Back to the old 12/10/32s drives is seems

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Jeff T.
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Back to the old 12/10/32s drives is seems

Postby Jeff T. » Fri Dec 03, 2010 11:43 pm

Are you getting more CD-Rs with recorded flaws lately? I am.

I think it is the burners of today, especially the DVD-R/CD-R combo recorders that do not handle CD-R as well as the old CD only recorders. I have been doing some trades with a friend, the usual stuff, old out of print MFSL, DCC, plus some Japanese original issues, and the odd needle drops. And when I started using my Pioneer DVD/CD combo recorder I noticed more small flaws in the recorded discs. I took it that the quality of the CD-Rs were getting worse, so I switched brands again, and tried more TY Japanese made media, and still go the same average number of flaws. Just small hiccups here and there, not entire disc failure.

Then I went back and started using my old Plextors, the 12/10/32s, and the 12/4/32s, as well as a 10/12/32a. I saved these first two drives on my computer junk drawers, and picked up that last one, the 12/10/32a from an old near dead computer I found at a thrift store for $10.

It seems my flawed discs % went way down when I went back to these old Plextor war horses. I was always burning at 16X tops anyway, and so going back to 12x is fine with me. I have three computers in a row with three screens so I can do needle drops on one, internet on another, while burning on the third is I am busy. Or have copies going on three machines at once for those extra large trades. It's nice to be able to knock out a 30 disc trade quickly with three machines going as I'm still much more of a disc trader rather than a downloader. But I am beginning to do a bit of FLAC downloading. And I am setting one of these machines up to be a music server with a 2trb internal, and a similar external drive.

Anyway, it is just so odd to me that I would be back with my 1998 and 1999 Plextors this late in the game. And I wondered is others are also using these time tested awesome Plexys?

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lukpac
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Re: Back to the old 12/10/32s drives is seems

Postby lukpac » Sat Dec 04, 2010 12:06 am

I have a 12/10/32s in my Mac along with a Lite-ON that's a few years old. I honestly rarely use it, though. The Lite-ON seems to burn fine at 24x and 48x (the speeds I usually burn at), and the LG in my laptop seems to burn fine too (I've been doing 10x lately). Plus both the Lite-ON and LG seem to be great at DAE.

I've had some issues *ripping* with newer drives, notably my old laptop drive (even with EAC), but I can't recall many issues burning.

Honestly the Plextor is mostly around for nostalgia. And the occasional drive to drive copy.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Jeff T.
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Re: Back to the old 12/10/32s drives is seems

Postby Jeff T. » Sat Dec 04, 2010 12:30 am

I am seeing great ripping results out of the Pioneer 115D for CD copying (reading). It just left me with higher rate of bad discs when recording. The old Plextor readers (ROM drives) I also have but do not trust them as much as the Pioneers for reading.

I don't burn ever over 16x, it just seems too fast for music imo. Why save a minute by driving that fast?

I also have a Mac G5 and a laptop that is four years old. I do have other options as well.

But these Pent 4s with 2.8 CPUs, 2gigs of memory are my most used machines. The Mac is only for video editing, and I have been getting far fewer gigs the last two years. Anyway, the Pent PCs are fun because I can switch out the parts between them, drives and accessories, etc. There are six drives in each of these three machines, 2 CD-R, 2DVD, and 2 HDDs. I rip Laser Discs and VHS tapes for DVD-Rs, etc. Sometimes I'll have Procoder 1.5 mpg2 encoding a six hour overnight job on one for a DVD-R.

I must have gotten cheap Pioneer DVD-R writers then if I prefer the Plexs for CD-R.

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lukpac
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Re: Back to the old 12/10/32s drives is seems

Postby lukpac » Sat Dec 04, 2010 10:51 am

Jeff T. wrote:I don't burn ever over 16x, it just seems too fast for music imo. Why save a minute by driving that fast?


Why not? I guess if you can hear a difference, but I never have. Nor have I ever run into issues with playability. In my 12 or so years of CD-R burning, I can only remember a handful or two of discs with burn issues, those most of those were about 10 years ago.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD