Yamaha Introduces High Performance External Firewire 8x Cd-Rw Recorder - Yamaha Corporation of America's Yamaha CRW8824FXZ - Product Announcement

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Sept 4, 2000

Yamaha Corporation of America has released the CRW8824FXZ external CD-RW ReWritable CD recorder with IEEE 1394 FireWire interface. The increasingly popular 1394 standard has a broad bandwidth and is quickly becoming the ideal choice for bi-directional transfer of large amounts of digital audio and video data between electronic devices including computer peripherals.

Designed as part of a new generation of high speed CD recorders from Yamaha, this portable unit is the world's first external recorder to rewrite CD-RW discs at 8x speed, doubling the current standard of 4x and cutting the required time to rewrite a CD-RW disc in half. In addition, the CRW8824FXZ allows users to rip audio CDs at 24x-up to three times faster than conventional CD-RW recorders currently in the marketplace. Ripping is the process of converting CD music tracks to WAV and MP3 files for creating music CDs on a PC. The unit is expected to begin shipping on August 25, 2000.

With the FireWire interface, there is no need to convert digital data into analog for better signal integrity. The CD-RW drive can be added to and removed from a system without powering down while the bus is still active. And, unlike the legacy serial interface, FireWire supports free-form daisy chaining and branching for peer-to-peer implementations, allowing any two devices in the chain to transfer data to each other. FireWire also supports a tree (parallel) connection of devices. With its small, thin serial cable, the unit replaces bulky, expensive interface cables required for SCSI or parallel connections.

The CRW8824FXZ is designed for both IBM PC Compatible and Macintosh platforms. The external unit can be easily attached and detached and may also be used with several computers in a work environment without installation difficulties.

The unit features a large 4 MB buffer memory, writes and rewrites on CD-R discs at a top speed of 8x (writing a 650 MB CD in 9 minutes) and reads CDs at a maximum rate of 24x. It also benefits from Yamaha's exclusive PurePhase Laser System (Pat. Pending), which eliminates glare and reflections created on the surface of the disc while burning a CD. The CRW8824FXZ uses high performance 8x CD-R and CD-RW media for optimum recording. While blank 8x high performance CD-R discs are widely available in the marketplace, Yamaha and other leading manufacturers have introduced a new breed of 8x rewritable media, capable of reliable 8x rewriting at a cost only slightly higher than quality 4x certified CD-RW media.