1. Introduction
TEAC
CD-W28PU - Page 1
- Introduction
is
one of those companies that have chosen to support the USB 2.0 interface, and
take advantage of all those the interface can offer regarding the performance
and the easiness of installation. As it is well known, USB 2.0 has a raw data
rate at 480Mbps, and it is rated 40 times faster than its predecessor interface,
USB 1.1, which tops at 12Mbps. We have already tested the Teac CD-W280PU external
CD-RW drive, which was the Japanese version of the drive we currently have in
our hands. Teac CD-W28PU is the drive contained in the European retail package
and supports 8x CDR writing, 8x CD-RW writing and 24x reading speed. Competition
by Plextor, CyQve and other manufacturers is already established and we couldn't
resist to a straight performance comparison.
- Package
The
European retail package contains the CD-W28PU drive unit, the AC adapter, the
USB interface cable, an installation floppy disc, Nero Burning Rom v.5.5 writing
software, an information CD-ROM with manuals and specifications, and the user's
manual. The package is priced at $225.
As
you can see in the picture, the drive has basically a metallic gray color. It
is manual top loading / manual eject and on the top you will find the eject
button, the power/busy indicator led, which indicates the status and the operation
states of the drive, and the write indicator led, which shows the write status
of the drive. On the left side of the drive there is the 3.5mm line output jack
for analog audio. On the right side there is DC-IN connector, in which is connected
the provided dedicated AC adapter.
Teac
CD-W28PU weights only 450 g and its dimensions are 140 x 15 x 146 mm (WxHxD).
The drive supports 8x writing speed, 24x CAV cd-r reading speed, and 8x CLV
cd-rw reading speed. TEAC standard gives the drive a 110 msec access time (random
stroke).
- Installation
The
drive was installed through the package included USB 2.0 cable to the PC card
and was powered by the provided AC adapter. Note that the drive can also be
connected through the USB 1.1 interface, but with a lower reading/writing performance.
Teac CD-W28PU was identified as "TEAC CD-W28E". As Nero reports, the
drive supports 8x writing speed, buffer underrun protection, cd-text, DAO, and
has a 2 MB buffer although Nero reports only 1280 KB. On the other hand, Teac
CD-W28PU does not support the overburning function. The drive is a December
2001 model and the firmware installed was vU1.B1
2. Data Tests
TEAC
CD-W28PU - Page 2
Data Tests
For comparison, we illustrate the performance of some compatible drives in
all of our result graphs. These drives are PlexWriter PX-S88TU, TEAC CD-W280PU,
(Japanese version), and CyQve RW8080A.
- SCSI Mechanic v3.0x results
As expected, TEAC drives have the same performance and gave the best transfer
rate in the average Random I/O and the Same Sector I/O tests. In the sequential
I/O test, the drive comes second close to Plextor PX-S88TU.
- Pressed disc results: (Click to view
the CD Speed graphs)
We confirmed the previous results with the CDSpeed test, as TEAC CD-W28PU gave
the third best average reading speed, close to PlexWriter.
In the same test, we get the access times of TEAC CD-W28PU. The drive leads
in the random access test, and keeps the good performance in the 1/3 and full
access mode test.
- CDR Media results: (Click to view
the CD Speed graphs)
TEAC CD-W28TU showed the same behavior with the cdr media as with the pressed
media.
- HS-RW results: (Click to view
the CD Speed graphs)
Teac CD-W28PU read the inserted HSRW disc at 8x average speed, 2x slower than
CyQve RW8080A.
3. CloneCD Reading Tests
TEAC
CD-W28PU - Page 3
CloneCD Reading Tests
-Procedure
We used CloneCD (v3.3.4.1) and 5 original CDs - Euro 2000 (SafeDisc 1), No
One Lives For Ever (SafeDisc 2), Rally Masters (LaserLock 1), Desperados (LaserLock
2) and V-Rally 2 Expert (SecuROM 2) - in order to test the reading performance
of TEAC CD-RW28PU. We also tested its reading performance with backups of the
original CDs, since the reading speed varies between the original and the backup
media. The following pictures show reading/writing capabilities for both drives:
The
drive supports the RAW-SAO writing mode, is not compatible with CloneCD RAW-DAO
mode, and supports buffer underrun protection and the write simulation option.
-PSX Pressed Media
For this test we used the PSX game 'NBA Jam Extreme' and we ripped the image
to HD with CloneCD. We measured the reading times for both tested drives. TEAC
is the winner here with only 103secs, while Plextor needs 19 more seconds to
write the image:
- SafeDisc 1/2 Results
TEAC CD-W28PU had hard times to make the image of both SafeDisc 1/2 protected
cds. The drive was very slow with the original and the backup discs.
- LaserLock 1/2 Results
TEAC CD-W28PU was fast with LaserLock v1 originally protected media, and gets
the second position behind its brother TEAC CD-W280PU. With the backup media,
PlexWriter holds the first place with 544.96 sectors/sec.
In the LaserLock v2 test the drive gave the best performance with the original
cds and was slower with the backup ones, although the differences are small.
- SecuROM Results
In the SecuRom v2 test, both TEAC drives lead among the other drives with the
original cds, and are slower with the backup titles, where CyQve RW8080A gave
a better performance.
4. DAE Tests
TEAC
CD-W28PU - Page 4
DAE Tests
- Test Method
We used CD DAE 99 v0.3 and EAC v0.9 beta 1 software in order to check the DAE
performance of both drives with various AudioCDs (both pressed and CDR). The
posted DAE results are the average of both applications. As a last note, we
used the "BURST" reading mode of EAC. We made a full CD Rip starting
from the first to the last track of the CD. The Average DAE reported speed along
with the CPU Usage is displayed in the test graphs.
- DAE features
As
the EAC v0.9 beta 1 reported, the TEAC CD-RW28PU drive does "Caching"
of data, supports "Accurate Stream" and "C2 Error info
-Pressed AudioCD results
PleXWriter PX-S88TU supports up to 24x (CAV) DAE when both pressed and CDR
media are inserted. On the TEAC CD-RW28PU DAE speed is locked at 8x (CLV), and
therefore it cannot really compete against the PleXWriter:
-CDR AudioCD Results
With CDR media, the PleXWriter PX-S88TU still holds the first place with 13.3X
average reading speed.
- EAC Secure Extract Ripping mode
For each drive we used the build-in detection function:
|
Drives tested
|
Average DAE speed
|
|
Pressed
|
CD-R
|
|
TEAC CD-W280PU
|
7.5
|
7.6
|
|
PlexWriter PX-S88TU
|
2.3
|
2.6
|
|
CyQve RW8080A
|
2.2
|
2.3
|
|
TEAC CD-W28TU
|
2.1
|
2.3
|
TEAC CD-RW280PU was much faster than TEAC CD-RW28PU, mainly cause it doesn't
"caching" data. During the DAE process EAC reported many sync errors,
however the final CRC for all tracks were ok.
-Advanced DAE Quality
All drives performed excellently in the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE quality
test. The TEAC CD-W28PU produced 0 data/sync errors and got a perfect score
(100). As the Nero CD Speed reports, the drive can read SubChannel Data but
not CD-Text format:
- Bad CDR Media results
Despite the fact that Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test stretches a drive's mechanism
to the max, we decided to do real life tests with a scratched disc. The disc
was dirty, and with some light scratches, enough to cause problems to most of
the tested drives. We used CD DAE 99 software to rip the whole disc (756539616
sectors) and the results were very interesting:
|
|
Average speed (X)
|
Produced errors
|
Total disc errors (%)
|
|
TEAC CD-W280PU
|
7.9
|
0
|
0
|
|
PlexWriter PX-S88TU
|
12.6
|
86458
|
0.01
|
|
CyQve RW8080A
|
9.4
|
60254016
|
7.96
|
|
TEAC CD-W28TU
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
TEAC CD-W28PU did not give any read errors but the average ripping speed is
limited to 2X. Low reading speed, but with perfect results!
- Ripping 90 and 99min CDs
TEAC CD-W28PU gave a read error at 90 min when a 90:28 min disc was inserted
for a Nero CDSpeed reading test. The 99 min test gave an error at 96 minutes.
5. CDR Tests
TEAC
CD-W28PU - Page 5
CDR Tests
TEAC CD-W28PU supports 8x (CLV) writing with USB 2.0 interface. We tested the
drive with Nero v5.5.2.4, CloneCD v3.3.4.1 and Padus DJ v3.50.818 software.
For the CDR tests we used: Creation 74min (16x), Taiyo Yuden 74 & 80min
(24x), Mitsui 74min (24 & 16x) and Verbatim/TDK 74min HS-RW media.
- CD-R Tests
We created a "DataCD" job with data slightly higher than 74mins (74:03:65).
We burned the same job with both drives, using the same media:
The TEAC CD-W28PU finished the burning task faster than PlexWriter and CyQve,
and had exactly the same performance as TEAC CD-W280PU.
- 80min CDs
Following the same procedure as in the previous test, we created a DataCD with
data lower than 80min (79:49:50).
As in the 74min burning test, TEAC CD-W28PU was the fastest writer at 8x, with
the lower recording time.
-Writing Quality Tests
We used low quality media written at 8x, with both drives. The results are
posted in the following table:
|
8x writing speed
|
|
Model
|
C1
|
Average Burning Time (sec)
|
|
Max
|
Average
|
|
PleXWriter PX-S88TU
|
39
|
6,7
|
623
|
|
TEAC CD-RW280PU
|
47
|
7.5
|
598
|
|
TEAC CD-RW28PU
|
18
|
1.6
|
598
|
Very good writing quality from TEAC CD-W28PU with just an 1.6 average C1 error
rate and a maximum C1 value of 18.
- Overburning Tests
TEAC CD-W28PU does not support overburning.
- CD-Text Results
We created several AudioCDs with CD-Text enabled. TEAC CD-W28PU writes/reads
CD-Text on CDR media without any problems.
- 8cm mini CDs
TEAC CD-W28PU support reading/writing of 8cm CDs
- CloneCD Tests
CloneCD
v3.3.4.1 reports that the TEAC drive supports only SAO-RAW writing mode and
has a buffer underrun protection. The drive does not support simulation. According
to our tests, TEAC can backup only SD1, LaserLock1/2 protected titles.
- SD2 Support
For the SD2 tests we used the "No One Lives For Ever", "Emperor
Battle for Dune" and "Max Payne" CD titles. We used the drive
as reader/writer. The produced backups didn't play in the same or other drives.
Therefore TEAC cannot produce SD2 working backups.
6. HS-RW / Packet Writing Tests
TEAC
CD-W28PU - Page 6
RW Writing Tests
We used Nero 5.5.7.0 for writing CDs in maximum RW writing speed (8X) with
both drives in 10x HS-RW media. The TEAC leads the re-writing race with 598secs:
- Packet Writing Tests
We used Ahead InCD v2.26 for all Packet Writing tests. We used TDK HS-RW media
and we formatted it. The formatted disc revealed 530mbs of free space. We copied
a 403 MB file (403.147 kbs) from a Hard Disk (on the same PC as the writers)
to the formatted RW media-using explorer (we dragged and dropped) and we completed
the test twice to eliminate possible time measurement faults and user errors:
Teac CD-W28PU supports 8x CLV HSRW writing speed. The packet writing/reading
performance is adequate and is close to PlexWriter's, mainly at the reading
part.
7. Conclusion
TEAC
CD-W28PU - Page 7
Conclusion
|
Positive (+)
|
Negative (-)
|
|
- Supports USB1.1/2.0 interfaces
- "Write Proof" anti-coaster technology
- Good data reading performance with both CDR/pressed media
- Low access times
- Good PSX ripping performance
- Good DAE quality
- Very good writing quality
- Supports CD-Text (reading/writing)
- Small dimensions
- Weights only 450g
- 2 years of warranty (only for Europe)
|
- Doesn't support overburning
- Doesn't support DAO-RAW
- Failed to backup SD2 protected CDs
- Low CloneCD reading performance with SD1/2 protected CDs
- DAE speed locked at 8x
- Very short attached USB2.0 cable :(
|
To sum up, TEAC CD-W28PU gave a good overall performance. The drive takes advantage
of the latest version of the USB 2.0 interface standard to offer faster read
and write speeds than have been possible to date with the interface. On the
advantages, we should consider the good data reading/writing performance, the
high DAE quality, and the low access times, and of course the small dimensions
of the drive, among with the limited weight of 450gr. On the other hand, it
doesn't support overburning neither DAO-RAW writing mode and is slow when ripping
an audio CD to the HD. Lastly, the TEAC CD-W28PU costs around $225 (European
package) and comes with 2 year of warranty (only for Europe).