Search for the perfect CD Ripping Drive - The Pioneer BDR-XS08MB-S

 In my last installment: The CD Ripping Adventure, I discussed how CD ripping is still the best way to get high quality lossless audio onto your computer.  

I mentioned that I bought the cheapest USB 3 CD-ROM drive I could find.  This drive works fine for most of the discs I get, although it isn't the festest thing in the world.  Being a budget slim type, it tends to vibrate a lot unless I place something heavy on top, and it's so light that the drawer is hard to close with just one hand.  Still, for $20 or so, it works surprisingly well on most CDs.  

I mainly use Asunder for ripping.  It has a "Secure" mode, but it does the retries, etc., under the covers, so you don't really see how many errors it found, or how many retries were needed to actually get a good copy.  You can usually tell, though, because the more scratched up a CD is, the longer it takes to rip.  

I buy a lot of used and rental CDs, but surprisingly most are in reasonable good condition.  The shops actually do clean and polish them - but from time to time I do get unreadable CDs.

In an effort to decrease ripping time and increase quality I have decided to upgrade my drive. (Being able to burn DB discs is just a side benefit).  

Back in the day I used an internal SCSI Yamaha drive and it was very, very good at ripping audio CDs.  I didn't have the same kind of issues that most of my friends did.  I even used CD paranoid, but it typically reported no errors to correct.  

I could find an old drive like that, but using a parallel SCSI drive these days would be a pain.  It seems that Yamaha has also basicall stopped making optical drives all together, save for those in audio equipment.  

I need an external drive, but I don't mind a larger one (i.e. an internal drive in an external case) if need be.  A slim one would be okay, but only if I can find one with the needed quality.  

Yamaha has made some DVD drives a few years ago, and they are rated highly, but they all use USB 2 or Firewire 400.  Firewire could theoretically be converted: FW400 - FW800 - DisplayPort Thunderbolt - USB C Thunderbolt - but whether it would actually work us unknown until I test it.  (f.e. the original iSight camera doesn't like this).  

I could buy a Yamaha internal drive (like the CRW-3200), and find a Thunderbolt or USB 3 case to put it in, but the old drive may or not be compatible with it.  

The CDW-70 is interesting in that it is portable but well made, and very highly rated for audio ripping.  Despite being only USB 2, it still rips at 22x with a low error rate.  (Certainly faster than my current Logitec drive!)  

There is also the issue of reliability of older drives, so I thought I would take a look at the runner up.  In the English speaking world, it seems that Plextor is legendary - but they also seem to have mostly stopped making optical drives.  

So... a choice between an old Yamaha or an old Plextor?

Looking on english speaking forums with data about drives, I found that some LG drives had the lowest error rates, along with a few drives from LiteOn, and a few others.  

I started thinking that getting a proper "professional" drive with decent build quality and ripping compatibility might be along the same lines as getting a new floppy drive.  

When I started searching in Japanese, though, my search very quickly brought me to another audio equipment maker: Pioneer.  

It seems that Pioneer still does very much make DVD drives, and very high end ones at that.  Their drives can basically read and write all of the CD, DVD, and blue ray formats, including things like DVD-RAM, BDXL, Ultra HD BlueRay, and M-DISC.  (Though the last three I have never heard of before!)

Furthermore, their external units use USB 3.2 over USB C, and support Android as well as Windows.  (And, from reviews, they works just fine in Linux).  

Most importantly, they are devloped with CDDA audio ripping as a priority, even including special features in the firmware to recover from errors.  

The feature, called "PureRead" basically detects when there is an error from the normal error correction subsystem, and will try various other methods to re-read the data.  They don't give a huge amount of data, but I was able to find out that one of the things that PureRead4+ does is try to use the other lasers (the DVD and Blueray ones) instead of just the IR based CD laser.  

I was originally looking at the X13J-S, but what has really caught my eye now is the XS08MB-S.  

While neither model has a catchy name, the XS08 model is a slimline external model that is still quite solid looking.  It is slot loading instead of having a door, but it also has dampeners to reduce vibration, as well as internal padding.  It can be bus powered from a computer as well.  Most importantly, it not only supports PureRead4+, but it also support ripping in Android or PC (Windows and Mac), and the PureRead feature can be turned on and off via the eject button without using software.  

The SX08 is smaller and cheaper than something like the X13J-S, but it is a bit slower in exchange.  There are other  (Clamshell style) models that are cheaper and have equally good reviews, but since vibration has been an issue with my current drive, I wanted to get the one with the vibration dampening feet.  

So how are the reviews for this thing?

Well, The thing I care about: it rips CDs quite fast compared with the average drive, and with very few errors (usually zero).

It can take a scratched up CD that has a lot of static when ripped with other drives, and rip a good sounding  track with very few errors.  

Obviously, it's not an actual miracle worker, so while it might be able to try various methods to recover the data, a disc that is damaged too badly may just be beyond repair.  

I'll most some stats from actual use under Linux once I get it.