Smart and Friendly's CD Rocket Mach 12 - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Emedia Professional, April, 2000 by Hugh Bennett

Smart and Friendly never seems to have trouble eclipsing its past glories with its new recording bundles. The CD Rocket Mach 12 is no exception to the rule, being the first 12-speed CD recorder on the market.

Propelling the Mach 12 to supersonic speeds is Sanyo Electric's new CRD-RW2 CD-R/RW drive. Following on to the company's wildly successful series of eight-speed units, this latest-generation Sanyo offers unprecedented 12X CD-R and 4X CD-RW writing speed, 32X maximum CAV read performance, a 4MB buffer, flash firmware, Disc-At-Once (DAO) writing capability, low-bandwidth Running OPC, and available ATAPI or SCSI interfaces. All this comes combined with the promise of a revolutionary integrated technology for recovering from buffer underruns as well as support for business- card and 80-minute CD-R media, making the Mach 12 indeed a force to be reckoned with.

Smart and Friendly offers the Mach 12 in three configurations: a $299 internal ATAPI, a $399 internal SCSI model, and a $499 external SCSI version. The SCSI recorders come ready to go with an Advansys ASB-3940UA PCI SCSI card for Mac and PC, but what really sets the Mach 12 a cut above, apart from its performance, is the generous amount of high-quality bundled software. This includes full versions of Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe for Windows and Toast 4 for MacOS (external model only), PowerQuest Drive Image, Sonic Foundry CD Architect, Sonic Foundry Sound Forge XP, Diamond Cut Audio Restoration Tools 32, CD-Quickshare, and ECI Disc Inspector Pro. One obvious deficiency, however, is that Adaptec DirectCD isn't included, so PC users will need additional software to take advantage of packet writing.

on your mach: system requirements

In comparison to 8X recorders, which take nine minutes to write a full 650MB disc (or 74-minute audio), the new twelve-speed Mach 12 transfers data at 1800KB/sec and takes roughly six minutes to do the same task. CD-RW discs are written at 4X, which translates to about 20 minutes.

As might be expected, achieving higher performance comes at the cost of greater demands being placed on the host computer. Realistic requirements for a reliable system should include at least Power Macintosh G3 or Pentium II, with an Ultra DMA or fast SCSI-2 hard drive. When copying disc-to-disc, another consideration is to make sure you are using a fast enough CD-ROM drive to keep up the 12X recording process. Over the past few years, CD-ROM drives have used Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) technology to achieve higher reading speeds but, in so doing, many can't sustain a fast enough transfer rate across an entire disc to copy successfully at 12X. For example, most 24X and 32X CD-ROM drives operate at only 8X or 10X when reading the inside portion of a disc and, as a result, would be inadequate for 12X disc-to-disc copying. And Digital Audio Extraction (DAE), necessary for copying audio discs, is usually even slower.

Aware of these speed issues, Sanyo says it will be incorporating a revolutionary new feature into the CRD-RW2 called Buffer Under RuN-Proof (BURN-Proof). Not available in time for this review, Sanyo says BURN-Proof will eliminate ruined discs due to buffer underruns by letting the recorder pick up the writing process from where it failed. Reportedly, this is done without creating any link areas, so the recorder could recover from a buffer underrun on any type of disc, including audio CDs. If BURN-Proof lives up to the hype, it will be a significantly more important advance than 12X recording.

two to tango: the media mix and match

Every time there's an increase in the writing speed of CD-R/RW recording hardware, corresponding changes must be made in the blank discs to accommodate the jump. Such was the case when 8X technology was introduced, and the same now holds true with 12X systems. Desperately working to differentiate themselves from their competitors, numerous media manufacturers have rapidly embraced 12X by upgrading their products accordingly. As of January 2000, the Mach 12 officially supports several popular brands of CD-R media for 12X recording including Kodak, Fuji, Maxell, Mitsubishi, Verbatim, Mitsui, Pioneer, Ricoh, Smart and Friendly, Taiyo Yuden, and TDK.

Since there are over 60 companies in the world producing CD-R discs, hardware manufacturers such as Sanyo can't hope to test everything or keep up with all of the branded and rebranded media on the market. Consequently, it's safe to experiment with different products--keeping in mind, however, that just because a disc seemingly records at 12X doesn't mean that the result can be played back in all CD/DVD-ROM drives or audio players. An important feature of the Mach 12 is its adjustable recording speed, so if 12X-compatible media isn't readily available, the unit can also record at slower 10X, 8X, 6X, 4X, 2X, and 1X speeds.

twelfth night: how the mach 12 tested

Successfully writing high-quality discs at 12X is no small accomplishment, so the Mach 12's performance was evaluated by recording ten full 650MB discs from five manufacturers (two each of Kodak, Mitsui, TDK, Mitsubishi, and Taiyo Yuden), and then analyzing them using commercial-grade Philips and Audio Development test equipment.