DCC Archive Advice on CD-RW

I think my cd-rom is fried. Rather than just replace it I'm considering upgrading to a cd-rw.

Besides the storage capabilities I'm intrigued by burning my own music cd's. This is all new to me.

Anyone have a good experience with this? Recommendations on a good model?

TIA

[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: justhefax ]

 

I just ran across this site:
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_quality.shtml

Seems to be a lot of info on writers, media, etc., including reviews.

Mike

 

Check out the Plextor PlexWriter 24/10/40A, this is the best IMO.

 

Ditto. I should have mentioned it in the post above. We have a Plextor 8/4/32A at work and its excellent.

 

Plextors rule and whip huge ammounts of solid burning ass. Go out of your way for a Plextor.

If you cannot find one, the only drives that come close are the new Sony CRX175A (Red box with a bald headed guy on it -24X10X40) or most newer HP retail writers. I can always rely on HP writers to do a great job. Sorry I sold mine (sorta).

Keep away from Yama-ha-ha's and the newer Acers (I still use a 2X 3 year-old Acer for backup and I doubt it will ever die).

 

Many thanks for the feedback. The Plexwriter is well reviewed at CNet, too.

Just to make sure I'm not passing up a good thing, CNET uses the word "audiophile" when reviewing the QPS Que! 24/10/40.

There's both a bad and good review. See link:

http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1095-404-6479945.html?tag= st.co.2645886-7-1648566.topfive.1095-404-6479945

Any feedback on QPS? I'm 99% sold on the Plexwriter.

[ December 18, 2001: Message edited by: justhefax ]

 

Why must I always play Devil's advocate, here?;-)

Yes, the Plextor is great (btw, the fadden.org CDRFaq is also an EXCELLENT resource), but keep in mind; I've owned two CDRs, and used quite a few more, and I've never had ANY problems. Seriously. Unless you plan on seriously flogging your drive--perhaps doing lots of on-the-fly, et cetera--IDE over SCSI really isn't a problem.

The two drives I use? HP-8100I (much older, tops out at 4X, and is essentially a re-labeled SONY drive) and a NEC-7800A. While the latter has supported-by-software issues, I experience essentially no problems.

So if you find something cheap, and the Fadden site doesn't condemn it, good chance is it'll work well for you.

-D

 

I have a QPS external FireWire drive (4x4x24x) that I use on my Mac. The drive itself is a Mitsui 4804TE.

Most of the problems I've had have had more to do with software than hardware. I will say this, though, I think QPS customer service sucks.

Shared letters at planetfeedback.com for QPS.

[ December 18, 2001: Message edited by: Patrick M ]

 

I was the first one to complain about QPS at PlanetFeedback. Apparently I didn't share the letter, though. Here it is for anyone considering buying a QPS product:

RE: PLANETFEEDBACK INCIDENT NUMBER 459724

I could not be more dissatisfied with the customer service at QPS. Ironically, these initials stand for "quality", "performance", and "service."

On 01/23/00, before I bought my Que Fire! 4x4x24x drive, I sent an e-mail to [email protected] asking when the FireWire CDRWs would be available. No response.

On 02/07/00, I sent an e-mail to [email protected] asking if the Que! Fire would support 80 min/700 MB CDR media from a Macintosh. No response.

Between 7/31 and 8/23/00, I sent five e-mails to Richard Lopez at QPS ([email protected]) regarding problems using the drive to record in disk-at-once (DAO) mode. I received three responses, and was finally ignored completely when I couldn't resolve the problem. (I have since resolved it on my own.)

On 01/11/01, I sent an e-mail to [email protected] (the listed contact for FireWire CDRW tech support questions) regarding a "Sense Key" failure occuring from Toast 4.1.2. The e-mail included all the information the QPS website indicated I should include. Twelve days later, I have received no response. I sent a follow up e-mail a few moments ago, but I'm not optimistic I will receive a response.

I would like to add that before I purchased this QPS drive, I contacted LaCie with presales questions via e-mail and received prompt responses every time. The only deciding factor in my purchase was that the QPS was available sooner.

I would never purchase another QPS product again, nor could I in good faith recommend this brand to anyone. <slight snippage>

[ December 18, 2001: Message edited by: Patrick M ]

 

I've heard that the latest Yamaha CD-writer (can't remeber the model number) is designed for optimising the quality of CD-audio burning. It uses a different process (CAV vs CLV, I think), and also can burn CD-Rs with longer pits, which makes them less subject to jitter problems on playback. This does reduce the playback time of an audio-CD-R. I am keen to hear further reports on this model.

Apparently some of the Ricoh models are good overall burners, and there are a couple of LiteOn models that have been well reviewed.

 

I have heard similar bad news with the QPS Que. I have a Plextor Plexwriter 10/12/32S and am happy with it. I have a SCSI hard drive and a SCSI Toshiba 1401 DVD-ROM drive and have been very satisfied with the performance. Alas the SCSI costs quite a bit more than the ATAPI 16/10/40A. The ATAPI version is 129.00 at buy.com.

If you want to consider a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo, take a look at the Toshiba SD-R1x02 models (x = 0, 1, or 2). http://www.toshiba.com/taecdpd/products/features/SDR1202-Over.shtml


I haven't had any problems with the Toshiba DVD-ROM drives, but the Plextor CDx models are able to read CDs in very bad condition.

I bought a number of the used MoFi UDCDs from MusicDirect and I couldn't get anything to play them without errors (including mid-fi and high end CD players, DVD players, CD-ROM drives on other computers), except the PlexWriter. I still returned those defective CDs to MusicDirect, but I became amazed at what the Plexwriter could do.

 

I have had consistently good experiences with Que Firewire drives, including in DAO, although I sympathize with the earlier poster. I went through 4 G4s before getting one that worked.

 

Not to be a contrarian, but I got sick and tired of using my computer so I bought a stand alone TDK dual-well CD recorder 'cuz I also wanted to record vinyl...

Results?

Great. Period. Better than I'd hoped for and a lot better than the computer method - a lot more fun, too.

$250 on eBay - and worth it.

Best to the Board,

Ben

 

I don't mind dubbing vinyl into my computer and using Cool Edit Pro to get rid of the clicks (I leave the rest alone as to not mess up the music) and it makes super CDs.

 

Here's two more negatives:

1) I bought a ucb QPS, and it died at about 13 months - with *light* usage!

2) My brother bought a QPS firewire version, and it died about 6 months in (he has it in for repair right now).

Last, when we took the CDR master for the Holy Zoo cd into the replicator, while they were running it through some diagnostic checking for errors, we asked him a bit about what he though of recent CD burners. His response: Plextor seems to be giving the lowest error rates. (Aside: he also mentioned to NOT burn at 1X - he says they universally see more errors that way. Try 2x or 4x instead (apparently all the new drives are optimized at higher burning speeds, and they hardly spend much time optimizing for 1x).

So... two more against QPS, one more for Plextor.

Coupl other thoughts: I have a Matshita (I think) built into my iMac, and it's been working flawlessly now for the few months that we've had the machine.

And.. I have a new Yamaha at work, and it seems to be able to suck in hard to read discs better than the iMac at home.

[ December 18, 2001: Message edited by: Holy Zoo ]

 

PLEXWRITER $30 HOLIDAY REBATE!

Well, I did a little more research, and purchased the Plexwriter 161040A. I did it through CNet comparison shopping, found it at AVLogic for $117 + $13 s&h. On checkout I found the rebate info. Nice surprise.

My computer p2/266 doesn't have enough juice to push the Plexwriter 241040A, minimum requirement p2/300.

Thanks to all for your feedback!

 

My Que Fire IS A PLEXTOR! Although not all of them are. Check this out from Macfixit:

Henry Cline received a detailed reminder of this from Dantz: "Check to see which of the two QueFire 12x10x32 drives you have. Open Retrospect and go to Configure > Devices. Click the Device Status button. Does it name your CD-RW drive as 'CD-R PX-W1210A' (which is made by Plextor) or "'CD-W512EB' (which is made by TEAC)? If it is the PX-W1210A, then it is a supported drive. If it is the CD-W512EB, then it is not.

 

Sorry, I could have been more clear.. of course QPS use different mechnaisms inside.

I think the moral of the story here may be in the QPS hardware, not the internal mechanism.