westgroveG

Evereux & I have created a new drive features database, it can be found at:

http://www.daefeatures.co.uk

The database stores all features relevant to digital audio extraction for a drive. It’s sorted, allows filtering by manufacturer & has a colour coded background system for easy reference.

The database is already largely populated, all complete records from The Coaster Factory & all records I have collected from HA & DI forums have been imported into the database.

What about eac-audio.de?

The differences between our database & eac-audio.de are:

• We keep only drive features relevant to ripping
• We only keep complete records – all features for a drive must be submitted
• Our web table is designed for fast & easy reference

We request that people wanting to support the site register & submit their drive’s features to us. Anyone who is unsure on how to perform drive feature tests can find explanations in our FAQ page.

Note: Anyone who has submitted to The Coaster Factory (before 02/27/2002) or to one of the forums (HydrogenAudio or Digital-Inn ) please do NOT re-submit the same drive data to the DAE Drive Features Database.

JuanK

Please correct the entry for the Yamaha 2100S (CD-RW drive). The correct name is Yamaha CRW2100S.

Once more, please reconsider the addition of writing capabilities. It's just three columns to add, and the database will be the most complete and useful.

westgroveG

Thanks for the correction, this will be corrected shortly.

Unfortunately that would require a complete database restructure, re-sort & import of The Coaster Factory records, & the forum submissions would be invalid.

JuanK

Did you have a look here? There's a lot of drives listed.

wyhiwyg

Once more, please reconsider the addition of writing capabilities. It's just three columns to add, and the database will be the most complete and useful.

Hmm, maybe one day someone will do a complete EAC settings database and there will be no more need for 10000 different sites . I'm sure a lot of work into it but really, what is the point of another incomplete database?

evereux

Hello,

Due to popular demand , we shall be adding a write offsets column to the database soon (hopefully within the next week or two) so we can have a complete table.

Thanks for your comments, they're apprecaited.

Halcyon

Grreeat! Write features is very important. I'm glad you are implementing it. Good work!

wyhiwyg

You may want to re-word the offsets headings. Sample offset = "read offset" or "read offset correction"? Most people know that the value listed is the value you enter in EAC but I've read posts here where someone has asked about it.

westgroveG

I believe there is software that uses byte, & sector precision to calculate offsets so we have to be clear what format the measurement is in.

wyhiwyg

What I mean is that while EAC requires the "Read Offset Correction" to be entered, people commonly refer to this value as the "Read Offset" which is wrong. The correction is the opposite (-/+) value of the Read Offset.

Prodoc

I send this message to one of the creators of the DAE Drive Features website a couple of weeks ago as well but so far I did not receive a response. Incase no one received it and for the sake of discussion I desided to post it here as well.

I just found your "DAE Drive Features Database" project page and I must say, nice job! It's good to have a nice, clean and easy resource like this.

I just submitted my drive info (Plextor PX-716A by Prodoc) and I've got a few suggestion which might help to improve the website even more.

- Type dropdown
As far as I can tell the Type input field on the submission page will only be used for a fixed set of values. Therefor imo it would make life a bit easier if it was a dropdown instead of an input field. This will also prevent any wrong data entry. I didn't know what to fill in at first, I had to go to the search page to compare it with other drives first. Having a fixed set in a dropdown also allows you to use more descriptive values as well.

- Additional info links
On the submission page it might be handy to have a link behind each input field to provide additional info about that input field. Linking e.g. to a FAQ area would be sufficient or a popup could appear. The info needed per input field would be: what kind of value is expected (also including some examples) and how it can be determined. I for one didn't know how I was able to determine the Overread value of my drive. To be honest, I didn't even know what it ment... The same goes e.g. for the greater-than and smaller-than signs in the firmware input field, people will forget to use them, use them without actually being able to confirm that it will work on older or newer firmware versions, etc.
That reminds me: why bother using greater-than and smaller-than signs in the first place? What should I have entered? My drive (Plextor PX-716A) supported all stuff before the firmware version I entered and probably will in all new releases.
For the C2 Errors EAC can be used and e.g. Nero InfoTool to determine if the drive has this feature.

- AccurateRip
I don't know if you've heared of the AccurateRip project (http://www.accuraterip.com/), you probably know about it but I just want to remind you that that project already collected a sh*t load of Sample Offset's of different drives. Maybe it's of any use to you as well.

- Correction option
On the search results pages it might be handy to have a correction option behind each drive. Clicking on this button will take you to the submit page with the current values of the drive filled in which can be altered. Maybe an extra comment field could be provided for people to explain why something is wrong and/or how they know. The altered info could be submitted to you so you receive a nice and clear log of what should be changed and why. Depending on the way you receive/store the results you can manually alter the info, you could create a separate db table with a website function to apply the changed or any change could be applied as soon as people submit it with you receiving a (db) log to double check.

Anyway, just my 2 cents ;-)

Keep up the good work!

westgroveG

Thanks for your feedback Prodoc, I did read your e-mail & we considering your suggestions. Currently we are all a little busy but we soon plan to make various improvements to the DAE DB.

evereux

http://www.daefeatures.co.uk has now been updated to include the following features:

* Users can now edit their drive submissions.
* Users can now input a drives write offset.


If a user has some drive info's that they didn't input via the site (eg they came from another list) they won't be able to edit those info's. If those users would like to register and have those drive info's associated with their login so they can edit them, let me know.

Also, you can now link to the search form to show only one particular drive manufacturer:
http://www.daefeatures.co.uk/search.php?man=PLEXTOR

The email address paul atnospam daefeatures.co.uk hasn't been working until very recently. My apologies to those that may have sent me an email and didn't get a reply.


Any problems, please let me know. smile.gif

Prodoc

A "remember login" feature would be handy ;-)

evereux

It's a security feature.

I don't believe it's that much of problem though? People aren't exactly going to be logging in everyday.