Yes if you have lots of TV recordings, like from iPlayer etc, you will need disk space. But you can always re-download shows or films, if they still available, the place I live is in a primitive part of the country where 28Mbps is the best I get on broadband, while my NAS gives me wire-speed off the my old LAN (which is 113 MBytes/s), so as you may imagine, I like to cache, so as not to block the internet for users at home too often! FWIW, my main RAID5 unit can sink data at wire-speed too, which is very nice.
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CD drive needed for ripping.
- Thread starter Paul7777x
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somebodyelse
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Only if it's getting any uncorrectable read error sections from somewhere else. How many of those you get depends on the drive's read capability when it encounters disc errors, and how many of your discs have errors large enough for the drive not to read. See the "Testing the drive" section of NTTY's CD player reviews for the variability in players' ability to cope with different types and severity of disc errors. The list in post #2 is a proxy for that now that no sites are doing this sort of testing on drives. Even when they were doing such tests it was a bit of a minefield as the performance could change significantly depending on the firmware version. It's something that doesn't matter for most discs because they don't have errors that will cause any drive a problem. It's just when you hit those few troublesome discs where the difference shows, but it may be cheaper to get a new copy of the disc than to track down a drive that'll read it.
I'm not sure what this really means.
A CD drive reads an absolute ton of redundant info, along with the the actual music data - this is what guarantees the data part can be rebuilt (if possible).
Apart from ageing, dirt and damage, the laser read heads are pretty much the same in all drives - there are maybe 3 companies that make these lasers and are in nearly all drives. It's not as if, say, Marantz manufactures their own special lasers just for use in Marantz CD players!
This is the same with the chipsets that control the drive and the contained firmware that checks the 'correctness' of the read information - the algorithm for error checking and correction is very old now, and is pretty standard. Yes, new firmware was issued from time to time, but usually had to do with compatibility of disk variants (not for reading music CDs, usually for burning CD & DVDs).
As for 'faster', the output of any CD has to be done at a controlled rate for a PCM bitstream to work for playing music- yes, the receiver recovers the clock but there are limits. There is a buffer for the data, and a time window to either fix a faulty read from the redundant info, or abandon it. And the latter will cause an audible glitch if you are listening to the music. If you have ever used (e.g.) fre:ac to rip a CD, you'll know it's not the same as music playback - it does not care about real-time for the data - in fact you can set "paranoid mode" and the disk sectors may be re-read many times, and it can seem painfully slow. Ask me how I know.
Whatever is believed about "better" or "not so good" CD drives, they really don't affect "accuracy" or "speed" for ripping.
You could argue that a nasty cheap drive may fail, but I'm saying if it works at all, it will rip perfectly well.
RandomEar
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On CDs in good condition and without copy protection shenanigans, there's essentially no difference between drives. On scratched CDs, there is. I don't exactly know why, but the AccurateRip stats clearly show that not all drives are the same and my experience with damaged discs fully supports this finding.
I know that there are some drives where the firmware allows you to turn off certain error correction features to stream the raw data to the PC, whereas in other drives the error correction is hard-coded to "on" and you will never get the raw data. This and other differences in behaviour when encountering damaged tracks and read errors (like a forced slow-down after a read failure) 100% do differ between drives, but it will only affect you if you try to read significantly degraded discs. If you never encountered such discs, you wouldn't even think about these differences and probably not expect them.
I've had several CDs with slight damage (not necessarily visible) that would not play on various expensive-brand CD players I've had - for music playback.
I have ripped every CD I have on cheap PC CD drives or cheap USB drives and never had a single failure.
I'm not arguing that drives may behave differently when you have a damaged CD for music playback, I'm saying that for me, cheap drives have been fine for ripping.
Come to think of it, I have never had the means to hook any of my expensive branded players to my PC to see how good they are at ripping. Anyone wanting to try can buy a cheap toslink to USB converter, but that's surely a waste when you can buy a £15 USB drive (nearly always the good old Mitsumi drive in those).
I have ripped every CD I have on cheap PC CD drives or cheap USB drives and never had a single failure.
I'm not arguing that drives may behave differently when you have a damaged CD for music playback, I'm saying that for me, cheap drives have been fine for ripping.
Come to think of it, I have never had the means to hook any of my expensive branded players to my PC to see how good they are at ripping. Anyone wanting to try can buy a cheap toslink to USB converter, but that's surely a waste when you can buy a £15 USB drive (nearly always the good old Mitsumi drive in those).
My experience shows otherwise. I think it's due to the fact that good ripping software tries to read the whole disk bit perfect. If a sector cannot be read it rereads it until it succeeds. With bad discs on bad drives this can take much more time, even leading to a stall (as I experienced withj my LG DVD drive).
JSmith
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Sorry to hear that bud, I know the feeling, as I've also lost whole drives of important music, photos and data.
I also agree with comments regarding a NAS... and RAID.
JSmith
Is it an issue if you only need to spend £15 to rip? As I say, many hundreds of CD ripped, no issues.
It only takes 1 time, and you slip into backups and/or RAID pretty easily!
Back when PCs were prone to failing to boot, every 2 weeks, maybe because of trashed boot sector some unknown software or disk issue, you'd be surprised at the brownie points I got from family members when I said "Yeah we can sort that out in max of 30mins"!
Of course 'cos I'm constantly messing up PCs for fun, and trying about 8 versions Linux and weird software, I can be ever-so brave in the face of danger, knowing that with with small effort, I can get back to safety!
I just decided to buy a drive where I knew it would work. For me it was worth the money. Case rested.
RexrothPigeon
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Okay, this is helpful. I definitely have bad discs (my post earlier explains what I need the drive for: archiving a huge library of rare CD-Rs from 20+ years ago).
Can you recommend an external drive that will give me decent odds of success? Or I guess an internal drive + a case so I can use it with a mac mini?
Mr. Swordfish
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Ripping a CD is just moving the bits from one storage device to another, so as long as they all get there in the same order, a $15 drive will perform identically to a $15k drive, despite what all the audio-woosters will have you believe.
That said, some drives will handle damaged discs better than others, so you might find that the cheap USB external drive won't play some discs.
That said, some drives will handle damaged discs better than others, so you might find that the cheap USB external drive won't play some discs.
Reminds me of my last laptop buy....no cd drive and I didn't notice for a while (mostly because I hadn't tried to rip anything since). I've used an old bluray capable drive via a usb connection but doesn't work for all programs....
Mr. Swordfish
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I replaced my desktop PC about a year ago, and there wasn't even an option to get it with an internal CD drive. Basically, optical discs are going the way of vinyl.
Let's hope it's "the way of vinyl" and not "the way of 8-tracks".
See postings 2 and 6 in this thread.
Most of my CDs are from the early 00s when copy protection was very common and it has been a pain in the neck and unpredictable: Some drives can rip some (protected) CDs and not others and some other drives can rip a different group. Then there are some, very few, that no drive could rip, but those were maybe 3 in 1000.
JSmith
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Absolutely!
@Paul7777x
Don't waste any funds on the USB drive and just by a cheap drive with proper reviews.
For the saved funds I would recommend to buy the dbPoweramp CD Ripper software (which is available for Windows and Mac) which securley rips with AccurateRip and provides accurate metadata: https://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper
RandomEar
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That depends. Most protections violated the Red Book standard. If a drive adheres religiously to the standard, you will never be able to read that disc using that drive. Many drive firmwares accept some deviation from the standard and it depends on the manufacturer's choice what is ignored or corrected and what will result in no-read or read error scenario.
I distinctly remember this being a problem with a few discs in the early 2000s, but not anymore since then. I assume many drive firmwares were "adapted" after a couple of years? That's all speculation, of course.
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