[MadMan007]

Easy-peasy color-coded guide to drive features:

DAE Drive Features Database

Unfortunately the 'perfect' drives are older and afaik can't be bought new. From my understanding overread is the least important function to worry about, given that and the timing of when I bought a drive I got a Samsung SH-203B and it's worked very well, not always the fastest rips but very good quality when set up properly in EAC. I actually bought a second as a backup when it was on sale for like $20 shipped hehe but the one I use has gone through well over 600 CDs and is still going strong.

 

[Pageygeeza]

I happened to be rummaging around the loft today and came across my old Sony DRX-800UL. Last time I used it, it was basically knackered and wouldn't read disks, but left it up there as I don't believe in throwing things away unless I know there isn't a chance for it. To cut a long story short, I was going to scavenge parts from it fix and old stereo of mine. Plugged it into my laptop and it worked perfectly!

Thing is, I tried it out on EAC and got some bloody fast speeds out of it, think about 30x at one point. But now it's slowed down to 2x. I've tried everything to get the speed back but nothing. When it's running slow though, the software runs very sluggish, the progress bar jumps up in increments. But when it was running fast, It was nice and smooth. It was a bit late in the day that I was messing around with it today, but I'll have another look tomorrow. The only thing I can notice is the fact the drive isn't getting up to full speed, I've noticed my internal drives does it also.

 

[etiolate]

Quote:

Originally Posted by googleborg /img/forum/go_quote.gif any drive that isn't broken works fine.

x2. digital...

 

[WirBrauchenBass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by etiolate /img/forum/go_quote.gif x2. digital...

yes - and that's also why cds sound perfect and all dacs sound identical...

 

[etiolate]

Quote:

Originally Posted by WirBrauchenBass /img/forum/go_quote.gif yes - and that's also why cds sound perfect and all dacs sound identical...

I can't agree with you on a dac thing. It's a crucial component and different dacs sound different and some are definitely better than others.

 

[stokitw]

If you get consistent slow speed on EAC with an ok disc.
Check your IDE setting on your CD/DVD rom in Windows XP.
It may just downgraded into PIO mode, get it back to DMA mode.

EAC is more sensitve to the drive.
Other than trying to buy a drive perfect for EAC, one may consider buy the full version of dbpoweramp.
dbpoweramp is less sensitive to the drive, it can get highest speed in secure rip on clean disks for most of drives. Unlike EAC spins down for every problematic frame in the process, dbpoweramp goes back to problematic frames after the rest of disk is finished and do the slow re-ripping all together. Average CD-rom typically runs at best in 15x at EAC secure rip, you may want to run 2 passes to make sure of quality. You can set dbpoweramp's ultra secure in some crazy parameters (like at most 6 passes at least 3 clean passes) and still spend less time in ripping.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pageygeeza /img/forum/go_quote.gif I happened to be rummaging around the loft today and came across my old Sony DRX-800UL. Last time I used it, it was basically knackered and wouldn't read disks, but left it up there as I don't believe in throwing things away unless I know there isn't a chance for it. To cut a long story short, I was going to scavenge parts from it fix and old stereo of mine. Plugged it into my laptop and it worked perfectly! Thing is, I tried it out on EAC and got some bloody fast speeds out of it, think about 30x at one point. But now it's slowed down to 2x. I've tried everything to get the speed back but nothing. When it's running slow though, the software runs very sluggish, the progress bar jumps up in increments. But when it was running fast, It was nice and smooth. It was a bit late in the day that I was messing around with it today, but I'll have another look tomorrow. The only thing I can notice is the fact the drive isn't getting up to full speed, I've noticed my internal drives does it also.

 

[Pageygeeza]

The problem was me messing without knowing what the settings were doing. It's working great now.

I was given an external optical drive yesterday, basically someone was dumping it but was fully functional. I thought this a little weird and had a nosey at it, found out why it was being dumped, it was only a CD-RW. After hunting out my Sony drive, I didn't think it was worth keeping the drive for myself as it only played CD's. But later in the day I thought I'd give it a go as CD ripper. Bloody good job I did, It's fantastic! I think I got it to peak at nearly 50x! After some settings tweaking, I managed to get a CD fully ripped in 3-4 mins. The CD drive is actually giving me less timing and synch errors. If any errors do occur, I just put it through on my repair setting and Bob's yer uncle! I'm not even sure how old the thing is. All I know is it's a Freecom CDRW52J.

 

[Pageygeeza]

I've now hit a brick wall with my optical drives. Some of my CD's have disc rot and the four optical drives are going mad trying to read them. But my 17 year old stereo can play them with no problems. Is there a drive that can read these unreadable rotted discs? Plus, how comes the Stereo can play them, but the drives can't rip them? :S

 

[Magsy]

Because the PC drive is treating it a bit more like data and is being insistant on getting it all off, 100% perfect and error corrected.
A stereo cd player doesn't have time for that, so just allows pops n clicks through without such severe attempts at error correction.

On my rotted discs that don't rip, I can actually hear a kind of popping/static type noise at times when they play in the car cd player..

 

[Pageygeeza]

Is there a magic drive that could circumvent error correction, or at least completely remove error correction and drop drive speed to minimum?

 

[tosehee]

Plextor is one of the best and most reliable. But it usually commends more money than other brands.

 

[Pageygeeza]

I've been hearing a lot of good stuff about Plextors, was checking up on prices too. Bit out my league.

I've settled on a brand new Samsung Drive.

 

[rederanged]

At the risk of asking the obvious: Do you have EAC in 'secure' or 'paranoid' mode? If so, put it in the mode where it does not do error checking. (I think it is called 'Burst Mode', but I don't have the software installed any more so I'm not sure.) You'd obviously be losing the error correction, but at least you might get something useful off the disks.

 

[Pageygeeza]

I think it might just be me being too fussy. If it says it doesn't match up with what's in the database, then I assume it's unusable. I usually read in the order: Paranoid > Secure > Burst. I've also noticed a lot of CD's, the last track at the end pretty much always has a problem.

 

[GreenLeo]

Are rips of different drives different? Otherwise, how can the quality of a rip different from the others. However, different DAC does sounds different for the same wave file.