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Does anyone have any opinions as to the relative merits of CD-R burners that are still relatively easy to find? I don't care as much about their virtues for ripping or CD-RW or DVD media although that is obviously a plus.
Plextor PX-203A? (a rebadged BenQ?)
Plextor PX-760A?
NEC ND-3550A?
NEC AD-7170A?
LiteOn?
BenQ?
Sony?
Does going to a USB external really improve the sonics of the burns?
Follow Ups:
I personally use a Plextor Premium and I know it's controversial but I have very good results (lower BLER & Jitter) using GigaRec (0.8x) This elongates the pits and lands creating a disc that is 80% of normal. (A 74 minute CD-R will only fit 59 minutes) This is similar to the "AudioMasterQuality" that Yamaha used to use and which is now licensed to use on the Plextor Premium 2. (Unfortunately the Premium 2 is not currently available in the U.S.) I think their method is closer to 85%.But here's an interesting thread about a review conducted by C't magazine in Germany.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=45551
You can still get the Pioneer DVR-111D at newegg. It had really good results (if you are only concerned with burning)But this is only half the story. You need to use quality blank CD-Rs. Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs give me the lowest BLER & Jitter, but here again is another controversial subject. Some people swear by Gold or Black CD-Rs. If you want to try those, then go with the best gold which is Mitsui Gold (MID: 97:27:56) still made by HHB, or the Prodisc Black. I can hear a difference between these 3, but I'm not going to get into that now. You simply have to decide for yourself.
Although without the accompanying text and test data it is a little hard to know what to make of it. The price is definitely right on the DVR-111D. I was interested to see the favorable impression both in the test and on Spoon's part for the Plextor PX-230A since it has been disparaged a bit in other quarters.
I have some MAM-A Gold (Colorado Springs) 650MB CD-R blanks to use up but I'll probably get some Taiyo Yuden blanks to try.
if you like Plextor buy them before they disappear. Future Plextor drives are likely to be rebadged, potentially from LiteOn (but yet to be confirmed).I have a Plextor PX-760A - pretty happy with it. I've owned Sony, LiteOn and LG in the past and they all had various issues (eg. caching, or inability to read into leadout, or poor error correction).
I have several PCs that I've built myself. They all have either NEC25xx or NEC35xx CD\DVD burner units. No problems what so ever. In fact last Saturday night I just did a 17 CD burn job on my older machine with a NEC25xx burner not one coaster. You best bet would be to visit Newegg.com. There you find all the best selling and current drives available at decent prices. Of course I recommend NEC.
- http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=5&name=CD-DVD-Burners-RW-Drives (Open in New Window)
The non re badged Plextor drives are supposed to be the best. As for the sonics you probably wont be able to tell much difference. But technically the external should be better for a few reasons.
1. With the external drive you have the option of mounting it on some sort of isolation device such as vibrapods or cones...etc. This should make it less prone to vibration than an internal drive which is usually mounted with a few screws to a flimsy metal case.
2. The external has its own dedicated power supply built in, this should be better/cleaner then an internal which is sharing a power supply with a whole bunch of other components(cpu, hard drive, video card...etc)Whether or not your going to hear these differances is another story all together.
"1. With the external drive you have the option of mounting it on some sort of isolation device such as vibrapods or cones...etc."Very good point. It's difficult to see how external vibration wouldn't affect the quality of a burn, particlarly audio discs intended for use on any-and-all CD-players
I still use a 7-year old SCSI TEAC CDR-56 (6x - gasp!) for critical burns, such as vinyl transcriptions I send to my Dad in Australia. It's probably still only made 100 or so discs in that entire time.
It's on a slab of sandstone, on squash-balls. In fact, I prefer the idea of rollers, and might get round to improvising some.
I'll probably give some of Herbie's footers a try if I get an external drive. In analogue applications I have found them to be much better sonically than any of the other compliant feet/balls. Of course, whether this translates into being the best under a CD-burner or external HD is another matter. Spikes/rigid feet doesn't intuitively seem like the right answer. Stillpoints or Aurios are a bit pricey but maybe some sort of DIY roller. Mass loading the top of the drive enclosure?
Lots of mass on compliant suspension, to get a low 'Q', is the way to go, I reckonWith any rotating/planar storage system (analogue or optical disc), lateral vibes are the most destructive, and the most problematic.
Most of the infra/sub-sonic movmement in buidings (excited by traffic and seismic activity) is in this mode, and it's difficult to kill.
Mass-on-rollers is good way of transforming them into higher amplitude, very low (i.e. less than 4Hz) frequencies which won't interfere with reading or writing from a disc. (Pretty much how modern skyscrapers are built to deal with earthquakes).
But let's not get carried away(!) - in terms of a CD burner, any suspension is a good idea, quite apart from having the burner on it's own PSU.
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