Elite Eight No More: 8X CD Recording Goes Mainstream - Buyers Guide

Emedia Professional, Nov, 1999 by Hugh Bennett

When the first 8X CD recorder was released, it was largely viewed with suspicion and skepticism by CD-R purists. But now ... vow! What a difference a year makes!

When the first eight-speed CD-Recordable drive was introduced toward the end of 1998, the market list price was in the $1,000 range. Although compatible with only a few types of blank discs, the first-to-market Smart and Friendly CD Rocket was, nonetheless, a solid performer. Yet it was largely viewed with suspicion and skepticism by CD-R purists. But now ... wow! What a difference a year makes!

At last count, 8X recorders are now manufactured by five companies (Sanyo, Plextor, TEAC, Matsushita/Panasonic, and Sony), come in kits from all major brand names, sell for as little as $300, and support discs from a wide variety of vendors. Capabilities have also increased to include 2X and 4X CD-RW writing, as well as the ability to display enhanced read performance to the nme of 20X to 32X maximum speeds. Rather than transitioning slowly to high-speed recording, professional users and enthusiasts in the desktop drive corner have now joined the denizens of the duplication scene, embracing 8X as their own, resulting in overjoyed manufacturers now readying an assault on the mass market.

For several reason,s some observers originally voiced concerns about promoting 8X CD-R for common use, including the possible inability of average computer systems to sustain the required data transfer rates and the fear that compatibility of 8X written discs with the installed base of CD-ROM drives and CD-Audio players would be a problem. Fortunately, these worries have proven largely unfounded, as 8X recorders arrived incorporating large 2MB and 4MB buffers while PC speed and hard drive performance exploded and tremendous effort was made to fine-rune 8X recorders and compatible media.

Although manufacturers promote speed as a way of differentiating their products, higher CD-R writing performance is useful for many applications, such as when it is necessary to duplicate copies of the same disc or when making a variety of unique discs. By way of explanation, the simplest way of thinking about recording speed is to remember that a single speed (1X) recorder writes dam at a rate of 150KB per second, translating into roughly 76 minutes to record a full 650MB (or 74-minute audio) disc. Double (2X) and quad (4X) speed systems write twice and four times as fast, respectively, and eight-speed (8X) units write eight times faster, meaning that an 8X recorder can write the same full disc in roughly nine minutes.

When shopping for a recorder, it's important always to look beyond just high-speed writing capability and to separate useful features from gimmicks. For example, is CD-RW writing capability important? Is enhanced read speed useful? Often, bundles provided with the recorder can prove to be the deciding factor, depending on your own particular application. Just as there is more to a car than the engine, there is more to choosing a recorder than a simple consideration of the speed and price of the recording unit itself.

PLEXTOR

Over the past ten years, the Plextor name has become synonymous with performance, quality, and attention to detail. Their CD-ROM drives are widely coveted and trusted by audio premastering engineers, MIS workers, the CD duplication community, and dedicated enthusiasts worldwide. The eight-speed Plextor CD-R/RW recording products continue to add to this impressive tradition.

Since its introduction in late 1998, Plextor's PlexWriter 8/20 has set the hardware standard for all eight-speed CD-R/RW recorders that were to follow [See Hugh Bennett's review, March 1999, pp. 64-66--Ed.]. Incorporating Plextor's PX-R820T recorder, the $629 internal and $719 external PlexWriter 8/20 offer broad 8X media support, 20X max/9X min Partial Constant Angular Velocity (P-CAV) playback, and Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) performance, 170ms access time, a plentiful 4MB buffer, CD-RW read capability, lowbandwidth Running Optimum Power Control (Running OPC), R-W subcode support, and a SCSI interface.

It has been said that all good things come to an end, but it's also occasionally true that sometimes something even better is waiting in the wings to take its place. Such is the case with the current PlexWriter 8/20, which is being slowly phased out in favor of the new $669 internal and $759 external PlexWriter 8/2/20. This new drive offers the same high level of quality anti performance while adding double-speed CD-RW writing capability to the already potent mix of features.

Included with both the PlexWriter 8/20 and 8/2/20 models is the sparse yet functional suite of software suited more to the professional than the home user. The bundle features Adaptec's Easy CD Creator and DirectCD, as well as Plextor's own CD Res-Q and Plextor Manager 2000 utilities. An Adaptec AHA-2930C Ultra SCSI card completes the package.

The incomparable Plextor Manager is unique to the PlexWriter 8/20 and 8/2/20 bundles, and comprises the latest update of a useful set of tools for controlling and taking advantage of the features of Plextor CD-ROM drives and CD-R/RW recorders. In addition to playing audio and video files, Plextor Manager 2000 easily performs flawless Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) as well as disc-to-disc duplication. Plextor Manager also provides AudioFS, which allows users to view and use the contents of audio CDs as standard WAVE files. Each track on an audio CD appears as a sound file, so it can be dragged and dropped to any location or directly opened from within an application. AudioFS will invisibly perform the necessary DAE procedure to convert the track into a usable WAVE file.