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Mad Dog CDRW slow at audio extraction

post #1 of 16
9/17/04 at 5:57pm
Thread Starter 
I bought a second CDRW drive to use for digital audio extraction. This Mad Dog 52x drive is supposed to do DAE up to 52x. I am using CDex, and this drive extracts at about 1/3 of the speed of my older drive. My calculations show it extracting at about 8x. I called their tech support and they said return it for another one. I did, and the new one does the same thing. There are no firmware updates available. DMA is enabled and running in Ultra DMA mode 2. The paperwork says to run this as the slave, which is fine with me because my other cd needs to be master. Any ideas to try before I switch them as master/slave?

Thanks
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post #2 of 16
9/18/04 at 4:20am
Buy a CD-RW drive that someone has heard of.
-Mag
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post #3 of 16
9/18/04 at 6:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MagusG
Buy a CD-RW drive that someone has heard of.
-Mag
Heh, yeah Lite-on models are supposed to be the best from the cheap CD-RW drives. At least for defeating copy protections and getting good rips. I don't know about speed.
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post #4 of 16
9/18/04 at 10:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by breez
Heh, yeah Lite-on models are supposed to be the best from the cheap CD-RW drives. At least for defeating copy protections and getting good rips. I don't know about speed.
I second that Lite-On reccomendation. They're fast and accurate, and go good with EAC.
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post #5 of 16
9/18/04 at 11:54am
Thread Starter 
I understand that this brand is new and low priced. But I found some good reviews of it before I bought it. Here is one:
http://www.tweak3d.net/reviews/maddog/mdmm52x/

and another mention at comdex:
http://www.targetpc.com/articles/comdex2003/

Anyway, I am not looking for recommendations for drives, I am asking if there are any settings or tweaks that can improve DAE.
Thanks
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post #6 of 16
9/18/04 at 1:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by vincenzo992004
I bought a second CDRW drive to use for digital audio extraction. This Mad Dog 52x drive is supposed to do DAE up to 52x. I am using CDex, and this drive extracts at about 1/3 of the speed of my older drive. My calculations show it extracting at about 8x. I called their tech support and they said return it for another one. I did, and the new one does the same thing. There are no firmware updates available. DMA is enabled and running in Ultra DMA mode 2. The paperwork says to run this as the slave, which is fine with me because my other cd needs to be master. Any ideas to try before I switch them as master/slave?

Thanks
I know this might sound funny, but try setting it to Multi-Word DMA or PIO4 in your BIOS. Also remember with PATA, your drive is just as slow as the slowest link on the chain. So if your old CD-R/W is on the same PATA cable, and it's PIO4, your new CD-RW will be limited to the rate of it's neighbor.

I think the drive you have is a rebadged Artec WRR-52Z from a quick glance on Google. Firmware is available at http://www.cdfreaks.com/drive/531, but I am sure it's the same as what you have.
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post #7 of 16
9/18/04 at 4:17pm
Some cheap cdrw are infact rebranded LiteOns, unfortunately I did not recieve a liteon and the fastest DAE I have done is 24x.

This might be a longshot, but when I changed my extraction mode to BURST mode, my ripping sped up from <8x to 24x.
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post #8 of 16
9/19/04 at 10:12am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the ideas. I changed it to PIO4 but that slowed it down even more. And my other drive is a TDK drive that runs at UDMA2 so that should not be creating a slowdown.
And yes, it is an Artec drive. I will look into that firmware update.

Quote:
Originally Posted by funnytimes
This might be a longshot, but when I changed my extraction mode to BURST mode, my ripping sped up from <8x to 24x.
This sounds interesting. Where do I find that option?
Thanks
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post #9 of 16
9/19/04 at 12:48pm
Burst mode, while faster, turns off all error checking/correction. If you really want to use burst mode then go to the EAC menu -> Drive Options and select Burst Mode. I'd personally reccomend returning the Mad Dog Multimedia CD-RW and getting a Lite-On off Newegg.com or another reputable online store.
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post #10 of 16
9/20/04 at 10:09am
Thread Starter 
I am past the point of being able to return it, although I could just put it in my kid's machine and buy something else. But I want to exhaust all the possibilities first. I have not downloaded EAC yet, but Burst Mode is not something I would want to use if it can allow errors. But has anyone found that different programs give different DAE rates? Maybe this drive just has a problem with CDex.
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post #11 of 16
9/20/04 at 6:24pm
EAC and CDex use different error checking/correction methods so EAC might work better.
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post #12 of 16
9/20/04 at 6:33pm
This might have nothing to do with your problem but having the drive retrieve C2 error info sped up my ripping speed from <8x to 12x-24x.
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post #13 of 16
9/20/04 at 7:00pm
Not all drives do C2 error correction properly, which is one of the reasons Plextools only works with Plextor drives (which do have correct C2 functionality).
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post #14 of 16
9/20/04 at 7:07pm
EAC says my 16X DVD-ROM from that brand does up to about 24X rips at maximum. It's a lot faster than my Plexy, but usually messes up the first track.
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post #15 of 16
9/20/04 at 7:28pm
Thread Starter 
OK I will look into EAC. Is C2 error retrieval one of the options in EAC?
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