Ripping Audio Cd's

Hi,

Is the premium2 worth buying for ripping my audio cds?
I started to rip my cd's into mp3 format but then realised it would have been better to rip to flac for wav.
I want to rip the audio in the best quality, and some of the cd's maybe scratched.
Would the premium 2 be a good choice? Or would a liteon be better?
I have a Pioneer 216d dvd burner, but apparently its not very good at ripping.

Cheers

The Premium2 works fine for accurate audio ripping. I've also been impressed by some samples of the old 4012A drive for reading scratched discs and just yesterday I found that a PX760 was the only drive that would read a particular disc. It seems that it is worth having a variety of drives on hand to cater for all eventualities.

Cheers

James.

I have both Premiums in the same computer, and I find the first-generation Premium to be a better ripper on average. The main reason to throw money at a Premium2, is because that drive is the better writer, rather than the better reader.

There are a lot of common misconceptions about audio CD ripping. Let me dispel them right here:

While not all ripping drives are created equal, it would be misleading to say that there is a 'quality' difference. It's not like one drive is going to unlock more soundstage or deeper bass. The 'quality' of your rips actually has more to do with whether you use lossless or not, and... whether your ripping software performs re-reads or not. The only difference the drive makes, is how many times you have to re-read before you end up with consistent/trustworthy results. You may be needing to re-read areas of a disc that aren't even damaged, but if your ripping process only reads the disc once - then you'd never know whether any re-reading was necessary or not.

All true Plextors (including the Premiums) can Overread into the Lead-In and the Lead-Out, instead of only one or the other. This, combined with re-reading (which is software-based and not unique to Plextors), is what will get you perfect rips, rather than merely great rips. It is possible to get perfect rips on another drive that can't Overread into both, but this depends upon how much absolute silence is near the beginning or the end of the CD - so some CDs you can rip perfectly with a nonPlextor, and other CDs you can't.

The best ripping scenario comes from any true Plextor, with properly-configured Exact Audio Copy - ripping into lossless. The only effective difference from one true Plextor to the next, is how much more quickly you can get the same end results as another true Plextor. That's why the first-generation Premium is "the best". There is nothing at least as reliable, that will go faster than the Premium's cacheless C2 ripping. You could use a Premium2, a PX-760, a PX-716, or any other true Plextor - and get the exact same rip (matching checksums) in more time instead of less.

No ripping drive is so special that you can just use any lossless ripping software you want (or EAC without any custom settings), and always get perfect rips.

It might be argued that CD-only drives from Plextor, have a more difficult ripping session than DVD drives from Plextor. With enough re-reading, both drives get me the exact same result (with matching MD5s) as each other. On that note, I prefer to rip with my Premium because it makes me smug to see how misunderstood that same disc would be inside a CD player (a CD-only drive like the Premium will give you the best measure of this). Exact Audio Copy might be telling me that my "Track Quality" is 98.9%, but this is only a measure of how much re-reading the Premium had to perform to be certain about that track (the lower the percentage - the more frequent the re-reads). A DVD drive that doesn't have to re-read as many times as a CD-only drive to yield the same MD5, isn't really telling me about how many bullets I dodged by dismissing all CD players as pseudo-science.

If you aren't going to burn a lot of audio CDs (and if you aren't going to buy any CD-Rs specifically designed for slow burnings), then I wouldn't waste your money on a Premium2. It is one of many true Plextors capable of perfect ripping if you give them enough configuring and re-reading time.

The biggest reason for going for a Premium2 over a Premium for ripping audio is that the Premium2 is still currently available new.

Plextools is also capable of accurate audio extraction at high speeds.

Cheers

James.

If I wanted a(nother) factory-sealed Premium, they really aren't too difficult to find - if I'm willing to pay the same price as a new Premium2. It could be argued that the finite availability of brand new Premiums, gives their potential buyers a greater sense of urgency than the currently-refilling supply of Premium2s.

Exact Audio Copy works precisely the same way with -USEFUA and the proper drive settings, except EAC also supports multiple/simultaneous instances, it supports multicore encoding, more types of CUEsheets, and it can do Test & Copy (because you shouldn't trust only one sweep of PlexTools/C2). You also have to upgrade to a paid version of PlexTools before you can use a commandline encoder for any format you want, and even then you still get only one read mode when ripping (sometimes it's nice to have a fallback option for when C2 isn't quite living up to the hype).

EAC is the first ripper in the world to employ Offset Correction, while dBpowerAMP and PlexTools are basically copycats with bells & whistles they try to charge you for - many of which EAC offers for free. The one and only edge that PlexTools has on ripping, is with the logs PlexTools generates. But if those detailed logs are based on only one sweep of C2, then once or twice a year when your rip is wrong - you won't know there's a problem but you'll assume PlexTools had everything under control just like the majority of other times when PlexTools actually did do the rip properly.

Plus when you tell people to do ripping with PlexTools, you are also at least somewhat endorsing them to do burning with PlexTools too - while it goes unsaid that PlexTools is even more unfaithful about audio CD burning than it is about audio CD ripping. Certainly you need PlexTools to unlock features like Single-Session reading or AMQR burning, but the role of PlexTools doesn't need be anything beyond supplementary for all your ripping/burning activities performed with another program like EAC.

Plextor might make some of the best drives, but they don't make the best software. Let's avoid the one-stop-shop mentality here.

Hi,

Wich brand is inside a Plextor Premium 2 ???
Does someone nows that?

Thanks,
Vaako

Thanks for the responses guys, however some of this beyond my knowledge in the area.

When i ripped my cd's to MP3's I used WMP, so i'm gussing thats a pretty poor ripper?
I think i'll take a look at this EAC software too, because I've never used that.

I'll be ripping about 150 - 200 cd's, so its not many and therefore i might buy a cheaper drive to rip my cds - any ideas?
I do have plextor 760 but thats in another PC at a different location now.

Vaako, i'm not sure i understand your question, do you mean the chip maker?

Thanks again,

If EAC is the most scientific ripper out there, then WMP and iTunes are witchcraft in comparison.

Audio CDs don't employ the same amount of error correction as data CDs. With data CDs, it's impossible to think you observed a different 1 or a 0 than what was really on the CD (with the exception of deliberately 'corrupt' or non-indexed sectors found on many game discs). With an audio CD, the only way to know for certain about the sectors you are reading - is to scan each sector at least twice, then scan another two times if the first two scans didn't match. Exact Audio Copy is the most potentially relentless ripping software when it comes to doing the job properly. dBpowerAMP has improved in recent years, but it still can't bypass the caching of the Premiums - so the ripping takes much longer than with EAC or PlexTools, and somehow the C2 results are at least a little less reliable from a caching Premium versus a noncaching Premium.

If you like ripping audio CDs with certainty, and into any oddball format you want (I prefer WavPack), nothing is going to give you faster certainty and wider flexibility than the Premium with EAC. The PX-760 is a good fallback drive though, for the small handful of CDs where C2-based ripping isn't the answer. You'll know the Premium's C2 isn't working when you've ripped an entire track twice and the CRCs don't match. Test & Copy will never make you overconfident about C2.

The "Premium 2" is an original Plextor design.

Compared to the "Premium" back from 2003 it has a reworked build (17cm vs. 19cm length) and some extra functions (2x and 48x writing speeds; Gigarec 0.9 and 1.1 settings, Varirec settings in 1/10 steps; AMQR) but otherwise functions strictly the same.

I am not sure where you are getting your information from but this is totally wrong. Plextools is perfectly capable of producing bit accurate audio discs and, while it was under development, the developers were very quick to correct any problems that caused inaccurate burns.

I have regularly carried out null tests on burned discs to verify this.

What problems have you experienced with Plextools burns?

James.

Try ripping any CD you just burnt, then compare MD5s of the new disc versus the old disc. On EAC the closing tracks will often (but not always) match, depending upon the album. If you used PlexTools then the closing tracks will never match. PlexTools adds extra silence on the end to make sure it didn't miss anything with the write offset (because there's no such thing as a drive that can Overwrite into Lead-In and Lead-Out), but it's not 'necessary' for PlexTools to do this with every album.

Technically if you make a PlexTools copy of a PlexTools copy, you'll stray even further from the original. If the original had absolute silence for at least the last 30 samples, then Premiums operating under EAC could make unlimited copies-of-copies without deviating from true 1:1 copies. Even if there were some actual sound throughout the final 30 samples, the first EAC-burnt copy would be the only one to introduce any generation loss. All further EAC burning generations would be the same as the first EAC burning, so long as a burning drive with a bigger negative write offset isn't introduced into the generations, or a ripping drive without full overreading or small enough read offset.

Usually if a Plextor can't burn an exact copy, you can use a nonPlextor with a positive write offset (the smaller the better) for that particular album instead. You will want a real Plextor to perform the pre-burning rip at least.

OK - so you are saying that the length of the file or the end point isn't always the same with Plextools rather than the actual extracted data being wrong. I'm more worried about extracted files being too short so a file that is slightly too long isn't a problem as far as I am concerned.

Cheers

James.

EAC doesn't 'change' the length of the CD. EAC simply writes a certain amount of absolute silence within the beginning or the end of the original length of the CD. The specific length of the mandatory silence, and whether it's near the beginning or near the end - depends on the size of your Write Offset and whether it is negative or positive. In many scenarios, EAC is simply replacing original absolute silence with... Write Offset absolute silence, and the burnt CD ends up being coincidentally no different from the original. The alternative nonPlextor burners with the smaller Write Offsets or a Write Offset of 0 - do not have the bells and whistles of a Premium/Premium2 like GigaRec or VariRec, nor are they as low-jitter at the higher speeds.

So it's not really a great idea to use PlexTools for burning everything, because it really depends upon how much absolute silence the original CD had near the end. If the original CD had any actual sound during the final 30 samples, then maybe you would want to use PlexTools. Now if there's nothing but silence during the final 30 samples of the original, then there is nothing wrong with using EAC instead of PlexTools (as is the case with most albums). If you decide that getting the burnt CD to match an oddball original is more important than having AMQR, then you may want to use a nonPlextor for burning that particular album, but PlexTools won't know the nonPlextor's Write Offset or give you the chance to specify the offset, while EAC while allow you to specify offsets for any brand of drives. When you have a mixed-brand setup (because Plextor isn't the solution to the world's problems - but it's at least part of the solution), EAC is the only software that will overcome problems throughout your entire rig.

From Glathannus:
Exact Audio Copy works precisely the same way with -USEFUA and the proper drive settings, except EAC also supports multiple/simultaneous instances, it supports multicore encoding, more types of CUEsheets, and it can do Test & Copy (because you shouldn't trust only one sweep of PlexTools/C2).

How can I activate the -USEFUA button? I use EAC 0.99pb4.
Until now EAC is much slower than PTPXL.

You encorporate it as a subcommand onto the end of your EAC shortcut. You open up the Properties of an existing shortcut, you take the Target that says something like

"C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\EAC.exe"

And all you would have to do is turn that into

"C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\EAC.exe" -USEFUA

Well actually, after you've hit Apply and exited out of that window, there is one more thing.

Open up EAC, and in..
EAC > Drive Options > Extraction Method
You want to uncheck "Drive caches audio data", and check "Drive is capable of retrieving C2 error information".

That should do it.
If you ever like to leave PlexTools running in the background, make sure if you've been doing any C1 or Beta/Jitter tests, that you've set the drive back to full speed in PlexTools after you were done, otherwise if PlexTools was recently told to do some reading with the Premium at 4x - any other software eventually tapping into the Premium will also be capped at 4x.

Brace yourself for some 20x ripping and beyond. If you ever find at least one below-100% "Track Quality" in your logs (this won't necessarily happen with all CDs - but it should happen with most of them), you'll know the caching (or lack thereof) and error correction are functioning properly.

I'm currently using 0.95pb5, but chances are the tweaks will work just fine on your version. Just beware of some of the dreaded copy protection out there, because I think older versions of EAC have an easier time with it than PlexTools. While C2 isn't quite the solution to the world's problems, you'd be surprised on how much copy protection it can actually overcome on an older version of EAC. There are some deliberately-faulty standard-breaking albums where you'll need AccurateStream instead of C2, and the Premium behaves a little weird if you try doing cacheless ripping with AccurateStream instead of C2. So I recommend you keep two shortcuts around for EAC - one with the USEFUA, and one without it, and beware that you should recheck the caching setting in Drive Options and re-enable AccurateStream whenever you launch the shortcut without the USEFUA - for the oddball albums that can't be error-corrected with C2. You'll probably have to do this for no more than 1% of the albums you own, unless you think Japan had most of the best music ever in 2002-2003 and you never bought the non-protected reissues that came out 5 years later.

hi guys, just discovered this topic..
i also have a 'best drive for DAE' problem already described here and lately i've also started thinking about getting a plextor to really do the job.

i own many CD-Rs (yeah, they may already be a bit far from the originals) that got old and i encounter multiple reading problems, so the situation is a bit difficult. the media isn't of the best quality also, i never knew how to compare or what to search for years ago when i've written these discs and i also didn't had many options here on my country's market at that time. the discs were written with tools like clonecd or alcohol or even nero, i didn't knew how to do copies in the best way at that time. the burners were mainly from lite-on and sony.. some of the discs are severely damaged, there may be scratches (minor) and some are visibly affected (spots, blemishes, visible marks on the disc surface, color changes, edges affected)

i don't expect miracles under these conditions, but i just want a drive that can really do its best in extracting what can be extracted. still, the great majority of the discs are still ok and my lite-on didn't complain.. i think a real plextor can do much better, the question is: which drive would you recommend ?
judging from Glathannus posts, the premiums are two of the top plextor's line, and the px760 could also be an option (with the advantage of also having a dvd-reader-burner).. any other recommendations ?

thanks much

Hello, I'm new to this forum and just found this post. I do a lot of ripping of audio cds and not a whole lot of burning. So I'm interested in a Premium - they can still quite easily be found, it seems.

However the Plextor web site specifies for the Premium2 that Windows OS is required. I use a Mac. Would anybody know whether these units will work as described here on a Mac? (I use XLD for ripping - it's the closest thing on a Mac to EAC and works great for me.)

I would like to use this device externally using a USB or - preferably - FW interface. Does anyone know a decent 5.25" enclosure that would work with this drive?

Thanks

I don't believe the Premium2 is much more Windows-specific than the original Premium. The problem with either Premium is that in order to unlock/activate their special features, you need Windows software called PlexTools. There was some alternative being developed independently for Linux, but I don't know if that software was ever ported to OSX - plus I believe the project was terminated during the years of the PX-760, but just before the Premium2 came out. So it might be able to unlock any of the features that are the same between the Premium and the Premium2, but it probably can't enable AMQR (you probably still get GigaRec 0.8 and 0.9 though), and probably can't erase a CD-R.

Exact Audio Copy (my ripper of choice - and it can unlock a special ripping feature of the Premium just as PlexTools can) is also Windows-specific. Some people claim to have had EAC success on WINE or Parallels or Virtual PC, but none of these success stories have specifically mentioned either Premium (we don't know if emulated software can bypass the caching of the Premiums). Perhaps PlexTools can be emulated too - at least for unlocking AMQR.

*edit*
In native OSX, you should at least be able to do basic reading and writing with the Premiums. It's not like if you don't have Windows (or are not at least emulating some software that was meant to be ran on Windows), that you can't use the Premiums the same way you would use any other CD drive installed with a Mac. The reason to get Windows even remotely involved, is to access the special features that distinguish the Premiums from most nonPlextors - otherwise the Premium2 is "just another CD drive" (other than the fact that the Premium2 burnings are very low-jitter at low speeds even without GigaRec/AMQR or VariRec).

---

Last edited by Glathannus; 08-04-2009 at 02:50.

Thanks for that. I think EAC should work under Parallels - it's quite amazing to see that run windows within your OSX interface.

I know about EAC and it being windows only. But I trust XLD to do the same for me. It works with the accurate rip database and that's pretty much the only guarantee for bit perfect rips. And music is extracted in ways similar to EAC, so even music not present in accurate rip is mostly ripped without errors. If there are any errors, XLD will list them in its log. Plus I like the AIFF format over WAV, because of its capacity to handle metadata (including artwork) without problems - unlike WAV. I don't think AIFF is available in EAC.

But as I mentioned in my original post, my interest in in the fastest exact rips possible. You wrote:

The only effective difference from one true Plextor to the next, is how much more quickly you can get the same end results as another true Plextor. That's why the first-generation Premium is "the best".

and:

If you like ripping audio CDs with certainty, and into any oddball format you want (I prefer WavPack), nothing is going to give you faster certainty and wider flexibility than the Premium with EAC.

This is what I'm after. Some questions after reading your post:

1. The special features you mention, are they only involved in burning, or also in ripping? If also in ripping: what features are these that set the premium apart from "just another cd drive"? I am guessing that XLD will be able to use these features too, so it would be nice to know.

2. Isn't the low jitter characteristic at low speeds enough in itself to decide for the Premium over "just another cd drive" when you're in it for the ripping?

3. What feature(s) is (are) involved in setting the Premium apart as a faster/better drive than the Premium2 (or any other real plextor drive) for ripping perfect copies?

4. Is there any reason why a Premium2 would do a better or faster job of ripping audio cds into lossless than any other real plextor drive (e.g. PX-760)?

5. Would you recommend a specific external FW enclosure with a Premium? (There is lots of junk around and would appreciate any tips if you have experience with this sort of kit.)

6. Is there a reason for not wanting to use an IDE-to-SATA adapter when I fit it into an external 5.25" enclosure? (Most of the enclosures are SATA nowadays - it's hard to find IDE/ATAPI ones...)

7. Would you know of a resource that shows how to properly configure EAC for audio ripping with a Premium?

1.) The Premiums (especially the first one) have extraordinarily fast and accurate C2 error correction if you can bypass the drive's caching. When ripping software says it can 'defeat' the caching, they are usually saying that the cache does in fact fill up with information, but they are smart enough to empty the cache out before attempting to re-read any particular sectors of the disc (otherwise you will always get the same results twice and never know when the disc is truly inconsistent). The bigger the cache, the more this slows down the ripping process. PlexTools or an obscure subcommand in EAC, are the only ripping processes I know of that can get completely around the caching of the Premiums. There's no indication that XLD does any secure ripping beyond the usual clear-out-the-cache-then-reread.

For writing, I strongly doubt that XLD or any native OSX software will let you adjust the laser strength (a feature called VariRec), or let you adjust the pit size (GigaRec/AMQR). At minimum, you are supposed to keep PlexTools around as a utility for unlocking those on a per-disc basis, even when PlexTools itself isn't the software you are using to carry out the burning. Now from a ripping standpoint, PlexTools will only bypass the caching for its own ripping process - it doesn't just grant cache-bypassing to any other ripping software you use while PlexTools is running in the background. EAC is capable of the cache-bypassing independently of whether or not you also have PlexTools.

2.) The Premiums are more about the bells & whistles you have to unlock, rather than the base characteristics of the drives. Most drives that can burn CDs slowly, don't produce much jitter, so the differences in the low-speed arena are marginal between the Premiums and nonPlextors. At higher burning speeds, the original Premium is fairly nice about keeping the jitter within a medium tolerance instead of letting it go crazy. While these burning behaviors should be true no matter what burning software you use, without the bells & whistles the base behaviors are hardly compelling enough reasons to choose the Premiums over cheaper or easier-to-find alternatives.

3.) Either of the Premiums will do perfect rips, as will nearly any real Plextor in the world. The main feature that sets Plextors apart is "Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out", which is almost completely unheard of among nonPlextors. Pretend you're a police chief, there's a hostage situation, and you've got officers on the ground surrounding the perpetrator. You know the margin of 'kick' on your officers' firearms, but they aren't aware that there's a margin. You tell them to aim for the hostage, and shoot - knowing the bullets will actually hit the perpetrator. The officers refuse. This is how most nonPlextors behave. It's not that the Plextor "gun" doesn't have a margin - it's that the Plextors are more obedient. The Leads are like the hostages, the officers are the drives, and the shooting margins are the Read Offsets. There is something near the Leads that you're supposed to 'shoot', but you have to think you're barely aiming at the Leads in order get the very first or very last bit of data that other drives will refuse to read. Only in the ripping software where you can specifically say that your drive does full overreading (or you're ripping with PlexTools which already knows everything about every real Plextor), will this feature ever make a difference.

4.) The cacheless C2 ripping of the Premiums (when properly activated) is faster than any other secure ripping I have ever seen. For some reason the Premium is slightly faster on average about this than the Premium2, but this always depends on the album. Some albums the Premium2 will rip faster, and some albums the original Premium will rip faster. Despite this minor differences, either Premium will run circles around everything else, including the PX-760. When you're not doing cacheless C2, but when you're doing "cache-defeating" AccurateStream instead, the PX-760 might be faster than the Premiums, and this is a ripping process you may have to use on a very small handful of copy-protected CDs.

5. I know enough not to trust the Premium-U's own external USB enclosure for Gap Detection methods B and C at least. Gap Detection isn't a heavily-explored feature when people are comparing external enclosures, so I believe everyone is on their own and in the dark for this. In any other manner of drive operations, most enclosures should be okay with most drive features, so while I can't recommend specific enclosures, I can at least say the odds are in your favor.

6.) I could imagine it being a problem with small-buffer drives burning at high speeds, but never with a Premium/Premium2 burning at 2x-20x. Shouldn't introduce any problems with reading, but who knows - maybe those adapters screw with -USEFUA, and maybe they mess with gap detection more than USB-to-IDE alone can already do.

7.) In EAC Options and Drive Options, leave everything unchecked that I don't specifically mention:
EAC Options > Extraction:
Fill Up missing offset samples with silence
Synchronize between tracks
Lock drive tray during extraction
Error recovery quality: High

EAC Options > General:
Use Alternate CD play routines
Disable 'CD' Autostart' for audio and data CDs while EAC running
On unknown CDs: open CD information dialog
Ask before overwriting files
Correct bug of wrong filename order in Windows multiple file dialog
Show status dialog after extraction

EAC Options > Tools:
Retrieve UPC / ISRC codes in CUE sheet generation
Use CD-Text information in CUE sheet generation
Automatically write status report after extraction
On extraction, start external compressors queued in the background: Your number of CPU cores (probably 2)
Do not open external compressor window

EAC Options > Filename:
I personally like %N. %T
and %N. %A - %T
But to each his own.

EAC Options > Write:
I uncheck EVERYTHING.
(except perhaps Disc-At-Once - which I haven't experimented enough with yet)

EAC Options > Write:
Use of SCSI interface:
"Native Win32" might be the only safe option on emulated EAC.
It's probably also the only selectable option.

Drive Options > Extraction Method:
Secure Mode with following drive features (recommended):
Drive caches audio data: UNCHECKED
Drive is capable of retrieving C2 error information: CHECKED

Drive Options > Offset / Speed:
Use red sample offset correction: +30
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out
Allow Speed reduction during extraction
CD-Text Read capable drive

Drive Options > Gap Detection:
Gap/Inex retrieval method: Detection method A
Detection accuracy: Secure

Drive Options > Writer:
Write samples offset: -30
Drive is able to write UPC/ISRC
Drive is able to write CD-Text (if you're a purist, you only want to enable this when you know your original CD actually had CD-Text, otherwise you are introducing CD-Text into a copy that was never in the original)

Compression Options:
Go find a tutorial specific to which format you are interested in.

Also your commandline to EAC (in the form of a shortcut or whatever it is that you use to launch it) must include -USEFUA. If you cannot effectively implement this, you need to tell EAC that your drive does caching, and you should probably have it do AccurateStream instead of C2. The C2 behaves a little strange without -USEFUA, and AccurateStream behaves a little strange with functional -USEFUA.

You will also want to get into the habit of creating CUE sheets with each rip. There isn't a setting to automatically do this (like how the ripping logs can be auto-saved).

---

If you are going to do a lot of ripping but not a lot of burning, then don't waste your money on a Premium2. Most of their cost is for the burning features (slower burns, more adjustments with laser strength or pit size, etc..). The Premium2 is basically a Premium that is biased more toward burning (especially slow burning) - though either drive can "get the job done" with ripping or burning.

That would have been QPXTool: http://qpxtool.sourceforge.net/index.html

AFAIK it was never ported to any other OS. I'm not into Linux very much but i'd imagine it should be possible to get it running by using a live-CD Linux. Not a very comfortable way of operating it but at least feasible.

Thanks very much for this. I think I'll build a Windows machine with a Premium2 inside. I found that there is a piece of software that allows EAC to pass the extracted audio data on to iTunes for the encoding into AIFF.

Are there any drawbacks you know of when using software other than EAC to do the encoding of the files after EAC ripped the data using the settings you provide above?

About the -USEFUA option: that should be no problem. Including it in the shortcut as you described in a post above should be simple enough.

Thanks again for this wealth of information. It is VERY helpful.

I believe you are responsible for manually or Musicbrainz Picard tagging the files after the fact, if you rip in WAV/AIFF/RAW/etc.. The nice thing about having EAC doing the encoding, is that the rips can already be tagged if you included the compression subcommands for each type of tag.

Having EAC doing the tagging, hasn't helped me much when most of the CDs I own are Japanese, and when EAC only wants to support ANSI characters. That is really the one thing I hate about EAC.

I wanted to touch upon this issue and not ignore you, but obviously I'm a little late.

No matter which of The Big Three drives you get, you're going to want PlexTools (as your actual ripping software) for salvaging the heavily damaged discs. PlexTools is probably the best "do what you can" ripper for when rips don't have to be (or could never be) absolutely perfect. The "best guesses" of PlexTools can hit very close to the mark, even if not precisely on the mark. Audibly, you probably wouldn't even know that anything went wrong.

Glathannus, got it, thanks for your answer. i must admit i'm attracted by the px-760a model because of its dvd r/w capabilities that it has over the premiums; but i'm also wondering: what about the optical system ? shouldn't there be a difference between a cd and a cd/dvd capable drive ? furthermore, the px-760a is a newer drive and maybe integrates newer optical technologies and there is a difference on the read failure rate; maybe one of the drives "sees" better a sector than the other one..
.. these are just thoughts not affirmations, i'm curious about your opinion on the topic, and if you have any knowledge of any comparison tests that may have revealed a difference among plextor drives regarding pure optical performance

also, what's your opinion about buying a used or refurbished drive from e B a y rather than to search for a new one that can cost a lot ?

i also admit i like the premium2 idea for its writing features.. from which i understood by reading about this drive, it is quite unique.. if you use the proper media and software, you can create very high quality burns; this could help me in live conditions when you have the singer on the scene and the instrumental track running in who knows what cd-player and everything must work perfectly, mistakes or cd skips aren't allowed