I used the drive in a few scenarios: on my Mac Pro with iTunes (full database - HUGE) and with dbPowerAmp. And on my Retina MacBook Pro, with an empty iTunes Library, directly connected to the laptop with the supplied USB 3.0 cable (no hub).
So I was ripping the recent Warner (EMI) Rafael Kubelik 13CD "The Complete HMV Recordings" and I came to CD 9 and it took iTunes a long time to rip it on my Macbook Pro. I have the extensive options (the single "Use error correction") set (to Yes). This one disc took about 30 minutes to rip but at the end it was happy and I went on to rip some more discs. But I thought, let me spot check CD 8 as that rip time was long. Kirk, the rip was dreadful. On any track LOUD stuttering. Completely unusable. This was actually my main impetus to switch to Windows and dbPowerAMp some 5 or so years ago as my main CD ripper. I was listening to ripped music (with iTunes) and I would get audio glitches from ripped CDs. Now this Kubelik set is brand new and has no visible physical defects or fingerprints on the disc. All my discs that I bought new are immaculate.
dbPowerAmp, and I believe EAC, not only offer many fine-tuning options, they can output a ripping log with your choice of 3 logging levels and if they don't have the warm and fuzzies about a track they'll tell you, and also optionally re-read a track multiple times. iTunes simply acts like everything is OK.
I had one other issue which raises concerns with the relatively new dbPowerAmp for OS X. I was ripping the new Sony 10CD box set "Masterworks of the 20th century" and it just stopped on Track 12 of one of the CDs. About 2/3 of the way through the CD. I tried changing many ripping options but to no avail. Now iTunes ripped the disc and played tracks 11-13 and they sound OK.
The main appeal of iTunes to me is their Gracenote database. I still edit a lot of tags but at least it gives me a baseline to work from. dbPowerAmp, although it queries FIVE sources (AMG, GD3, MusicBrainz, freedb, and TrackType), has less entries than Gracenote. So I do a lot of typing. Since I get so many new releases, I think my hit ratio % is lower than most. But I know if I rips are good.
I'll read your review and I'll return this drive to Amazon Monday. I'll also play that Kubelik CD in my Oppo CD player and test rip it on four different Windows machines with 4 different DVD drives as I want to see what they report.
I did some UPS re-arranging today and now having other issues with power distribution. It's driving me nuts right now. Oh I found the problem. I have 3 UPSs and one is actually plugged into another. Ugh. It's a spaghetti mess of cables.
I'd suggest taking a look at XLD, a free audio converter which can also rip CDs and which supports AccurateRip. There are various guides to setting it up for secure ripping. Here's the one from the Hydrogen Audio forum. It supports a variety of formats for input and output, including MP3, AAC and Apple Lossless.
I am sure this - if fixed - would improve the UX of someone ripping CDs to the Rose. In my case, and across hundreds of CDs, I had to navigate - for a good number of CDs - through so many search attempts and - in many cases - I had to rip CDs on my Mac as the Rose, despite many searches, could not find the correct album cover artwork.
No need to be RSA780. Most of external CD ROM works.
You can try ripping CD with Apple superdrive as well.
However, the CDROM for PC assembly may not work.
I would recommend using well known brands.
If only the album cover of the CD is not found, try searching for the album cover.
Also, please let me know if only album cover is not searchable for other CDs. If only the album cover is not found on other CDs, it may be issue about CD ROM or RS250.
So I am wanting to start getting into buying blue rays and ripping them to my media server. I also am seriously considering using BD for archiving important documents and such off my Nexcloud. I started looking into drives and these two seem to be highly recommended.
Shop Amazon for PIONEER External Blu-ray Drive BDR-XS07S Silver Color to Match Mac.6X Slot Loading Portable USB 3.2 Gen1(3.0) BD/DVD/CD Writer. Supports BDXL and M-Disc Format. USB Bus Powered and find millions of items, delivered faster than ever.
I guess I was wondering how others that use Blueray Drives for stuff have their setup? If I get an internal and then install it in my server obv I remove the bottleneck of moving data over the network. The advantage of the external one being better flexibility and I can use it with other machines easily.
Then for DVD and regular bluray I CPU transcode to shrink the file. DVD gets h.264 transcode and bluray gets h.265. I find the space savings of h265 on DVD is minimal and not worth the time differential. I also manually input the meta data like title and release date here, if makemkv did t get it.
Just an honest question going on the premise that we own the Discs and avoid legal or not question. If use the something such as the Rarr usenet apps and have great internet speed would there be any difference if quality if downloaded a copy of my movie in a high quality Bluray Remux say wit both dolby vision and HDR 10. Or for that matter just I could just download the disc and then do the encoding however I wanted to keep it. Just simply asking is there any reason the quality would be worse. I can download a 35 to 58 GB file already the way I would want it and it will be seen by plex and ready to go in about 15 to 25 minutes. That is quicker for me than ripping it and then encoding to a super high quality remux myself even on the Threadripper because I would do a 2 pass and such. Again just wondering is there any quality to be gained and I recognize how lucky I am to living a small town where the county decided to start up their own fiber Internet, cable service (thanks to Greenlight Fiber of Wilson, NC) Now I could never move, LOL.
Most modern computers lack a physical disc drive, but an external optical drive allows you to watch, rip, or burn movies and shows that may be found only on disc. If you have a massive library of DVD movies, the Verbatim External Slimline CD/DVD Writer is fast and affordable. For Blu-rays, we recommend the Potvmosl External Compatible Blu-ray Drive, which offers fantastic value and good performance.
Using the above criteria, we gathered a list of the best-selling external optical drives across Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, and other retailers. Then we eliminated drives with large numbers of performance and reliability complaints.
We settled on five new drives to test: the Archgon MD-8107 External UHD Blu-ray Optical Drive, the LG GP65NB60, the Pioneer BDR-XD08UMB-S, the Potvmosl External Compatible Blu-ray Drive, and the Verbatim External Slimline CD/DVD Writer. We also retested our most recent previous picks that are still available to purchase new, the Asus ZenDrive U9M and the LG WP50NB40.
For CD/DVD drives, I ripped three DVD movies using MakeMKV at least twice, and then I used the commercially available Nero Burning ROM to burn a 4.3 GB ISO file (a kind of disc image) twice. For our Blu-ray drive candidates, I ripped one DVD movie at least twice and then ripped three Blu-ray movies at least twice before finally burning both a 4.3 GB ISO and a 19.5 GB Blu-ray disc image at least twice.
For our DVD burn tests, I used 16X 4.7 GB Verbatim DVD-R discs, and for our Blu-ray burn tests, I used 16X 25 GB Verbatim BD-R discs. I also tested DVD and Blu-ray playback on each drive and tested the burned discs to confirm that the burned files functioned properly. And I tested each disc on both Windows 11 and macOS Sonoma to see whether the drives supported playback on both.
Over the course of our testing, I noted the build quality of each drive, as well as how easily it opened and closed. I also noted the software included with each drive, though no drive we tested came with a software package I could recommend. Increasingly, manufacturers are including only trial or limited-function versions of applications that gate functionality behind additional fees. Almost all of this software is similar to the kinds of bloatware that bog down cheap laptops, and I recommend avoiding it if you can.
Although one pick was a clear winner in DVD rip times, our Blu-ray testing painted a much more chaotic picture. This is largely attributable to how much more complicated Blu-ray discs tend to be than DVDs, as they have many more chapters, folders, and scripts to determine more sophisticated menus and audio/subtitle options. Some drives seemed to need to work harder with some discs and not others. In this case, we had to make a decision while taking all of the numbers, along with the price of each model, into consideration.
Its build quality is good for the price. Despite the shockingly low price tag, this drive was far better than we expected in its build quality and sturdiness. Its noise levels were even with those of the other models we tested, and its textured shell was both inoffensive to the eye and apparently inclined to attract fewer fingerprints than the black plastic surfaces of almost every other drive we considered.
The Archgon MD-8107 External UHD Blu-ray Optical Drive posted the most consistently good Blu-ray ripping speeds of any of the drives we tested. Its Blu-ray and DVD burn speeds also ranked among the faster results we saw, and during Blu-ray playback it was quieter than the other drives we tested. Its main drawback is its price, which is much higher than that of our Blu-ray pick from Potvmosl; on top of that, it produced only middling performance in ripping DVD movies.
It consistently ripped Blu-ray discs quickly. The Archgon drive consistently ranked among the best performers in Blu-ray disc rip time. This was especially evident with our second Blu-ray test disc: Whereas two other drives took around an hour to rip that disc, the Archgon drive took about 26 minutes. It also posted the second-fastest burn times of the pack, running behind the leader by just 20 seconds or so.
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