PleXWriter PX-W4824A

Review Pages

1. Introduction
2. Installation/Package
3. Data Reading Tests
4. Error Correction Tests
5. CloneCD Reading Tests
6. DAE Tests
7. CDR Tests
8. Writing Quality Tests
9. RW/Packet Writing Tests
10. Mt. Rainier Tests
11. Conclusion

PleXWriter PX-W4824A IDE CDR-W - Page 6

DAE Tests

- DAE features

- Pressed AudioCD

The PX-W4824A had an average DAE ripping performance and gets the last place with 30X. The YAMAHA CRW-F1E is slightly faster, due to increased 44X reading speed, while the ASUS and CyberDrive drives share the first two positions.

- AudioCD-R media

With CD-R media, the PX-W4824A has somewhat lower performance than with pressed media. The drive is the slowest with 29.9X.

- EAC Secure Extract Ripping mode

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

Tested Drives	Average DAE Speed (X)
Tested Drives	Pressed	CDR
YAMAHA CRW-F1	7.2	7.3
PleXWriter PX-W4824A	10.6	10.5

- Advanced DAE Quality

The drive got a 100 score (best) in the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test. The average speed for PleXWriter was 29.86X. The drive can also read data from Lead-in, CD-text and SubChannel.

- Bad CDR Media results

We used CD DAE 99 software to rip the whole disc (756539616 sectors) to the hard disk.

	Average Speed (X)	Errors	Errors Of Total Disc (%)
PleXWriter PX-W4824A	22.3	27041048	35.74

The PleXWriter PX-W4824A finished the test which a high error rate of 35.74%. Judging from the average reading speed, we can see that the drive didn't reduce its reading speed in the problematic disc areas, producing a high error rate.

- Ripping 90 and 99mins AudioCDs

Tested drives	Ripping up to
PleXWriter PX-W4824A	The drive has problems reading 99min written discs.

- Reading/Ripping Protected AudioCDs

For the test procedure we used 2 protected AudioCDs, which we tested in both recognition and ripping (with EAC) processes:

* Pressed AudioCD with Sony Key2Audio (Celine Dion - New Day Has Come)
* Pressed AudioCD with Cactus Data Shield 200 (Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island)

Key2Audio

CDS200

EAC

PleXWriter PX-W4824A

Rips entire disc without problems

With the Manual TOC option, it detects all tracks, but cannot rip above the 9th track. All tracks from 1st-9th contain errors when ripping with EAC's Burst mode.

With PlexTools it can rip all tracks but again errors are reported...

The drive can handle Key2Audio protected audio discs without any issues, while seems to have glitches with CDS200 discs, at least with EAC software. Using PlexTools software the CDS200 problem can be overpassed, but PlexTools reported errors after the end of the process, so user is advised to use the very good error correction capabilities of PlexTools....