Best CD drive for ripping audio?

[Shawn T. Rutledge]

What's the best drive for this?

I use cdparanoia and I think the fastest I've ever seen was 1.4x, once,
momentarily on a clean disc.  Typically it's less than 1x.  I know it's
possible to go much faster with some drives.  My Memory CD-RW seems the
best of what I've got for this purpose; I got slightly less performance
with a not-too-old IDE CD-ROM and really lousy performance, or not working
at all, with various old SCSI drives.

I've heard good things about the Plextor 32X but what about the newer
faster ones?

What about that really fast multi-beam Kenwood?

What about newer faster CD-RW drives?  I could use a faster one anyway.

What about DVD-ROMs, are any of these also good at ripping audio?

(I tried to ask this on Slashdot but the @#$@'s never posted it.  Seems
to me it's a better question than the usual Ask Slashdot's.)

-- 
  _______                   Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD  ecloud@bigfoot.com
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