You need to read up on DAE (digital audio extraction). Just because a drive can "read" at 40X doesn't mean it can do DAE anywhere near that rate. My current crappy CDROM drive is 52X but the DAE is only around 3.3X. A good drive to get is the TDK Velo-CD and of course, any Plextor brands. My 12/20X plextor actually got up to 8-10X DAE speeds which was impressive at the time (a few years ago).

later,
ajay