TEAC CD-W548E IDE CD-RW- Page 9

Conclusion

The TEAC CD-W548E possibly comes a little late since nowadays the 52X recorders are already sold in the market. The TEAC name ensures the optimum writing performance with good writing quality and of course high CD error correction capabilities. The CD-W548E completes the two of the three mentioned abilities since it is without any doubt the faster 48X recorder we have ever tested. The recording result of 2:32 mins for a full 80min disc is absolutely amazing if you consider that the faster 52X recorder needs 2:29mins for the same task. The writing quality remained at high levels with 24X~ 48X certified media. Of course we would like to see a higher media compatibility for the 48X media, since several 48X branded media was allowed to written only at 16X...

Continuing mentioning the positives, the drive had very good re-writing performance due to the 16X writing speed, increased DAE speeds (34X) either with CD-R or pressed media, it can rip CDS200 protected Audio discs, its reading performance with protected discs under CloneCD was good (!) and due to the change of used chipsets it can backup SD2 discs without the need of any special software. Lastly the drive's price of <99 Euro makes it an attractive recording solution.

On the negative side we could mention that the drive is picky with the inserted discs at the 48X speed, the CD error correction is low and even C2 error information is present cannot be retrieved with high accuracy. The drive also has some problems under Mt. Rainier, halted when inserted our BAD DAE test discs and cannot rip Key2Audio protected discs. Last, the retail package doesn't include any16X HS-RW media (!) while the bulked 52X media are allowed to be burned only at the 40X speed...