CyQ've RW8080A- Page 4

DAE Tests

- Test Method

We used CD DAE 99 v0.21 beta and EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 software in order to check the DAE performance of both drives with various AudioCDs (both pressed and CDR). The posted DAE results are the average of both applications, but the CPU usage was only taken from CD DAE 99, since EAC occupies the system a lot more. As a last note, we used the "BURST" reading mode of EAC. We made a full CD Rip starting from the first to the last track of the CD. The Average DAE reported speed along with the CPU Usage is displayed in the test graphs.

- DAE features:
As the EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 reported, CyQ've RW8080A doesn't do "Caching" of data, supports "Accurate Stream" and no "C2 Error info".

- Pressed AudioCD results: (CyQ've RW8080A CD Speed graphs)

The PleXWriter PX-S88TU supports up to 24x (CAV) DAE with both pressed and CDR media. CyQ've RW8080A follows with an 9.7X average DAE speed. As for TEAC CD-RW280PU, the DAE speed is locked at 8x (CLV), and therefore it cannot really compete against the other drives:

- CDR AudioCD Results: (CyQ've RW8080A CD Speed graphs)

CyQ've RW8080A and the other drives performed with CDR media as with pressed CDs:

- EAC Secure Extract Ripping mode

EAC's secure extract ripping mode test ensures the maximum produced WAV quality. Note that for each drive we used the build-in detection function:

TEAC CD-RW280PU was much faster than the other drives, mainly because it doesn't support "caching" of data. During the DAE process EAC reported many sync errors, however the final CRC for all tracks were OK. CyQ've RW8080A and PleXWriter keep their speed under 3X.

- Advanced DAE Quality

All drives performed excellently in the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE quality test. They produced 0 data/sync errors and got a perfect score (100). CyQ've RW8080A gave the second best performance with 9.9X average speed.

- Bad CDR Media results

Despite the fact that Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test stretches a drive's mechanism to the max, we decided to do real life tests with a scratched disc. The disc was dirty, and with some light scratches, enough to cause problems to most of the tested drives. We used CD DAE 99 software to rip the whole disc (756539616 sectors) and the results were very interesting:

CyQ've RW8080A is not the best reader, since it produced too many read errors.

- Ripping 90 and 99min CDs

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We inserted a 90min CD in the CyQ've RW8080A and ran the CDSpeed test. The drive gave a reading error at 88:00:00. As for the 99min media, they are not even recognized by the drive.