Need help chosing a new CD-ROM

[NotoriousJTC]

I've had it with my Aopen.


I know Toshiba and ASUS make good drives, how about Sony?

What would you reccomend? Please dont say the Kenwood 72x, i just need a cheap one to get the job one.


Thanks.

 

[Moonbeam]

Kenwood. You might give storagereview.com a look.

 

[frover2000]

avoid creative i have 2 and they both suck

 

[Shooters]

The Kenwood is fast when it works, but many people on here have had problems with it reading burned discs as well as DAE problems. The Teac CD-450E and the Asus 50x (model S500) are both very good drives for the money. I have the Asus myself, and I will admit that it is noisier than other drives, but it just sounds like a high speed fan, not a 747 like other drives. Plus it reads anything that you can throw at it. I've never used the Teac, but I've heard a lot of good comments about it. Go here for all the info you could possibly want for CD-ROMS. I've said it before, and I'll say it again.....

AVOID THE CREATIVE LABS 52X AT ALL COSTS!

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

Toshiba 48X is quiet and really fast. According to SR, it has the best seeks around. I highly recommend this drive.

It's only downside is that it doesn't have fast DAE.

 

[NotoriousJTC]

Sorry i should have mentioned that noise and seek time was a big concern for me. My Aopen is god damn loud when it "spins up" and take forever to load stuff. Thanks for the link Shooters. Forgive my ignorance, but I completely forgot what DAE stood for?


Hmmm, maybe ill buy the Creative?

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

Ha. Creative's are some of the loudest drives out there.

toshiba or kenwood.

edit: DAE = Digital Audio Extraction. DAE is when you want to rip an audio cd into a file, usually wave. useful if u want to "back-up" your music cd's.

 

[narciarz]

Asus or Toshiba. Have both Asus 40X and Toshiba DVD drive. Stay away from Creative.

 

[Shifter25]

TEAC CD-540E

 

[SiliconVandal]

I don't know what you guys think, but when I owned and opperated HardwarePub.com I did a review/comparison of the Kenwood 72x vs the Creative 52x. The Creative was barely behind it, at a very competitive price. This is a great drive and I love it. Very fast..and quiet. What do you have against this drive?

 

[SiliconVandal]

The Creative wasn't much louder than the Kenwood for me, and not much slower..I really like mine. I have a black Toshiba 48x too, and the creative blows its out speed wise. It is noisier though.

 

[Instigator]

Actually my Acer 50x has been pretty good. I saw in a review awhile back that is was one of the fastest 50x cd-roms. You can get an Acer 52x from mwave for $36, which is pretty cheap.

 

[Instigator]

bump

 

[Shooters]

SiliconVandal, I don't think it's so much the performance that people dislike about the Creative CD-ROM as much as it is the reliability. I've read countless stories about the drive dying on people after just a few months (somtimes weeks) of use.

Notorious, like EvilDonnyBoy said if you do a lot of music copying.....I mean backing up , then you'll want a drive with good DAE speed. It's especially handy if you also have a fast burner becuase then you can do "disc to disc on-the-fly" burning instead of having to rip the music to your hard drive first and then burning it. Check out the DAE results on the cdspeed website, and you'll see that there are only a handful of drives that extract audio fast enough to allow you to do on-the-fly copying at 12x. Of course if you really don't do that much audio ripping then the DAE speed won't be a priority for you.

 

[NotoriousJTC]

Thanks for the explanation guys.
I'm not really into DAE so i guess it wont be of much concern when buying the new drive.
As I've said, noise and seek time are pretty important to me. Infact the 32x on my old IBM Aptiva seemed faster and quieter than the AOpen i have now.

CDspeed ranked my AOpen #3 in Data+DAE. Unfortuantely they failed to say how loud this damn Thing is
ASUS was near the top of my list, but then I read that it can get pretty loud at times. Are there any programs that limit what speed it operates at? To decrease lous "spin ups".

Afreey seems to have scored well, and I've read some decent things about it, anyone have first hand experience with it?

Sorry, I know i'm asking a lot, but after making a blunder with the Aopen, I really wanna get it right this time

 

[NotoriousJTC]

bump

 

[bacillus]

go with a Toshiba as apart from being reliable, is also clonecd compatible!

 

[Supergax]

I'd say Teac, Toshiba, I've had no problems with Kenwood, even though a lot of people have.

I'd say also check out Sony OEM's from mwave, I've installed a bunch in low end systems, very quiet, cheap, and never had a problem with one.

And stay away from Creatives like the plague, the things are garbage.

 

[mztykal]

I suggest you take a look at the Afreey 50x. It's a really good drive for the price. I've had the Creative 52x (sucked and was LOUD) and a CenDyne 52x (biggest POS I've ever seen) and the Afreey. The Afreey performs much better than the other two and costs less...

 

[LXi]

Acer 40x, TEAC 40x, or Toshiba 48x. Those three perform real nicely, and they're all good readers.

 

[NotoriousJTC]

Alright, i think ive narrowed it down to the following:

TEAC, Toshiba, Sony, Afreey, and ASUS.

Supergax says the Sony is quiet, thats very intriging...
I guess I'm still open to the idea of a dvd-rom as well. I know Poineer makes good drives. They must be quiet too, to be reccommended so much.

 

[erub]

I have an Afreey 50x - got it a year ago in Feb. The drive is very loud, but very fast. Its the loudest CDROM i've used, but that's probably cause of the high spin rate. I wish I had gotten a quieter drive, but I don't want to say that it is the loudest because its the only one I've ever used that is 40x+. It seems to work pretty well.

 

[Nessism]

Asus has a nice utility to set the speed of their drive. I have an Asus 50X and I set the speed down when playing music CD's. Unfortunately, the speed adjustment resets to default speed each time Windows is rebooted.

One thing to keep in mind when selecting a drive, high speed drives make noise! Some of the faster drives these days are spinning upwards of 9000+ rpm. Their is now way that a 9000 rpm drive is going to be quiet! Some drives may be loud/quiet relative to similar drives in their speed range, but if someone tells you that their 48X brand XXX drive is quiet, they are pulling your leg or they have poor hearing.

Good luck.

 

[Wingznut]

Toshiba 48x is an excellent drive.

 

[ZigZag]

I am using the ASUS X 50 and in my opinion he is the best

any why is there a new firmware to this drive ?

I really want a new version...

Yaniv