Freecom Traveller II combo CDRW/DVD - Page 4

DAE/MP3 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 the Freecom drive with various AudioCDs (both pressed and CDR). As a 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

We used EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 to examine the drive's features. As the program reported, Freecom Traveller II does not support "Caching" and supports "Accurate stream" and "C2 error info"

- Pressed AudioCD results

Freecom Traveller II extracted the pressed audio CD at 8X and it gets the third place, far away from the top:

- CDR AudioCD results

Freecom Traveller II gave the same DAE speed in the CDR test as with pressed media, and also produced no errors.

- EAC Secure Extract Ripping mode

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

- Advanced DAE Quality

Freecom Traveller II keeps the DAE speed at 8X as in the previous tests. The quality score is 100 for all the drives, and as you can see below, CDSpeed states that the drive cannot read CD Text, but we will check it out later.

- Bad CDR Media results

Despite the fact that Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test stretches 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 in order 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:

Freecom Traveller II kept its ripping speed at 8X, but the produced error rate is very low and practically 0%. The TEAC CD-W280PU gets the first place with 0 errors.

- Ripping 90 and 99mins AudioCDs

Freecom Traveller II cannot recognize any 90/99 min media and the tests with CDSpeed gave a failure reading error in the beginning of the reading process.

- Mp3 Playback feature

Freecom Traveller II supports MP3 playback from CD-R/RW media. We created all possible combination of Mp3 files ,using Nero's build-in Mp3 encoder for both CBR/VBR encoding formats. The playback results are gathered in the following tables:

As the test results showed, Freecom Traveller II managed to playback ALL CBR/VBR encoded mp3 files without any noticable problems.

- Reading Protected AudioCDs

For the test procedure we used 3 protected AudioCDs, which we tested in both recognition and ripping (with CD DAE) processes:

* Pressed AudioCD with Sony's KeyAudio
* Pressed AudioCD with Cactus Data Shield 200 (Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island)
* CDR AudioCD protected with Cactus Data Shield (CDS100) - made with Clone Audio Protector v1.1 (adding 30 secs lead-out)

As the test results showed, Freecom Traveller II is not prepared to handle any AudioCD protected disc.