CR Ripping and Equipment in 2024

 In yesteryear, it was well known that Plextor and Yamaha were great brands for CD ripping, and many other brands of CD drives did okay, but not fantastic.  

Sure, you can get just an older drive if that's necessary, but many have SCSI or other interfaces that are less common these days.  I'm not against  buying an old used drive, but if connecting it to your devices is a hassle, then it may not be worth the trouble.  Optical  drives can be finiky, and have limited life spans due to moving parts.  Certain "oldie by goodie" moels might  actually be more expensive used now then they were new, and spending more money to buy a used item with no warranty that cound fail at any time seems like something that should warrant caution.

So, I survayed the landscape for newer options.

Firtly Yamaha and Plextor aren't really in the game of high quality optical drives anymore.  But Pioneer has stepped up their game.  

Before we get into that, it's worth mentioning that there are now really three caregories of drives:

1. Cheap DVD or Blu-ray drives that happen to be able to rip and read CDs.  These are soemtimes dirt cheap and are made by a large variety of manufacturers.  I actually bought one made by Logitec new at Yodobashi camera for about $30.  This was cheaper than the other drives because while it can read (and write) DVD ROMs, it can't play DVD movies, so I suppose they saved on licensing cost for CSS.  I use this drive in the rare case that I need to do non-audio related stuff with optical discs, and/or I get one of those mini CDs won't work in my other drive.

While it's rare for people to have optical drives at all anymore, if they do have one, this is most likely what they have.  

2. High quality computer centric drives with advanced audio features.  Yes, these are still made, at least by Pioneer.  (There are other Audiophile specific brands as well... but I wanted to keep the budget over $1000, and the numbers show that these drives aren't actually any better.)

3. CD Ripping specific drives that are often mobile centric, requiring use of a special app.   These are for sale at places like Yodobashi and Bic Camera, and for rental by places like Tsutaya, and typically connect to your phone or tablet via USB or WiFi.  They have a special app that will connect to the drive, look up your CD, and let you rip to your device.  These will handle the Metadata lookup and import as well.  

These are potentially great for those who don't have a computer but want to rip CDs - but let me ask you, how will you be backing up your collection?  If you don't have a computer, you probably also don't have a NAS, so your collection will likely die when your phone does.  

Now, since the Audio CD standard was not designed with ripping in mind, issues can happen, even though it's digital data.  The main issue is that unlike copying an MP3 file, if there are errors when reading the CD, many drives will just gloss over them, interpolating or filling in silence.  This is probably ideal when you are playing an audio CD in a CD player, because you don't want the playback to stop because of a scratch that affects a fraction of a second worth of audio.  For ripping a perfect copy to your computer, however, it's problematic.  With programs like CDParanoia and EAC, and protocols like AccurateRip, your computer can detect when there was an issue and try again.  The "better" drives on most of the ranking lists are just the ones that are, on average, able to read the disks perfectly on their first try.  

This means that in practice, you can use any old cheap drive that someone is selling used on the cheap or willing to give you for free, and the main drawback is that it may sometimes take multiple tries to perfectly rip certain CDs, or may rip very slowly as the software has to re-read the same frame over and over until it gets a clean read.  

In fact, the AccurateRip database shows many drives from not only Piooneer, but also LG and Matsushita (Panasonic) near the top for percentage of accurate rips, as well as a few from Sony, ASUS, and others.   

That is, any old drive will work for most CDs if your ripping software is good.  Where you get into trouble is:

a. Accidentally damaged discs - this means scratches, etc.

b. Purposely damaged discs - this means failed attempts at copy protection where errors were mastered into the disc.  

These are where you start to need a better drive.  Of course if a portion of the disk is physically damaged to the point that no drive could possibly read it (i.e. the foil backing has been flaked off), then even the fanciest drive in the world won't save you.  

Basically, the drives which are optimized for reading audio CDs have soem special features to deal with this, including in the case of Pioneer "PureRead".  That is, when they encounter an error, instead of trying to correct it by interpolation or adding silence, the drive will "change paramaters automatically" until it can successfully read the disc.  The English web site doesn't go into much detail about this, but the Japanese one does.  

Basically, among other things, the firmware in the drive can detect a read errors internally, and adjust the laser fucus, disk speed, which laser it uses, etc. in order to re-read successfully before reporting back to the operating system.  

At any rate, there are three basic settings for PureRead that can be used with the drive:

1. Off - This disables PureRead and tells the drive to act like any normal drive.  If there are scratches, fingerprints, etc., that cause errors, then the drive will interpolate (smooth) the data it retuens and continue.

2. Master Mode - The drive will detect errors internally, and change paramaters as necessary to try to read the correct data as much as it can.  If it isn't able to, then it will still interpolate.  This is the default mode.  

3. Perfect Mode - This mode is the same as master move- but the drive will stop reading and return an error instead of interpolating if the data can't be read error free.  

The exact drive I selected was the BDR-XS07TUHD, which is a slimline drive, powered by USC-C.  The main reasons I selected it were:

1. It can be used with a PC and normal ripping software

2. It also can be used with smartphones, and comes with dedicated smartphone ripping software

3. It is intended for audio-ripping, and the PureRead functionality.

4. (Less important) M-Disc functionality for long term backup disc creation.  

The upside of this device is that is's small and portable, so I can take it with me and rip from my phone if need-be.  

The downside of this device compared with the larger 3.5" versions is that the CD reading speed maxes out at 24x, compared with 48x for its larger brother.  Unless you are ripping a truely massive number of CDs in a short period of time, this won't matter.  

Ripping Process:

1. Normally I have the drive set to "perfect" mode, and I just plug the drive into my Xperia phone and use the included app to rip to FLAC.  In most cases, this works fine.  It will find the album art, and rip the disk with no issues.  On copy protected disks, it will drop down to real time speed, but typically still read the disk.  

2. I have ResilioSync set up to sync the ripped folder to my PC.  I can move the folder from the SmartPhoneRip folder to the WalkMan folder after updating any metadata tags, etc., which will cause it to be deleted from my phone, and synced to my NAS, Walkman, and other computers.  I can easily sync to my phone again if I like.  

3. In the rare case that the disc can't be read by the app on my phone, I will connect the drive to one of my PCs, change the setting to "master" and use a error-correcting ripping software on there. (This will often stil fail, since the disc was too damaged, but in this case, I just exchange the CD for another one).  If it's a mini CD, then I will start on the PC using my cheaper drive which can handle mini discs.  

Then the CD goes in the big box in the attic, or back to the rental company.  I play music:

- On my PCs using Lollipop or Musikcube

- On other PCs from my NAS using the Audio Station

- From one of my phones using DroidCube, powerAmp, DS Audio, etc.

- From my Walkman using the Sony Music App

My Desktop, Walkman and NAS sync everything all the time, but for my phones and laptops I only sync what I want to listen to often.