The Signature III system supports 3 printing modes, 600x300 dpi, 600x600 dpi and 1200x1200 dpi, which can be selected from the printer driver settings. The printer supports both color and monochrome inks. The color ink is assembled from 3 colors (C, M, Y) and black monochrome (K). With those 3 colors the printer will generate up to 16.7millions colors in almost any printable surface of CD-R, CDR-W, DVD-R. Since the printer uses ink-jet technology you are limited only to the CD/DVD blank printable media.

- Media:

Manufacturer	Model	Printable	Info
Primera	16x compatible "duff coated"	Yes	ATIP: 97m 24s 01f Disc Manufacturer: Taiyo Yuden Company Ltd. Assumed Dye type: Cyanine (Type 1) Media type: CD-Recordable Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown nominal Capacity: 656.40MB (74m 43s 00f / LBA: 336075)
Sony	CDQ-74CP	Yes
Verbatim	"fast dry"	Yes	ATIP: 97m 34s 21f Disc Manufacturer: Mitsubishi Chemicals Corp. Assumed Dye type: Cyanine (Type 1) Media type: CD-Recordable Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown nominal Capacity: 656.40MB (74m 43s 00f / LBA: 336075)
Maxell		Yes	ATIP: 97m 25s 23f Disc Manufacturer: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. Assumed Dye type: Cyanine (Type 3) Media type: CD-Recordable Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown nominal Capacity: 654.49MB (74m 30s 00f / LBA: 335100)

Our tests showed that the Signature III seems to produce the best results with the Taiyo Yuden white tops printable media. The produced CDs had very good colors and high brightness and shine. When used Verbatim's printable media the produced printable CDs had good colors but missed the brightness and the shine the Taiyo Yuden based media (Primera,Sony) had. Lastly, the Maxell printable media (white tope) didn't gave the excepted results. When used the Maxell printable media (silver printable top) the produced CD had better brightness but again didn't reached the levels of the Taiyo Yuden based media. Also we noticed that the 1200 dpi resolution results with Maxell printable media where worst than the lower 600dpi.

What about normal none printable CDs? Can those be printed with Signature III? The answer is no. Since the printer uses ink-jet technology the media must have printable (most time white) top. If you don't like using only CD printable CDs you must look for an advanced solution called "Thermal Printer"! Primera has a solution for you :)

- Tests:
First we tried to see if the printer's real performance is what the specs say. We used the "bank.tif" image from the Signature III setup CD and tried all available printing modes. For the test proposes we used the "Write Direct to the Port" setting since the 32bit Spooler software seems to give slight higher printing times:

As we can see the real time tests are very close to the one that Primera gives in the manual. There is a little difference (probably Primera doesn't count the loading time), which however is not that, important. The Signature III prints very fast (600x600dpi at 1:57min). I know what you are thinking..What about the quality of the produced CDs?

The Primera suggests for Normal 600 as the default setting. From our tests there is a visual difference between the two 600dpi printing modes. The 1200x1200 resolution is the best (theoretically), colors are full and without any visible printing lines. The 600x600dpi has small differences from the 1200dpi resolution and we think that this should be the default for most daily tasks since it uses much less time (and ink). The 600x300 dpi is just not worth looking for any serious task and should be used only for test prints.

We also used our home scanner (HP 5300C) for making several CD scans and try printing afterwards. We noticed that the Surething CD Labeler software had a hard time with very big images (1200x1200dpi) and worked fine with lower 600x600 scanned images. The results weren't so good, especially in this case since the quality of the scanned image is the main subject. If the source is not good how can you expect to have good print results? Also keep in mind that you will have to play with the printer settings (Ink saturation setting - Primera suggest 50 value when using their CDs...Experiment with the rest) and also with the quality of the printable media.