Pioneer BD Drive Models with Best CD read/ripping?

[callahan75]

I've heard lots of positives about Pioneer Blu-Ray drives. They might be a bit more expensive but many say they are uncommonly reliable and better than most at reading troubled CDs. Others say they are overrated; ymmv, I guess.

It probably sounds silly but before I finally have Microcenter build me a custom desktop for speedy 1080p video editing, I’d prefer to use one of these new Pioneer drives in a Dell Dimension 8300; Windows XP SP2. Pentium IV, 3G memory.

No problems using these 2020 Pioneer drives with Windows XP simply for CD ripping?

High Blu-Ray r/w performance is essential, but might anyone recommend one or more of these current internal models https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA ... ter+Drives or
these earlier models https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA ... s.Archived

for best overall performance, but especially for CD reading/ripping accuracy?

Also, Pioneer does tend to issue firmware updates more often than most other optical drive brands? If yes, why would this most likely be?

[Ian]

As long as you have an available SATA port, those drives should work fine. The big difference in many cases is the software bundle. For example, the BDR-212UBK comes with software that can play Ultra HD where the software that comes with the BDR-2212 can only play normal Blu-rays.

I've never really thought of their drives as being better than others for ripping CDs. However, they do have technologies like PureRead that are supposed to be good for scratched and dirty discs.

They used to issue firmware updates quite often but, with no new media showing up on the market, the frequency has slowed to a crawl. They seem to be releasing new drives more often than firmware updates.

[DennisOlof]

Pioneer is a quality brand so why not go for that device.

There could be problems with the drive, it depends on the motherboard. I remember back in the day some 3.5 Inch HDs with SATA had a jumper so you could set it to SATA150 if the motherboard could not detect the device. If you do not have SATA on your motherboard you can buy a PCI card with SATA ports and use that, should work. As long as you have the right drivers 32bit I assume.

The problem now is that a lot of software is moving towards 64bit and they are not in active development of 32bit software, this depends on what software you want to use.