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Optical drives and electrical noise

scardeal

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I'm building a new computer, and one of its duties will be ripping CDs, DVDs and blu-rays. I've got the selection down to these two Pioneer drives.
BDR-S13U-X - $290
BDR-S13UBK - $175

It lists out as the difference physical noise reduction bits (grommets, better motors, some sort of housing coating) and higher quality electrolytic capacitors and a low resistance sata cable. I can appreciate the physical noise reduction bits rationally, but my rational self is having trouble dissuading the emotional self from spending the extra $120. So... can more refined electronics mean the difference between reading a disc and not reading a disc?

I've got a few discs that stubbornly refuse to be read fully in my current optical drive, despite working fine in a blu-ray player. Any thoughts?
 
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DonR

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Remember: digital is data, not audio. Avoid the marketing audiophoolery and save your money. I have never had luck having a PC drive read blu-ray. PS3 was my goto BD player in the past.
 

JeremyFife

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It's just digital data ... my needs are simple so I use an external blu-ray drive (Pioneer, about £90 I think, usb connection to my laptop when I need it). Exact Audio Copy (EAC) software confirms that my CD rips are bit-perfect. Works fine ripping DVD and blu-ray movies too. No need to think any further.
Your cheaper option will be just fine.
 

AudiOhm

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I have an Asus ($30.00 CDN) DVD drive, USB to my laptop.
I have copied all my music to my hard drive, no issues at all using dBpoweramp CD Ripper.
Here is an example of Phil Collins In The Air Tonight.
#1 copied with no programs running.
#2 copied while surfing the internet, Excel opened, and uploading files to my cloud using Core FTP.
I have attached a pic of the check sums using 'HashCalc' software by Slava Soft and the Metadata.
AS you can see the files were copied identical to each other...

Hash Calc.png

Metadata-1.png
Metadata-2.png

Ohms
 
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Digby

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I'm building a new computer, and one of its duties will be ripping CDs, DVDs and blu-rays. I've got the selection down to these two Pioneer drives.
BDR-S13U-X - $290
BDR-S13UBK - $175
I feel like that is a lot of money for obsolete (disc based) equipment. I have no need of Blu-ray though. DVD drives are cheap.

It lists out as the difference physical noise reduction bits (grommets, better motors, some sort of housing coating) and higher quality electrolytic capacitors and a low resistance sata cable. I can appreciate the physical noise reduction bits rationally,
The low noise drive might be a thing, but if you are ripping discs, then unless it is unusually loud, I guess most drives are much of muchness. I'd stick to what is capable of the fastest accurate reads, personally.

For noise on playing a disc, you used to be able to get software that could adjust the drive speed. Almost any drive at between 1x and 4x speed is going to be rather quiet and again, probably much of a muchness.

So... can more refined electronics mean the difference between reading a disc and not reading a disc?
There used to be fora dedicated to this kind of thing 15 years ago, perhaps there still is, but I'd think unless you run into a problem like this, it is barely worth thinking about.
 
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Marc v E

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I'm building a new computer, and one of its duties will be ripping CDs, DVDs and blu-rays. I've got the selection down to these two Pioneer drives.
BDR-S13U-X - $290
BDR-S13UBK - $175

It lists out as the difference physical noise reduction bits (grommets, better motors, some sort of housing coating) and higher quality electrolytic capacitors and a low resistance sata cable. I can appreciate the physical noise reduction bits rationally, but my rational self is having trouble dissuading the emotional self from spending the extra $120. So... can more refined electronics mean the difference between reading a disc and not reading a disc?

I've got a few discs that stubbornly refuse to be read fully in my current optical drive, despite working fine in a blu-ray player. Any thoughts?
I've got this one: BDR-S13U-X.
Mainly because it's very quiet while ripping. I love devices that are quiet in operation. It won't give you better rips (use a cheap drive and good software for that: EAC, for example).
 

Digby

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Or just too many scratches.
They can be resurfaced (polished), as long as the data on top is OK. Computer and video game shops sometimes used to offer this service. Dunno whether many do now and it may be cheaper just to replace the discs.
 

AudiOhm

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It has been a lot of years since I have played and edited files with a Hex editor. In the 80's I had an Atari 800xl and I would use the Hex editor to set the high scores of some of the games that I would play.

I changed some random bits on the above Phil Collins tracks, I could not hear or see a difference on Foobar.

So I did the same to a 10 second 1Khz test tone. I had to change 100's of bits of information before I achieved a blip in the tone.

I would not worry about an expensive optical drive, buy what you can afford...

Ohms
 

dped90

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