Hi, I'm looking for a drive that is good at ripping audio cds, specifically my old CD collection that has quite a few scratches on them. Which brand/model do you guys recommend?

There is Audio forum here.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=57

It's been quite long since I rip audio CD last time. I used to use my Plextor 40x SCSI CD-ROM for that.

The ASUS CDS 520 is a great drive and so are the CD drives from LITEON which also feature C2 error correction.

Kenshin: My bad, I'll repost over there.

arup: Thanks for the recommendations, I'll add it to my list to checkout

My LiteOn 166 dvd rom rips faster then my Plex ultra wide 40 ever did so thats what I'd recomemend, it also handles most protections fine too. 30 bucks or so nowadays in the US.

Fully agree, of all the DVD readers I have owned from ASUS, Pioneer and others, the Liteon 163D has been among the longest lasting and fantastic reader with very good and accurate C2 correction, the only sad thing is that it chaches audio data making it a pain with EAC.

A 16x DVD-ROM is a reasonable choice; a LiteOn 52x32x52 is even a faster choice. In my experience it handles scratched originals quite well.