I just got a Plextor Premium, very nice drive.

Looking at the Plextools drive information it tells me my drive has -120 read offset and -120 write offset.
First of all can I trust these numbers?

Second how do I use these numbers with EAC?
Do I need to enter these mubers att all, maby the offsets are handled automaticly through the firmware?
If not, For read offset I'm supposed to eneter +120 for corected offset, and for write offset -120(actual offset not corrected), if I'm not mistaken?
As you can see I'm a bit confused.
Plese help me if you own a Plexor Remium drive and use EAC.

And if secure mode is working properly and the offsets are set correctly will that mean that I will get PERFECT copies?

Searching the internet I found sevral sources saying the offset is -30. Why is the plextools information saying its -120?

(in reply to markanini)

It might be the case they are measuring with respect to different "absolutes".

I mean that Plextor might use a different model for finding the offset.
In any case you should use the one provided by the folks at EAC. Because you will be using this software for ripping/burning.

Unfortunately, I do not expect the offsets to be handled automatically by firmware. Hence you should provide these numbers into the EAC configurations.
With respect to the plus or minus. I assume you will have to use them as reported on the EAC website. That is, use the minus sign.

The only way to know that all is correct fo the following.
Get a known .WAV file on the hard disk.
USe a rewritable to record one single track, in disc-at-once mode to the rewritable by setting the offset appropriately.
Than rip it back onto hard disk.
Use the dos command "fc /b file1 file2" to compare the WAVs.

By trial and error, you will find which is true and which is not.
Good luck

(in reply to markanini)

"It might be the case they are measuring with respect to different "absolutes"."
What do you mean?

"Unfortunately, I do not expect the offsets to be handled automatically by firmware."
Is there anything stopping manufacturers from doing this?

(in reply to markanini)

There is a way to get absolute values, by comparing data tracks when read as audio!
But even this approach might not get universal acceptance. Hence most, at least in the past, seemed to compare wrt to their own recorder!

It's too long ago since I have stoped researching further this issue, so I do not know how these offsets are being defined by the various authors today.

If the offsets were to be handled automatically by f/w's, then there sould not exist such offsets!

(in reply to markanini)

I now figured out that one sample is 4 bits(or bytes I'm not sure). Hence the audio offset is -120 bytes divided by four is -30 samples.

"If the offsets were to be handled automatically by f/w's, then there sould not exist such offsets!"
What I meant is that it would be good if the manufacturers set offset correction automaticly, since I can't see whats stopping them from doing so.

(in reply to markanini)

It is indeed 4 bytes.

The IC's used in drives used to be of low computation power, hence they had to be designed to fit exactly at the job intend to carry on. The first recorders by Philips, for example, were not able to compute L3 error correction code on the fly! So we are essentially dealing with persons who see things inherently different than the rest of us. Hence the difficulty in persuading them to do the self-evident!

Moreover, this attitude is still main stream. Consider, for example the inability of drive makers, and especially Philips, to fully implement Mt Rainier into f/w, yerars after its original inception.

There is, of course, a reason for all this having started wrong. The way the first 2 levels of error correction were implemented in the initial audio stream according to red book, required interleaving of the encoded stream. This left out the possibility of choosing one out of 6 possible ways to implement this multiplexing (if I remember well from reading the standards, 5 years ago). This opened up the opportunity for each maker for implementing his own offset, depending on the chipset series he used in his designs.

(in reply to markanini)