52X IDE CD-RW Recorder Roundup Vol 2 - Page 10

CDR Tests

- Recording Tests

All the drives support the 52X CAV writing speed. For more details for the supported speeds of each drive, you can see the first four pages of this article. In the following graph there are illustrated the best recording times for each model at 52X.

The best recording time came from AOpen CRW5224E with Mitsui SG Ultra 48X media. The drive finished writing in 2:29 minutes. However, all the drives have given similar recording times around 2:30. The Mitsumi drive wrote faster on SKC 48X and Taiyo Yuden 40X media. The result of Teac CD-W552E on the graph came with CMC Magnetics media, and for Waitec STORM 52/2 with Fuji 40X media. The below graph shows the best times for all the supported recording speeds above with various media:

• Aopen CRW5224

• Mitsumi CR-487ETE

• Teac CD-W552E

• Waitec STORM 52/2

- Supported media

In the following chart you can see the maximum allowed writing speeds according to the inserted disc type:

The AOpen and Waitec drives have the widest compatibility with the above media list for the 52X writing speed. At both drives you can disable the JustSpeed function and allow 52X writing. The Mitsumi and TEAC drives don't support this...

- Other features

- CloneCD Writing Tests

The CloneCD software reports that the drive supports the DAO-RAW feature. With the use of proper media, DAO-RAW writing can be performed at 52X.

For checking the drive's EFM correction status, we used 3 different game titles with different SafeDisc 2 versions with the latest software patches installed. We used the drive as reader/writer in the maximum reading/recording speed. Two discs were burned for each game. The first disc was burned with PadusDJ and the other with CloneCD (Amplify Weak Sectors On). The results are posted in the following table.

All the drives can backup SafeDisc v2.5x.xx ~ 2.80.xx builds without any problems due to the MediaTek and new RICOH chipsets.