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  3. 1239407900

CD drive improves HD rip quality?

Hi,
I am on the road towards getting the maximum out of my PC based system.I always thought that HD ripping is of similar(same) quality, if you use WAV files.

Then i tried ripping with Millenium CD mat.Much better.
Now i am thinking about another drive.Drive quality could contribute to the final quality of the ripped WAV files (similar to what transport does in transport+DAC system).

I will try an external CD (not DVD) drive - connected with USB cable to PC.This way i can isolate the drive from vibration, and use a better USB cable to transfer data to Hard Disk.
The problem is, all PC CD drives (external and internal) seem very resonant and low in mass.

Question - anyone knows about any better drives or transports?Like a CD transport that is connected with PC thru USB,and can be controlled by PC's ripping software?Maybe serious companies have this kind of product?Like Wadia or someone else?

Or simply a better,more stable CD drive (for PC), made for audio use...
Help,anyone?
audiobb
audiobb OP
103 posts
 
Also,one more problem...
Does anyone know how to do THIS:
"""""""As for OS, am using XP with the device manager options selected to disable kmixer - i.e: ~"Do not map through this device"/"Do not use audio through this device"- applied to both Empirical 1.1 and the Lynx drivers.""""""""

Don't know how to find this KMIXER...

Found it here
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?icomp&1229786837
cerrot's avatar
cerrot
1,700 posts
 
I have seen some nice imporvements when I went from the drive in my PC (Gateway FX) to an outboard Lacie Firewire drive. Have had no errors or hiccups at all (Rip with EAC).

Other than the better quality, I think that removing the drive from within a very noisey PC environment helps.

The audio quality from playing CD's is much better as well.

Dennis
audiobb OP
103 posts
 
I used EAC till last week.Now i use easy CD-DA extractor.With this program i can set the ripping speed to low 4x.This is a very small improvement,but still i can hear it in A-B test.
I did not find this option in EAC.
Cerrot thanks,i always thought that external drives are better.
2chnlben
595 posts
 
So, exactly what is the consensus...can the actual drive make any difference - even when you are using software with "exact copy" and error correction?? Provided that you accurately transfer all of the bits, does it matter how you transferred them?
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,308 posts
 
Some drives will have lower error rates than others but it is the drive and ripping software together that matters.

Higher error rates off the optical drive will result in re-reads of the same data multiple times and hence longer rip times though assuming software is configured to handle errors off the optical drive properly..

It doesn't matter how you transfer them to server disk storage, only that they get there correctly.

It does matter how they are transferred to the DAC because the source device provides the clock needed to convert the bits to sound accurately.

Some DACs will resample and reclock themselves in which case then the source device providing the bits to the DAC matters less as well.
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