Plextor PX-S88TU - Page 5

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:
The PleXWriter PX-S88TU does support "Caching", "Accurate Stream" and "C2 error info".

- Pressed AudioCD results: (Plextor S88TU CD Speed graphs)
The PleXWriter PX-S88TU supports up to 24x (CAV) DAE with both pressed and CDR media. On the TEAC CD-RW280PU DAE speed is locked at 8x (CLV), and therefore it cannot really compete against the PleXWriter:

As we can see, the PleXWriter easily wins with 13.3X average DAE speed. As we said earlier, the DAE speed of the TEAC drive is locked at 8X and stays away from the top.

- CDR AudioCD Results: (Plextor S88TU CD Speed graphs)

Both drives performed with CDR media as with pressed CDs:

- EAC Secure Extract Ripping mode:

After many requests from numerous visitors we have added the EAC's secure extract ripping mode results, which ensures maximum produced WAV quality. Note that for each drive we used the build-in detection function:

The TEAC CD-RW280PU was much faster than PleXWriter PX-S88TU, mainly cause it doesn't "caching" data. During the DAE process EAC reported many sync errors, however the final CRC for all tracks were ok. The PleXWriter drive keeps it's speed under 3X, at the Secure mode.

- Advanced DAE Quality

Both drives performed excellently in the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE quality test. Both drives produced 0 data/sync errors and got a perfect score (100). The PleXWriter managed to make 1:34:59 h (ouch) to finish the task and produced lot of noise during the test:

- 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:

As the tests proved, the TEAC CD-RW280PU shows a better behaviour with scratched CDs than the PleXWriter, which managed to produce 86458 read errors. The TEAC managed to produce zero (0) errors and gave a perfect output.

- Ripping 90 and 99min CDs:

The PleXWriter PX-S88TU can read 90min CDs without any problems, but doesn't recognize 99min CDs well.