I know Sony DVDROMs are quiet but I hadn't heard much else about them.
I'm not a big fan of Sony products. They're good while they work but my friends and I have had such bad luck over the years. I had a TV fail a year after warranty. One friend has had 4 Sony TVs fail. Luckily three were under warranty. Same friend had three CD players fail. One was under warranty but it took him 8 months to get a replacement. It was the original Discman (D-5, or something or other). The service center claimed it was shipped to Japan for actual servicing, not replacement. (yeah right! They must have sent it by rowboat). Four friends have had CD players fail in less than two years.
All of them keep buying Sony but not me.
In comparison, my 14-year-old Magnovox and 20-year-old Pioneer CD players are still going strong.
Sorry for venting and getting off topic.
Back to the topic...
Definitely important to do research.
For instance, I picked up an Artec DVDROM. It was to replace my niece's OEM CDROM. It didn't have to be the fastest, at anything but I didn't want her to sacrifice anything either. I hadn't done enough homework.
The early Artec units were rebadged Sonys so I stupidly assumed the new model (at the time) was as well. Wrong! I forget the model number but Artec was now using a drive with a MediaTek chipset. When I tested it I was dissapointed.
It was supposed to be 48x/8x DVDROM. I didn't care about the DVD speed because I knew it wasn't going to be used for ripping but the CD speeds were pretty bad. I think (not sure this was 1.5 years ago) that the Artec did about 40x with pressed CDs, 44x reading CDRs, something like 32x CDRWs, and only 8x DAE, plus the drive was incredibly noisy. These were terrible characteristics but at least performance was better (except for the DAE which was the same) than my niece's old CDROM. The noise was still a big problem.
Fortunately, in the month that I had the drive before Xmas, a new firmware was released. Afterward (IIRC), I was getting 44x for pressed CDs (4x better but only 44x was strange) but a full 48x for CDRs and 40x for CDRWs and the best news was that DAE was now 32x (which was great for a DVDROM at the time).
Was it worth the aggrevation? NO! (but I did save a whopping $5. LOL)
As for the noise, the Artec was very loud in my case but as it turned out, in my niece's case it was silent for DVD and audio CD playing and very quiet for CD data.
Her case uses screwless drive rails while mine doesn't. Apparently, this made all the difference. (Something to consider in my next rig).
The moral is, make sure what you buy meets your needs and don't assume anything.
<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>
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