inbuilt cd paranoia ripper. It should correct any jitter.

Look in the Computer Audio Forum. There are tons of threads on this. EAC is my choice BTW.

James