Freecom FC-1 - Page 5

DAE Tests

- Pressed and CDR AudioCD results

The Freecom FC-1 uses 40x CAV strategy for CD-DA. Below is a screen shot from the CDSpeed transfer rate test with a pressed audio CD.

The average speed of 30.95x, according to CDSpeed, is a good one while the seek times were also good.

We then ripped the contents of the same audio disc to the hard disk with CDDAE software.

According to the graph above, the Freecom drive was the slowest among the drives.

The same pressed audio disc was copied onto a CD-R and was read again with CDspeed. The Freecom FC-1 returned virtually the same ripping speed as with the pressed AudioCD.

- Advanced DAE Quality

After the end of the CDSpeed Advanced DAE Quality test, the software results are presented in the following screen shot:

The test showed us that the drive had an average speed of 26.84x, while no data or sync errors reported. The quality score is the absolute 100. The drive can read CD text and subchannel data but not leadin and leadout.

- Support of 90/99mins AudioCDs

Supports 99min disc

- Reading/Ripping Protected AudioCDs

For the test procedure we used two audio discs with different audio protections schemes. The tasks we tested for are recognition and ripping to the hard disk. The software we used is Exact Audio Copy.

* Pressed Audio disc protected by Sony Key2Audio (Celine Dion - New Day Has Come)

* Pressed Audio disc protected by Cactus Data Shield 200 (Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island)

Unfortunately the drive failed in both cases to playback or rip the contents of our test discs. In the case of the Key2Audio, it was not possible to recognize the disc, whereas with the CDS200, the Freecom drive recognized the disc but could neither rip or play its contents. The Plextor and AOpen drives had both managed to read both audio discs.