Samsung SW-224B IDE CDR-W - Page 4

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 the drive 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

As the program reported, the drive does "Caching" data, supports "Accurate Stream" and "C2 Error info".

- Pressed AudioCD results

The AOpen supports up to 32x DAE with both pressed and CDR media. The DAE ripping performance (23.6X) of Samsung is much lower than what the competition does offer:

- CDR AudioCD Results

The drive has the same performance as with pressed CDs. The average reading speed of 23.7X is considered low, since the competition shows increased reading speeds:

- EAC Secure Extract Ripping mode

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

- Advanced DAE Quality

The Samsung SW-224B performed excellently at the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE quality test. The drive produced 0 data/sync errors and got a perfect score (100). The drive can read "CD-Text" enabled AudioCDs, SubChannel data and from the lead-in area:

- 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:

As the tests showed,  Samsung SW-224B performed very good and gave 0 errors while reading our test disc.  TEAC CD-W524E has the same performance but reads the disc at almost full speed. Both Plextor and Yamaha 24x needs further improvement...

- Ripping 90 and 99min CDs

The drive can read up to 98min without any 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 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, the Samsung SW-224B is not prepared to handle any AudioCD protected disc.