Which new CD rom, or ?

[aaroncgi]

I've posted a few times about the problems I've had with my Kenwood 42X. For the most part, it works and works well. However, still get an annoying loud vibration on bootup for several minutes, and Diablo II cinematics won't work. The firmware upgrade from Kenwood doesn't work, and Kenwood tech support is not reachable (by me anyhow). What I love about the drive are that it's nearly silent, and it's very fast. I'd like to preserve these qualities but improve reliability and customer support (though you hope the latter isn't needed!).

So, if I get a new CD drive, what's a good one that doesn't break the bank? (thinking $60 or $70 max). I'd like to go SCSI, and I've seen the 40X Toshiba for a very good price, not sure if Plextor SCSI comes under my price limit or not.

On a related issue, I'm still not 100% sold on the advantages of SCSI. If my only reason for going SCSI would be that I want to have each device in my system on it's own channel (one HD, CD, DVD, CD-RW), how is SCSI better than buying an extra PCI HD controller?

And finally, I've got a parallel port scanner that I use frequently. When I scan, the whole computer is useless for the 15++ seconds it takes to scan. Does using a SCSI scanner eliminate this problem, or is it a function of the software? Also my scanner kicks my modem offline while scanning..

Thanks in advance!

Aaron

[Guru]

Go with the toshiba! The reason I recomend it is becouse it does not make as much noise as the most other drives on the market!

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[isochar]

for about 90-100 you can get a Plextor 40x. I'd say it's well worth it... not to mention it is only $20 more. You can use a free isp for a month to make up the cash

BTW, my Plextor 40x Wide smokes my Kenwood 72x.

[aaroncgi]

For about $90-$100, I can get a Toshiba 40X AND SCSI card. $90-100 is to me too much to spend on a CD drive. When everyone I know is using $40-50 drives and seemingly has no problems with them. I don't care about speed, within reasonable amounts (no I'm not going back to 8X), I just want a drive that works 100% !

Isochar, define 'smokes' ?

Aaron

[isochar]

I do a lot of data/audio cd ripping (for legal purposes of course I'd say on average that the plextor takes about 4 minutes while the kenwood takes 6-7

Not to mention ALL discs read in the plextor. I've had a few poor quality ones that the Kenwood didn't like...

As for your price comparison:

$90-100 for a toshiba and scsi card? Then you can get the plextor and scsi card for $100-120 It's a slippery slope...

[Gurm]

Advantages of SCSI... yes, they are many and varied. To answer your specific questions:

If you use a SCSI scanner, yes you will avoid the huge system lockups. And if you use SCSI, you won't need all your drives on separate channels to maintain performance. The SCSI protocol does that all by itself.

As for drives, you can NEVER go wrong with a Plextor. But in the world of drives that read a lot of things, the Toshiba isn't a half-bad way to go, either. They read most protected CD's (not that you'd want to do anything... err... illegal with your burner), as well as most multisession discs.

- Gurm

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[aaroncgi]

I don't have any immediate plans for doing any CD audio ripping/DAE. Frankly, I don't even know exactly what all these things are, which is surprising even to me, given my longstanding hobby of electronics, especially home/car stereo. I expect once I eventually get a CD recorder for my computer, I'll learn all about it. Main purpose for said recorder will be making custom audio CDs, so....

It does bug me that none of the Kenwoods will read CD-RW discs. Frankly, I think this is completely unacceptable, especially when they advertise that they do accept CD-RW !! Sure, the average user doesn't ever use CD-RW discs, but that's not the point. I've found Kenwood CD drives are becoming quite the difficult thing to find too, online or at local stores. Anyhow..

So I guess the choice comes down to Plextor or Toshiba. I'm not sure how you can get a Plextor + SCSI card for $100-$120 though. The cheapest I've seen the required SCSI card is about $50, and cheapest non-refurbished Plextor drive around $90. These are lowest prices, most are a bit higher. If you know of a better source than I, let me know! In the Plextors favor though, the DAE speeds seem far higher than any similarly rated (speed rating that is) drive, especially the Toshibas. Hmm. I just don't know, how fast in terms of speed do you need for DAE? Do you really need 24X extraction?

Aaron

[isochar]

You don't NEED 24x DAE. Hell, you don't NEED 10x. Point is how long you want to wait.

For example, I've got an 8x burner, which takes about 10 minutes to burn a cd. I'm planning on upgrading to the 16x (or 20x if released soon enough) and burn cds in less than 5 minutes.

Oh, as for price, I would tell you to go to buy.com. If you've never shopped there before, they'll give you $30 off a purchase of $150. They carry the almost all the plextor's and adaptec's, so you should be able to find what you're looking for...

If you have shopped there, then wait for the next time they hold a $30 off for everyone sale.

BTW, one more thing comes to mind, Toshiba CD Drives aren't reliable. I've had two of them fail on me as well as a DVD Drive. I've also seen large complaints in the NGs.

Hope this helps!

[Gurm]

Toshiba does have a higher reported failure rate than Plextor. Then again, EVERYONE fails more often than Plextor. Plextor is da shizznit.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Liquid Snake]

I've only had trouble once with my Kenwood 72X, when I was trying to make a copy of my Half-Life CD (for backup purposes - seriously). The Half-Life CD had plenty of scratches, and the Kenwood had trouble reading it. Popped it into my Plextor 8/4/32A and read it without a problem

About the DAE speed, my Plextor rips at 7-15X, the Kenwood rips at 35x. However, I use the Plextor to rip since it's generally much more reliable. BTW, my first Plextor 8/4/32 died within a week, it refused to read/write anything. Returned it and got another one and had no problems since then.

[Gurm]

When your Plextor reads at 15x it reads PERFECTLY at 15x. When the Kenwood reads at 35x you will get an imperfect rip. The fastest DAE in the world right now is 24x. Anything beyond that isn't really DAE.

Depending on what you read with it won't do pure DAE anyway. You can get a perfectly good sounding rip using Audio Catalyst, but it'll be burst/compensated rip, not true DAE.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[aaroncgi]

Thanks for all the tips, guys! Looks like I will probably be going Plextor after all. If for no other reason, than I'm sick of buying a drive and then having to buy another one each year after that (or sooner), or looking for a new one because the one I got doesn't support every function it claims to..

I'm not too keen on Buy.com, as they burned me pretty bad by totally screwing up a big DVD order I did with them a while back. Guess I could give them another try, if I only buy a couple things they should be able to get it right...

Thanks again!

[xortam]

Don't worry Aaron. You can't have too many CD-ROMs (at least if you have SCSI ). I've got my old NEC Multispin 3X, Yamaha CRW4416S , and Pioneer DVD-303S all hooked up and they come in really handy for those multi-CD games. Riven comes on five CDs. Some day these type of games will come on DVDs, but in the mean time the more drives the better.

[SteveC]

How about a DVD drive...?

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[aaroncgi]

SteveC,

I've already got a full home theater setup in the same room as my computer, so at this point I have no real use for a PC DVD drive. If they ever got into separate rooms (home theater and PC) then I probably would, as often I like to have a movie playing in the background (though that could still be done more cheaply in other ways).

Aaron