What is the recommended pc HW for very high quality ripping
of a large CD collection? cpu speed? ram? IDE bus speed?
adaptor model? The Dell site does not say the brand of
CD drive, I guess I need to shop elsewhere. From the FAQ
and e-mails it sounded like the Plextor drives were best.

Also, for ethernet connection does the Rio Car plug into
my router or does it need to go direct to the pc (w/x-over wire)?
I read the FAQ about winXP w/ethernet - no problem there.

IDE bus speed

0. Some IDE CD drives are better than others, but I've got at least one perfectly good CD that rips perfectly in a SCSI Plextor but not in any IDE drive I've tried.

You don't need very fast SCSI (a PCI Adaptec 2904 is fine). For Linux, you probably need at least a Pentium 100 with 16Mb of RAM, 32 if you want to run X on it too. For Gnome, KDE, or Windows, I'd guess more still.

Peter

I've got a SCSI pioneer DVD/CD drive that rips very fast. cdparanioa (similar to EAC i think) usually finds no errors to correct. But yes i've heard good things about plextor drives too.

For CPU it's just a matter of the faster the CPU, the quicker it will encode. LAME VBR --high on my 1.4 GHz Athlon encodes much faster than realtime..

You won't need much ram, 8Megs + whatever your OS needs should be pleanty.

IDE bus speed shouldn't matter, any mode that does DMA should be fast enough.

For ethernet you can either plug it into a hub/switch, or plug it directly into your PC with a cross over cable.

Without spending a ton of money, the fastest ripping drive I've found is the Kenwood True-X line. The True-X drives maintain their speed across the entire disc (most drives slow to less than half speed by the time they reach the end of the disc). My True-X is a 62X and it typically does DAE at 32X (I've seen over 35X). Running Audio Catalyst (most audiophiles don't like it's mp3 encoder), I can rip and compress at 27X. The limiting factor is my CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1500. If I set the rip method to "dynamic sync width", then it never skips, but the rip speed is slowed down to 16X (by the drive syncing, not CPU limited).

It takes me less than 2.5 minutes to rip & mp3 compress a CD that's over an hour long! I'm quite happy with the sound quality of the VBR set one notch up from the middle (averages ~150Kbps). If you're more concerned about sound quality, don't use Audio Catalyst.

Keep in mind that this drive is quite old (I've had mine for over a year) and you can also get Kenwood's 72X True-X drive that does DAE even faster (in case you've got a CPU >2GHz).

Hey, speaking of Zen True-X drives, what ever happened with those? I tried for months to get one of the Kenwood 72x units, but they had already stopped selling them, and I couldn't find any place that still had any. Does anybody know what happened? Did Kenwood and Zen have a falling out, or were there some technical problems with the multi-beam system?

Just curious...

I'm curious, if the CD is rotating at 72X, how much lateral force is sustained by the CD's outside edge? At what speed does the CD simply fly apart from the rotational forces?

Calvin

The 72x is just a speed equivelence rating on Zen-X based drives. They actually spin around 12x, and use 7 lasers combined with a huge buffer to acheive amazing speeds.

My friend has gone through a few of them though due to them no longer reading CD-R or RW disks. And on his current one, it's just dead. Great technology, but Kenwood didn't use it well.

The only problem I'm aware of is that it doesn't work with most Safe-Disc'd games. Safe-Disc is very widely used and this can be a major issue if this is your only drive. Since I also have a burner, I use that for games that don't work in the True-X drive.

Other than that, it's performed flawlessly. Two of my friends also have True-X drives (one has a 52X and one has as 72X). Both of them are also very happy with their drives (both also have another drive for loading Safe-Disc'd games).

I've used both a Plextor IDE 24x10x40x and a TDK 24x10x40x and they both do a good job although the Plextor seems to do a slightly better job. In EAC using the TDK, I rip tracks to 98% accuracy or better. With the Plextor using the latest firmware, it's a rarity to get anything but 100% on a non damaged CD. Usually I just go buy the CDs, bring them home, rip them and put them away and never touch them again so the majority of my CDs have only been in a drive once.

EAC/Plexwriter 16/10/40/Lame VBR

WOW. Is all I can say about that combo.

I'm a messy person, so a lot of my CDs are scratched, some horribly. As long as they're not cracked, this combination works all the time for me, no fail. And when they're not scratchy, it's fast as anything.

Great technology, but Kenwood didn't use it well

Yeah... That sucks. Well, I did a little more research, and came across this article:

Brakes slammed on world's fastest DVD drive

Looks like more bad news for Zen Research, and their multi-beam technology. Maybe it wasn't just Kenwood that screwed up...

damn damn damn. This would be such awesome technology if somebody got it down.

Usually I just go buy the CDs, bring them home, rip them and put them away and never touch them again so the majority of my CDs have only been in a drive once.

Yeah, that's exactly what I do. In fact, I can't remember the last time I listed to a CD... Must have been at least a year ago, before I bought my empeg...

I discovered that if you are unfortunate enough to smear sunscreen lotion on your CD and let it dry, it will not wipe off. With water, with soap or anything. It also becomes unreadable.

Calvin

Where you trying to protect it from harmful UV radiation?

One wonders how such things happen, but then I'm the one who found that inverting my Bose 6-disc changer and try to change CDs while it's upside down, it will jam. And I discovered that by accident!

I think I said this in another thread, but according to our CD drive guru here at MUSICMATCH, the Plexwriter 16x is the abolute best drive for DAE.

I discovered that if you are unfortunate enough to smear sunscreen lotion on your CD and let it dry, it will not wipe off. With water, with soap or anything. It also becomes unreadable.

A while ago, when Soft Cell's Tainted Love was re-released as a single, the CDs came in sporran-like leather pouches. Unfortunately, some chemical in the leather, some kind of ick from the tanning process, was wildly corrosive to the metal layer in the CD -- the metal layer was eaten away completely for about 3mm in from the disc rim, and there are macroscopic holes all over the surface, plus really bad tarnishing.

This was quite useful when we wanted to test HSX-109's behaviour on damaged CDs...

Peter

"best" is something that should really be qualified.

Best accuracy, best at reading damaged discs, best at reading copyprotected CDs, best speed, best price or best in some other category?

Thanks for all the help guys! I get my pc tomorrow and can
start playing with the ripping sw.

Just hope you got an Athlon.

Bruno

I discovered that if you are unfortunate enough to smear sunscreen lotion on your CD and let it dry, it will not wipe off. With water, with soap or anything. It also becomes unreadable.

That sounds like a challenge.

If you still have that CD, I bet I can make it work again if you'd like to send it to me...

tanstaafl.

"I discovered that if you are unfortunate enough to smear sunscreen lotion on your CD and let it dry, it will not wipe off. With water, with soap or anything. It also becomes unreadable."

Well, that's where you bring in the alcohol, or some mild solvents that'll dissolve the sunscreen and not the plastic of the CD

Send me your address. I'll send you two lotioned CDs. You're not going to be able to remove the sunscreen lotion. No way.

Calvin

I imagine that the lotion contained something that dissolved the plastic of the CD, which is why it seems unremovable.

Is the lotion on the bottom side of the CD (the side without the printing) or the top side (the side with the printing)?

If the bottom, Doug's kit might just work. If the top, you're scrod.

If the top, you're scrod.

Don't bet on it! My kit contains a solvent that actually dissolves the plastic coating on the CD, letting it re-form as the solvent evaporates. If the metallic foil itself is undamaged, there is a very good chance I can make it work. The only time I have failed to salvage a CD was when I got a particle of grit in my rubbing cloth, and before I realized it I had actually cut right through the plastic and into the foil.

I sent a PM to Calvin with my address, and if he sends me the CD, I'll see what happens and let you know.

tanstaafl.

It's on the clear "bottom" side of the CD. I keep sunscreen in my convertible for the benefit of the passengers, unfortunately, the same passengers are often the DJ's back before my empeg was installed and all i had was a CD unit. Thus, I have sunscreen fingerprints that do not come off. I'm dropping two of the worst in the mail today to Doug. I'm convinced that nothing can be done. :-D But I'm willing to be surprised.

Calvin

If it's on the clear side of the disc, then something can definitely be done. It's normally a PITA to take away enough substrate and get it to a fine polished state, but it can be done. Once the metal layer is damaged however, you're toast (as Tony has also mentioned at least once).

I have a MaxQ CD that someone obviously abused this way - the damage is to the top metal layer - right through the thin clearcoat. Looks like it had a little dance with some solvent. My former car changer didn't like it at all. My home player can handle it fairly well and my CDROM seemed to to a perfect job extracting the tracks.

Bruno

That was my thoughts originally. I ran some of the affected discs through a polisher device, and the more substance it polished off, the more damaged colored plastic it exposed. It was pretty disturbing to find that a single coating of sunscreen lotion on the surface would damage it down so deeply. If doug has a trick, I'd certainly like to hear the results. :-D

Calvin

Mark the tops of the discs with a marker, just in case he buys new ones and tries to pass them off as his "repaired" ones. On second thought, forget that. Just take the new discs. Hehe.

Bruno