cmdrdredd, no worries and no offense taken.
SD2 is a copy protection technology (SafeDisk 2... used in MOHAA for example). The other competing 40X products are able to deal with it. The TEAC cannot. DAE performance is important if you rip a fair number of CD's. Sure you can use another drive for it, but that's not the point if you have one of the latest and greated drives.
I agree, noise isn't a big deal. But your suggestion doesn't make too much sense if you burn CD's often.
CloneCD is not outdated, current version is 4.0... it is still the best 1:1 copy program out there. I suggest you post a question in the forums and see what the response is.
Supposedly, the new firmware 1.0c takes care of the DAE performance. Whether or not it addresses the other issues remains to be seen. I sent a PM to Ian, the guy that wrote the CDRLabs review. We will see what his response is. Here's the last paragraph in his review...
So is TEAC's CD-W540E for you? If you're looking for the drive with the fastest read speeds and lowest seek times out there, the CD-W540E probably is. I really can't say that its the fastest writer out there. It went neck and neck with the Plextor through out most of our tests and there was no clear winner. While we didn't include it in this review, the new ZS0A firmware for the LTR-40125S might just tip the scales in Lite-On's direction too. And then you also need to look at the media compatibility and the writing quality. As usual, the choice is up to you. You need to weigh the performance aspects and features that are important to you and go from there.
IMO Mt. Rainier support is just featureset marketing @ the moment. It's like saying a video card supports Pixel Shaders 1.4. The technology is there, but not utilized and won't be for a while. By the time it makes mainstream, most people (especially people that use this forum) will probably have bought 2 subsequent generations of products.
Jack head over to
CDRInfo and look in the articles section, there is a piece that answers your question.