Audio read performance:
To test the audio performance we downloaded EAC.
This utility enable accurate audio grabbing and reliable conversions.
One good thing about EAC is the integrated drive detector to detect the various features of your drive.

The EAC interface – Simple and accurate
We select drive Options to optimize our writer and to detect the options.
Extraction method:

The detected functions of the Plextor 24/10/40 IDE
We are going a little deeper into these properties:

The Plextor returns C2 error information according to the build in testprocedure…
Here we see the new Plextor’s ideal settings for audio grabbing using EAC
The drive’s read commando’s:
Because in the beginning there was no real drive-standard, most manufacturors used their own commands to read audiodata from CD’s. Due to this fact EAC knows many read commands and has a build in detection system to select the appropriate command for each drive.
The drive detection methode told us that the Plextor 16/10/40 uses the “read command D8”.
Offset/speed:
We did the ‘detect sample offset correction’ after creating a test CD for this feature. If we want to find an exact location on an audioCD it isn’t that simple as a normal data CD. Due to the lack of some extra data to calculate the exact position on an audioCD it is not possible to go to a predefined position. It will only be in the area of that position. Usually it is a few samples before or after that position.
With the offset correction you are much more accurate in locating the exact position.
The offset value of the Plex 24/10/40A is +68
The selection of ‘allow speed reduction during extraction’ helps a lot when there are various errors on the CD. Finally we select the CD-Text function.
The folowing preferences were also detected.
UPC/ISRC en CD-text support.