Well, I thought I should return with final conclusions and course of action.
A nod to CrystalGipsy’s remark above - I confess that when I compared rips from mk1 and mk3 models a couple days later, during the day, I was hard-pushed to detect the differences I thought I’d detected previously. Certainly not to the degree I thought I’d originally heard them. Perhaps tiredness/stress had an effect; I don’t know. My A/B methodology changed a little - I reduced the length of track I used to compare. Originally it was about 25 seconds; next time round it was around 15. Maybe with less to hold in audio memory my perception was more accurate? What’s not in doubt, though, is I feel pretty embarrassed in making this admission, but there it is.
Anyhow, I bought the Buffalo optical drive and ripped straight into my Melco. I
can’t detect any difference between that rip and the rips from the Mk1 and Mk3 machines. So the Mk3 is now up for sale.
Thanks everyone who contributed above. The most useful piece of information I can leave behind is that the Buffalo drive is an excellent ripping machine and Melco told me it wasn’t so very far from the D100.
