CD Recording Tests

The Plextor PX-712A is the first DVD burner that supports 48X CD recording.

• CD-R Format

The drive supports 4X, 8X, 16X (CLV), 32X (P-CAV) as well as the maximum 48X CAV writing speeds. Below are the recording speeds as detected from Nero Burning Rom.

Despite the fact that the PX-712A has a wide supported media list, its possible that older media will not permit writing at the maximum speed due to the PoweRecII technology. This can be bypassed by disabling PoweRec, either under PlexTools or Nero Burning Rom:

According to Nero CDSpeed the drive reached the maximum 48X speed. The test started at 21.05X and finished at 47.90X having an average speed of 36.20X. Click on the image below to see the whole graph.

• CD-R Recording Times

For the burning tests, we created an 80min data compilation through Nero Burning Rom, recorded the data on a 700MB disc. The Plextor PX-712A finished the task in 2:50 minutes, when we selected the 48X writing speed. The writing performance varies according to the inserted media, as our tests showed. The PoweRec II system will lower the writing speed, especially at the end producing a good and quality burn. Below is a chart demonstrating all recording times with various media.

The best performance came with CMC Magnetics 80min 52X media at 170secs (2:50mins), while the highest recording time was with TraxData 80min 52X media at 199secs (3:19mins). For comparison, we must note that its older brother (PX-708A) was slower by only 8 secs (178secs fastest burn)! For a complete list of supported CD-R media, please visit the Plextor Europe website.

- Other features

Overburning	Up to 99min
CD text reading/writing	Yes

• CD-RW Format

The Plextor PX-718A supports 24X P-CAV maximum rewriting speed with Ultra High Speed rewritable media. The drive also writes at 4X CLV with NS CD-RW and 10X CLV with HS-RW discs. Below you can see the Nero CD-DVD Speed writing simulation test with blank 24x US-RW media from Mitsubishi Chemicals.

The drive starts the writing task at 21.18X and reaches the maximum 24X around the 6:00 min area of the disc. According to CDSpeed, the average writing speed is 23.89X. We also used Nero Burning Rom in order to burn a data disc with 24x US-RW media from MC. The data compilation we burned had a size of 651 MB and the duration of the recording process was 3:34 minutes. The PX-708A for the same project needs 3:41mins.

• CD-RW Mount Rainier Tests

We used Philips Mount Rainier Validation Suite v2.2 to test the drive's compliance with the Mount Rainier format. All three scripts loaded in the Validation Suite (mandatory command set, Light R'n'R and Heavy R'n'R) were passed successfully by the drive, indicating perfect results.