:strip_icc():strip_exif()/u/23850/aquarius.jpg?f=community)
Toch maar besloten om deze review in het engels te schrijven. Ik kan een vrij groot stuk gebruiken voor een project, en misschien trekt dit nog buitenlands publiek 
Plextor PlexWriter Premium Review
INTRODUCTION
The Plextor PlexWriter Premium was first spotted at the CeBIT 2003 exhibition in Hannover, Germany. At first, not much was known about this new Plextor product. However, only two weeks later, Plextor Europe officially announced that both the PlexWriter Premium and the PlexWriter Premium-U (USB version) would be available in May of 2003 (Press Release). Apparently, that was a pretty good estimate
Besides being the fastest Plextor CD-Writer on the market, what else does this product offer? We all know that only increasing the writing and rewriting speeds isn’t that special. So, let’s take a look at the features.
GigaRec
GigaRec is probably the most interesting and exclusive feature of the PlexWriter Premium. GigaRec extends the capacity of a standard CD-R disc up to 40 percent. In theory, this means that you can get up to 1GB of data on a single 700MB CD-R, or even 1.2GB on a 99 minute CD. That sounds pretty amazing. Of course, this feature will be closer examined throughout this review.
SecuRec
SecuRec lets you write on a CD-R disc and protect the written data with a password. This feature comes in handy when you want to make sure that valuable information does not fall into the wrong hands. One nice feature about SecuRec is that you can access the protected data (assuming the user enters the correct password) with any drive using the SecuView Reader software. Even though this is a Plextor specific technology (only Plextor drives can use SecuRec to create a password protected CD), other drives will be able to access the protected data with the right software.
Silent Mode
This technology sets the drive for super-silent operation. By controlling spinup and spindown speeds, read/write speeds, and tray opening and closing speed, the drive noise can be reduces to a whisper. Although this feature will decrease performance, it is an ideal solution for those who would rather hear the spinning of their case fans.
Q-Check
It ‘s interesting to see such a feature build in to a relatively cheap drive like the PlexWriter Premium, because most CD-testing equipment is higher priced. Q-Check is able to check for C1/C2/CU errors, laser tracking and focus errors and beta and jitter errors.
Besides those cool new features, the PlexWriter Premium is outfitted with SpeadRead, PowerRec, VariRec, the Mt Rainier functionality and Buffer Under-run Proof. We’ve seen these technologies before, so I assume you already know what they are used for.
FIRST LOOK / SPECIFICATIONS
The PlexWriter Premium comes with one 52X certified CD-R disc, a PlexWriter Software CD (which includes PlexTools Pro 2.01, Easy CD Creator, PhotoSuite 5 SE, Retrospect Backup and Adobe Acrobat), the installation manual, the Plextor Quick Reference Quick an IDE cable, four screws and of course the oh so important emergency eject tool.
The front bezel is very similar to those of older Plextor drives. A nice design if you ask me
To the left is the head phone jack and next to that is the volume control. Oh, and the little hole above the eject button on the right is the emergency eject hole.
As you can in the above picture, Plextor chose for a black tray. According to Plextor, this minimizes jitter and reduces C1 error rates. Plextor also chose to place a cushion-like strip around the tray to minimize the noise level.
The drive I received was manufactured in April 2003 and contains firmware 1.00. Note the diagram showing the rear of the drive. Starting from the left you’ll see digital audio out, the analog audio out, the DMA and Cable Select/Master/Slave jumpers, the IDE interface connector and finally the power connection.
Now, let’s take a look at the specifications:
Write Speeds:
• 22-52X: 7800KB/s CAV
• 20-40X: 6000KB/s P-CAV
• 4-20X: 3000KB/s CLV
ReWrite Speeds:
• 20-32X: 4800KB/s P-CAV
• 4-10X: 1500KB/s CLV
Read Speeds:
• 10X-52X: 3300-7800KB/s CAV
• 4-8X: 1200KB/s CLV
Buffer Size:
• 8MB Buffer with Buffer Under-run Proof
Recording Modes
• Track at Once
• Session at Once
• Disc at Once
• Multisession
• Packet Writing
• VariRec
• GigaRec
• SecuRec
• PowerRec
• Mount Rainier
Supported Formats:
• CD-DA
• CD-ROM
• CD-ROM + CD-DA
• CD-ROM XA
• CD-I
• PHOTO-CD
• VIDEO-CD
• CD-Extra
• CD+G
• CD-TEXT
As you can see, Nero 5.5.10.28 identifies the drive as “PLEXTOR CD-R PREMIUM”.
Nero InfoTool can give you a pretty good indication of the capabilities of a drive. Reading and writing have been set to 52X.
CloneCD 4.2.0.2 indicates this drive is not compatible with CloneCD’s RAW SAO. Perhaps this can be fixed in future firmwares. Even though, I was able to make a working back-up of the SafeDisk 2.51 protected Battlefield Road to Rome in just under 3 and a half minutes, and Medal of Honor was no problem either.
BENCHMARKS
For testing purposes, I used Nero CD Speed 1.02g and PlexTools Pro 2.01. All reading tests have been done with SpeedRead on, thus enabling 52X reading.
Test System:
AMD AthlonXP 2100+ @ 1733MHz
Abit KR7A-RAID with bios CX
2 x 512MB Corsair CL2 @266MHz DDR
Leadtek GeForce4 Ti4600 with detonator 42.86
80GB Raid-0 (2 x 40GB Maxtor D740X)
Windows XP SP1 with Via HyperIon 4.46
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Read Test Pressed CD
While searching for a good CD to use for testing purposes, I came across a game called “Shogun Total War”. Disc 2 of the game contains almost the 79 minutes of data, so I decided to use it. The PlexWriter Premium had no trouble at all reading the CD-R. In fact, the drive was able to reach a whopping 52X.
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Read Test CD Audio
Again a nice 52X at the end of the reading process. Very good seek times and perfect DAE quality on this one.
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Read Test CD-R
The CD-R I used for this test was basically the 80 minute CD that was created in the write test in the next section. Pretty good seek times and the expected low CPU Usage for 1X, 2X, 4X and 8X.
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Read Test CD-RW
To test the CD-RW read speed, I chose a 74 minute CD-RW with files of various sizes (16KB – 2.62MB). This way I was able to fill the CD-RW with 651MB, the maximum capacity of the CD-RW. The PlexWriter Premium again met up to its expectations by achieving 52X at the end of the test.
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Write Test CD-R 80min
The PlexWriter Premium had no trouble at all writing a 48X certified 80 minute Sony disc at 52X. The graph shows a nice straight yellow line, indicating the rotation speed of the CD remained steady. With an average writing speed of just under 40X, this might be the fastest CD-Writer on the market.
Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE Quality Test
With a Sony 74 minute 10X CD-RW test disc, the score for this test came to a perfect 100 and a very fast 37X. Plextor’s DAE has always been remarkably good, and I guess this drive is no different. All advanced features are supported, but I wonder why 8X on the fly copying did not pass the test. I ran the test a second time, and it turned out “OK” instead of “too slow”. So I’ll just omit the minor flaw.
Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE Error Correcting Test
The special “A-BEX discs” which should be used in combination with this test, are intentionally created with some defects. Through the use of the Advanced DAE Error Correcting Test, the error correcting capabilities of the tested drive can be checked.
Unfortunately, I do not posses such a disc. Therefore, I was not able to check test the C2 error correction capabilities of the PlexWriter Premium.
PlexTools – GigaRec
As mentioned before, GigaRec can extend the capacity of a standard CD-R disc up to 40 percent. This means that you will be able to get up to 1GB of data on an 80 minute CD-R. Well, I decided to test that…
984MB on a 700MB disc! Let’s see if it’ll work…
The PlexWriter Premium was able to fit 984MB of data on a single 700MB disc! That’s almost 112 minutes on an 80 minute CD. This is an exact 40 percent increase, just like predicted. But there’s more! Let’s see if it can do 1100MB, this time on a 99 minute CD. Putting 125 minutes on a 99 minute CD might be a little too much. Although, this represents “only” a 30 percent increase, it would be very cool to be able to fit 1.1GB on a single CD.
Once again we see a successful simulation. 125 minutes means you can put over two hours of music on a single disc! Simply unheard of, no other CD-Writer can do this.
How about 135 minutes? It sounds impossible, but it’s a 40 percent increase knowing that the CD would only hold 97 minutes in the CD Speed overburn test.
Truly remarkable, the PlexWriter Premium was able to write almost 135 minutes (almost 1.2GB) to the 99 minute CD. This is far more than 2 hours of music, or almost as much as two 74 minute CD’s can hold.
PLEXTOOLS Q-CHECK
FE/TE Error check
A Focus Error (FE) is a measure of how accurately the laser is focused on the disc. A good disc will show a low number of focus errors across the graph. A bad disc will show a high number of focus errors across the graph, or points where the drive cannot focus the laser correctly because of poor disc quality.
A Tracking Error (TE) is a measure of how accurately the laser tracks in the disc’s pregroove are manufactured in the disc. A good disc will show low tracking error across the graph. A bad disc will show high tracking error, which is caused be eccentricity or poor quality of the media.
Measuring FE and TE errors has to be done with a blank CDR of CD-RW.
As you can see, the graph shows a huge increase in FE and TE errors after the 50 minute mark. Reducing the writing speed can reduce the number of FE and TE errors. For this test, I chose to use a 99 minute 24X CompUSA disc. Because this test has been done at 52X, lowering the writing speed should decrease the number of FE and TE errors for this disc.
Beta/Jitter Check
The data on the surface of a CD or CD-ROM disc is expressed by “pits” burned into the recording dye, and by unburned areas, or “lands,” which represent the “0” and “1” binary bits of the computer data. The CD book standards prescribe these 0 and 1 pits and lands as a series of 3 to 11 pieces in sequence (described as 3T to 11T). The millions of 3T data segments on the recorded media actually contain minute variations in length, with practically no individual 3T segments matching another. This variation distribution is called “jitter ratio,” and is a measurement of the variation of the prescribed length of the 3T segments against what is actually written on the disc. A lower jitter value indicates better uniformity of 3T data, which means the recording is of higher quality. The book standard regulates jitter value at no more than 35 nanoseconds.
Beta is a representation of the balance between pit and land. If the laser power is too high, the pit becomes too pronounced. If the power is too low, the land becomes too pronounced. In either case, data will not be accurately reproduced. A horizontal line would mean perfect balance and would give the best readability results.
C1/C2/CU Errors
CDs are written via a non-contact optical technology, resulting in errors on the written disc. Error correction is therefore an important component of drive quality. Audio written to a disc contains no major error correction. Missing audio bytes are interpolated (replaced by an approximate value) in the drive, and the reproduced output is generally very close to the original. (Differences are usually detectable only by an audiophile) If there are large numbers of missing bytes due to poor media, scratches, fingerprints, etc., these are reproduced as pops or crackles in the audio output, but the media will still play.
Data (non-audio) content is much more sensitive to errors. The data blocks on the recorded disc contain extensive embedded error correction as part of the data stream.
This error correction is derived from the actual content of the original computer data,
and is used to reconstruct the original data, if needed, when the disc is read.
Every CD has two layers of error correction, called C1 and C2:
• C1 is error correction for the block error rate (BLER), which consists of bit errors
at the lowest level. BLER is normally given in errors per second. The typical maximum BLER for quality recording is 220 errors per second.
• C2 error correction applies to bytes in a frame (24 bytes per frame, 98 frames per block) and is an indication of the drive's attempt to use extended error correction to recover the data. Even a few C2 errors can be an indication of poor media quality or a drive's inability to write or read correctly.
• CU error correction applies to uncorrectable errors, or errors that are present after
C2 level correction. No CU errors are allowed in a recorded disc. CU errors are usually a result of damage to a disc and represent unrecoverable data. Discs with CU errors quite often cannot be read at all.
The quantity of these errors is a measure of media and drive quality. High quality media, combined with a high quality drive, will have recorded data with some C1 errors and no C2 errors. Poor quality media, or media with scratches, fingerprints or other defects in the disc surface, or written on a drive that has poor write quality, will show a higher number of C1 errors and perhaps some C2 errors.
This graph shows no C2 and no CU errors at all. In addition to that, the C1 error correction level is 11.5 per second which is acceptable.
CONCLUSION
With the PlexWriter Premium, Plextor again has shown its capabilities. Not only is this drive one of the fastest drives on the market, but features like GigaRec and Q-Check make this a unique drive.
However, before buying this drive, you might want to ask yourself if you really need features like GigaRec, SecuRec and Q-Check. Of course they come in handy if you burn lots of CD’s, but for the average person it might not be worth it. For example, while testing this drive, I found myself asking who would really need Q-Check. Yes, it is a very nice feature and it works great, but it’s only useful to those who burn in massive quantities.
The DAE performance of this drive is excellent. A perfect score on the Advanced DAE Quality Test sure is something not all drives will be able to do. An in addition to that, extracting digital audio through PlexTools will allow for error correcting. This is especially useful if you have a nearly unreadable audio CD.
Besides the DAE, even the writing speed, reading speed, seek times and CPU usage was outstanding. This is a true 52X reader and writer, the tests have proven it. However, I did notice the drive was a little noisy when reading and writing at 52X. On the average, Plextor drives have the lowest CPU usage, and this trend continues with the PlexWriter Premium.
For a price of a little over a $100 (you can get this drive for $106), the Plextor PlexWriter Premium still seems like a very good buy to those who will use it more than a couple times a week. Solid performance, very high quality and let’s not forget PlexTools
Good:
• Solid performance
• Very good DAE capabilities
• Q-Check for checking quality of CD’s
• Amazing GigaRec, allows for 40 percent extra storage
• Huge 8MB buffer & UDMA 33 support
• Mt Rainier support
• PlexTools 2.01
• Available with standard or black bezel
Bad:
• Pricy
• No CD-RW included, just the 52X CD-R
• Little noisy at max speeds
Opmerking zijn natuurlijk welkom. Als je graag nog iets ander getest ziet, dan wil ik dat eventueel wel doen.
Plextor PlexWriter Premium Review
INTRODUCTION
The Plextor PlexWriter Premium was first spotted at the CeBIT 2003 exhibition in Hannover, Germany. At first, not much was known about this new Plextor product. However, only two weeks later, Plextor Europe officially announced that both the PlexWriter Premium and the PlexWriter Premium-U (USB version) would be available in May of 2003 (Press Release). Apparently, that was a pretty good estimate
Besides being the fastest Plextor CD-Writer on the market, what else does this product offer? We all know that only increasing the writing and rewriting speeds isn’t that special. So, let’s take a look at the features.
GigaRec
GigaRec is probably the most interesting and exclusive feature of the PlexWriter Premium. GigaRec extends the capacity of a standard CD-R disc up to 40 percent. In theory, this means that you can get up to 1GB of data on a single 700MB CD-R, or even 1.2GB on a 99 minute CD. That sounds pretty amazing. Of course, this feature will be closer examined throughout this review.
SecuRec
SecuRec lets you write on a CD-R disc and protect the written data with a password. This feature comes in handy when you want to make sure that valuable information does not fall into the wrong hands. One nice feature about SecuRec is that you can access the protected data (assuming the user enters the correct password) with any drive using the SecuView Reader software. Even though this is a Plextor specific technology (only Plextor drives can use SecuRec to create a password protected CD), other drives will be able to access the protected data with the right software.
Silent Mode
This technology sets the drive for super-silent operation. By controlling spinup and spindown speeds, read/write speeds, and tray opening and closing speed, the drive noise can be reduces to a whisper. Although this feature will decrease performance, it is an ideal solution for those who would rather hear the spinning of their case fans.
Q-Check
It ‘s interesting to see such a feature build in to a relatively cheap drive like the PlexWriter Premium, because most CD-testing equipment is higher priced. Q-Check is able to check for C1/C2/CU errors, laser tracking and focus errors and beta and jitter errors.
Besides those cool new features, the PlexWriter Premium is outfitted with SpeadRead, PowerRec, VariRec, the Mt Rainier functionality and Buffer Under-run Proof. We’ve seen these technologies before, so I assume you already know what they are used for.
FIRST LOOK / SPECIFICATIONS
The PlexWriter Premium comes with one 52X certified CD-R disc, a PlexWriter Software CD (which includes PlexTools Pro 2.01, Easy CD Creator, PhotoSuite 5 SE, Retrospect Backup and Adobe Acrobat), the installation manual, the Plextor Quick Reference Quick an IDE cable, four screws and of course the oh so important emergency eject tool.
The front bezel is very similar to those of older Plextor drives. A nice design if you ask me
To the left is the head phone jack and next to that is the volume control. Oh, and the little hole above the eject button on the right is the emergency eject hole.
As you can in the above picture, Plextor chose for a black tray. According to Plextor, this minimizes jitter and reduces C1 error rates. Plextor also chose to place a cushion-like strip around the tray to minimize the noise level.
The drive I received was manufactured in April 2003 and contains firmware 1.00. Note the diagram showing the rear of the drive. Starting from the left you’ll see digital audio out, the analog audio out, the DMA and Cable Select/Master/Slave jumpers, the IDE interface connector and finally the power connection.
Now, let’s take a look at the specifications:
Write Speeds:
• 22-52X: 7800KB/s CAV
• 20-40X: 6000KB/s P-CAV
• 4-20X: 3000KB/s CLV
ReWrite Speeds:
• 20-32X: 4800KB/s P-CAV
• 4-10X: 1500KB/s CLV
Read Speeds:
• 10X-52X: 3300-7800KB/s CAV
• 4-8X: 1200KB/s CLV
Buffer Size:
• 8MB Buffer with Buffer Under-run Proof
Recording Modes
• Track at Once
• Session at Once
• Disc at Once
• Multisession
• Packet Writing
• VariRec
• GigaRec
• SecuRec
• PowerRec
• Mount Rainier
Supported Formats:
• CD-DA
• CD-ROM
• CD-ROM + CD-DA
• CD-ROM XA
• CD-I
• PHOTO-CD
• VIDEO-CD
• CD-Extra
• CD+G
• CD-TEXT
As you can see, Nero 5.5.10.28 identifies the drive as “PLEXTOR CD-R PREMIUM”.
Nero InfoTool can give you a pretty good indication of the capabilities of a drive. Reading and writing have been set to 52X.
CloneCD 4.2.0.2 indicates this drive is not compatible with CloneCD’s RAW SAO. Perhaps this can be fixed in future firmwares. Even though, I was able to make a working back-up of the SafeDisk 2.51 protected Battlefield Road to Rome in just under 3 and a half minutes, and Medal of Honor was no problem either.
BENCHMARKS
For testing purposes, I used Nero CD Speed 1.02g and PlexTools Pro 2.01. All reading tests have been done with SpeedRead on, thus enabling 52X reading.
Test System:
AMD AthlonXP 2100+ @ 1733MHz
Abit KR7A-RAID with bios CX
2 x 512MB Corsair CL2 @266MHz DDR
Leadtek GeForce4 Ti4600 with detonator 42.86
80GB Raid-0 (2 x 40GB Maxtor D740X)
Windows XP SP1 with Via HyperIon 4.46
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Read Test Pressed CD
While searching for a good CD to use for testing purposes, I came across a game called “Shogun Total War”. Disc 2 of the game contains almost the 79 minutes of data, so I decided to use it. The PlexWriter Premium had no trouble at all reading the CD-R. In fact, the drive was able to reach a whopping 52X.
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Read Test CD Audio
Again a nice 52X at the end of the reading process. Very good seek times and perfect DAE quality on this one.
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Read Test CD-R
The CD-R I used for this test was basically the 80 minute CD that was created in the write test in the next section. Pretty good seek times and the expected low CPU Usage for 1X, 2X, 4X and 8X.
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Read Test CD-RW
To test the CD-RW read speed, I chose a 74 minute CD-RW with files of various sizes (16KB – 2.62MB). This way I was able to fill the CD-RW with 651MB, the maximum capacity of the CD-RW. The PlexWriter Premium again met up to its expectations by achieving 52X at the end of the test.
Nero CD Speed 1.02g - Write Test CD-R 80min
The PlexWriter Premium had no trouble at all writing a 48X certified 80 minute Sony disc at 52X. The graph shows a nice straight yellow line, indicating the rotation speed of the CD remained steady. With an average writing speed of just under 40X, this might be the fastest CD-Writer on the market.
Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE Quality Test
With a Sony 74 minute 10X CD-RW test disc, the score for this test came to a perfect 100 and a very fast 37X. Plextor’s DAE has always been remarkably good, and I guess this drive is no different. All advanced features are supported, but I wonder why 8X on the fly copying did not pass the test. I ran the test a second time, and it turned out “OK” instead of “too slow”. So I’ll just omit the minor flaw.
Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE Error Correcting Test
The special “A-BEX discs” which should be used in combination with this test, are intentionally created with some defects. Through the use of the Advanced DAE Error Correcting Test, the error correcting capabilities of the tested drive can be checked.
Unfortunately, I do not posses such a disc. Therefore, I was not able to check test the C2 error correction capabilities of the PlexWriter Premium.
PlexTools – GigaRec
As mentioned before, GigaRec can extend the capacity of a standard CD-R disc up to 40 percent. This means that you will be able to get up to 1GB of data on an 80 minute CD-R. Well, I decided to test that…
984MB on a 700MB disc! Let’s see if it’ll work…
The PlexWriter Premium was able to fit 984MB of data on a single 700MB disc! That’s almost 112 minutes on an 80 minute CD. This is an exact 40 percent increase, just like predicted. But there’s more! Let’s see if it can do 1100MB, this time on a 99 minute CD. Putting 125 minutes on a 99 minute CD might be a little too much. Although, this represents “only” a 30 percent increase, it would be very cool to be able to fit 1.1GB on a single CD.
Once again we see a successful simulation. 125 minutes means you can put over two hours of music on a single disc! Simply unheard of, no other CD-Writer can do this.
How about 135 minutes? It sounds impossible, but it’s a 40 percent increase knowing that the CD would only hold 97 minutes in the CD Speed overburn test.
Truly remarkable, the PlexWriter Premium was able to write almost 135 minutes (almost 1.2GB) to the 99 minute CD. This is far more than 2 hours of music, or almost as much as two 74 minute CD’s can hold.
PLEXTOOLS Q-CHECK
FE/TE Error check
A Focus Error (FE) is a measure of how accurately the laser is focused on the disc. A good disc will show a low number of focus errors across the graph. A bad disc will show a high number of focus errors across the graph, or points where the drive cannot focus the laser correctly because of poor disc quality.
A Tracking Error (TE) is a measure of how accurately the laser tracks in the disc’s pregroove are manufactured in the disc. A good disc will show low tracking error across the graph. A bad disc will show high tracking error, which is caused be eccentricity or poor quality of the media.
Measuring FE and TE errors has to be done with a blank CDR of CD-RW.
As you can see, the graph shows a huge increase in FE and TE errors after the 50 minute mark. Reducing the writing speed can reduce the number of FE and TE errors. For this test, I chose to use a 99 minute 24X CompUSA disc. Because this test has been done at 52X, lowering the writing speed should decrease the number of FE and TE errors for this disc.
Beta/Jitter Check
The data on the surface of a CD or CD-ROM disc is expressed by “pits” burned into the recording dye, and by unburned areas, or “lands,” which represent the “0” and “1” binary bits of the computer data. The CD book standards prescribe these 0 and 1 pits and lands as a series of 3 to 11 pieces in sequence (described as 3T to 11T). The millions of 3T data segments on the recorded media actually contain minute variations in length, with practically no individual 3T segments matching another. This variation distribution is called “jitter ratio,” and is a measurement of the variation of the prescribed length of the 3T segments against what is actually written on the disc. A lower jitter value indicates better uniformity of 3T data, which means the recording is of higher quality. The book standard regulates jitter value at no more than 35 nanoseconds.
Beta is a representation of the balance between pit and land. If the laser power is too high, the pit becomes too pronounced. If the power is too low, the land becomes too pronounced. In either case, data will not be accurately reproduced. A horizontal line would mean perfect balance and would give the best readability results.
C1/C2/CU Errors
CDs are written via a non-contact optical technology, resulting in errors on the written disc. Error correction is therefore an important component of drive quality. Audio written to a disc contains no major error correction. Missing audio bytes are interpolated (replaced by an approximate value) in the drive, and the reproduced output is generally very close to the original. (Differences are usually detectable only by an audiophile) If there are large numbers of missing bytes due to poor media, scratches, fingerprints, etc., these are reproduced as pops or crackles in the audio output, but the media will still play.
Data (non-audio) content is much more sensitive to errors. The data blocks on the recorded disc contain extensive embedded error correction as part of the data stream.
This error correction is derived from the actual content of the original computer data,
and is used to reconstruct the original data, if needed, when the disc is read.
Every CD has two layers of error correction, called C1 and C2:
• C1 is error correction for the block error rate (BLER), which consists of bit errors
at the lowest level. BLER is normally given in errors per second. The typical maximum BLER for quality recording is 220 errors per second.
• C2 error correction applies to bytes in a frame (24 bytes per frame, 98 frames per block) and is an indication of the drive's attempt to use extended error correction to recover the data. Even a few C2 errors can be an indication of poor media quality or a drive's inability to write or read correctly.
• CU error correction applies to uncorrectable errors, or errors that are present after
C2 level correction. No CU errors are allowed in a recorded disc. CU errors are usually a result of damage to a disc and represent unrecoverable data. Discs with CU errors quite often cannot be read at all.
The quantity of these errors is a measure of media and drive quality. High quality media, combined with a high quality drive, will have recorded data with some C1 errors and no C2 errors. Poor quality media, or media with scratches, fingerprints or other defects in the disc surface, or written on a drive that has poor write quality, will show a higher number of C1 errors and perhaps some C2 errors.
This graph shows no C2 and no CU errors at all. In addition to that, the C1 error correction level is 11.5 per second which is acceptable.
CONCLUSION
With the PlexWriter Premium, Plextor again has shown its capabilities. Not only is this drive one of the fastest drives on the market, but features like GigaRec and Q-Check make this a unique drive.
However, before buying this drive, you might want to ask yourself if you really need features like GigaRec, SecuRec and Q-Check. Of course they come in handy if you burn lots of CD’s, but for the average person it might not be worth it. For example, while testing this drive, I found myself asking who would really need Q-Check. Yes, it is a very nice feature and it works great, but it’s only useful to those who burn in massive quantities.
The DAE performance of this drive is excellent. A perfect score on the Advanced DAE Quality Test sure is something not all drives will be able to do. An in addition to that, extracting digital audio through PlexTools will allow for error correcting. This is especially useful if you have a nearly unreadable audio CD.
Besides the DAE, even the writing speed, reading speed, seek times and CPU usage was outstanding. This is a true 52X reader and writer, the tests have proven it. However, I did notice the drive was a little noisy when reading and writing at 52X. On the average, Plextor drives have the lowest CPU usage, and this trend continues with the PlexWriter Premium.
For a price of a little over a $100 (you can get this drive for $106), the Plextor PlexWriter Premium still seems like a very good buy to those who will use it more than a couple times a week. Solid performance, very high quality and let’s not forget PlexTools
Good:
• Solid performance
• Very good DAE capabilities
• Q-Check for checking quality of CD’s
• Amazing GigaRec, allows for 40 percent extra storage
• Huge 8MB buffer & UDMA 33 support
• Mt Rainier support
• PlexTools 2.01
• Available with standard or black bezel
Bad:
• Pricy
• No CD-RW included, just the 52X CD-R
• Little noisy at max speeds
Opmerking zijn natuurlijk welkom. Als je graag nog iets ander getest ziet, dan wil ik dat eventueel wel doen.
The trade of the tools
[ me | specs ] Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1 + Sennheiser HD-590
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:strip_icc():strip_exif()/u/3878/usericon1.jpg?f=community)
/u/3244/satcp-60.png?f=community)
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