YAMAHA CRW-F1 IDE CDR-W - Page 7

CDR Tests

YAMAHA has chosen a rather short supported writing speed list. The drive supports 1X, 4X, 8X, 16X (CLV) and 44X (CAV) writing speeds. There aren't any selectable speeds between 16X and 44X.

Not all discs are created equal: quality can vary greatly from brand to brand, and even from batch to batch. Yamaha's Optimum Write Speed Control function takes care of this problems and makes it easy to record at the highest possible quality for the media you choose.

Simply choose to record at maximum speed and let the recorder automatically throttle down if it feels a particular disc should be recorded at a slower speed.

YAMAHA explains that when OWSC (Optimum Writing Control ) is enabled, the drive will select automatically the best maximum possible recording speed from 8X, 16X (CLV), 20X, 24X, 32X, 36X, 40X and 44X (CAV), as the right graph shows.

The Optimum Writing Control system, determines the optimum writing speed for the disc inserted. The feature can be disabled through Nero software, and as a result, user will be able to record all inserted media at the maximum speed (44X). With OWSC on/off, you can select all recording speeds (1X-44X). When OWSC in enabled and a low quality media being used, Nero will report the drop of recording speed, usually down to 16X

- Full CAV recording method

YAMAHA has chosen Full CAV as the main recording technology. Actually the drive supports both Partial-CAV (P-CAV) and Full CAV, for its various recording speeds. If the drive drop its recording speed from 20X-40X will use P-CAV, else for the 44X Full CAV. Using a 80min disc, we can see the drive's start, ending recording speeds, according to the Nero CD Speed software.

The drive starts writing at 19.66X and gradually reaches almost 44X at the end of a 80min disc. The theoretical average writing speed is 33.08X, making it slower than 48X (CAV) and slight faster than 40X (Z-CLV) recorders. As we explained earlier, YAMAHA chosen this write strategy to reduce vibrations and improve the writing quality during the entire disc. According to YAMAHA, the CRWF1 drive keeps its C1 error rate constant than other 48X and 40X recorders from competitors:

- Recording Tests

YAMAHA CRW-F1 finished the writing process in 3:03 minutes. The result came with Mitsubishi Chemicals 80min 48x media, with the OWSC enabled. The ASUS CRW4816A finished the same task at 2:41 minutes due to its 48X (CAV) writing speed. The CyberDrive CW078D is also quite fast and just one second slower (184secs) than the YAMAHA drive. The LiteOn LTR-40125S comes third with 195secs and PleXWriter PX-W4012A last with 206secs (best results). Below is the screenshot of the best recording result (3:03mins):

The following table shows the recording time results we got with various media. As you can see there are two results from each media with OWSC (Optimum Writing Control) enabled/disabled. The test results shows that the CRWF1 drive will

a) drop its maximum recording to 16X (OWSC on) with:

• SanyoDigital 80min 24x
• SmartBuy 80min 32x
• SKC 80min 24x
• Plasmon 80min 16x
• Prodisc 80min 32x

b) write at 40X (P-CAV) (3:17mins) with:

• Octron 80min 24x
• Emtec 80min 24x
• Philips 80min 40x
• Hitachi-Maxell 80min 40x

and

c) write at the maximum speed 44X (CAV) (3:03mins) with

• FujiFilm 80min 40x
• CyberDrive 80min 40x
• Taiyo Yuden 80min 40x
• Mitsubishi Chemicals 80min 48x

As we can see the supported media list for the maximum speed is limited, with OWSC on. Of course you can disable the OWSC and write any media at 44X, but this isn't recommended as our writing quality tests have reviled:

- Overburning Tests

The drive can overburn up to 92min with 90min media. We could not test the drive with 99min media, because the drive could not recognize them.

- CD-Text Results

The drive can read/write CD-Text without any problems.

- CloneCD Writing Tests

The CloneCD v4.0.1.9 reports that the drive supports the DAO-RAW feature. The drive when using the proper media, will write up to 44X (CAV). CloneCD doesn't offer any option to disable OWSC.

- EFM correction tests

For checking the drive's EFM correction status, we used 3 different game titles with various SafeDisc 2 versions. For getting the maximum of them, we used the latest software patches.

We used the Yamaha CRW-F1 both as reader/writer at maximum reading/recording speed. We burned two discs for each game (Amplify Weak Sectors On/Off) and the results are posted in the below table:

As the test results showed, the CRWF1 drive can backup up to SD2 v2.50.020 version without the need of Amplify Weak Sectors. However with the latest v2.51.021+ builds it will not produce 100% correct playback disc. The backup media worked only in the LiteOn LTR-32123S recorder (with Hide CD-R activated) and the YAMAHA CRWF1-E itself. The results may trouble users. We don't know if this can be fixed with future firmware upgrade...