FREECOM Fx-50 DVD+/-RW - Page 7

DAE Tests

- Pressed and CDR AudioCD results

Freecom uses 40x CAV reading strategy for CD-DA. Below is the resultant output from the CDSpeed transfer rate test with a pressed audio CD:

According to Nero CDSpeed, the average reading speed was 30.91x, while at the end of the reading process, the speed reached 40.82 x. The seek times were good.

To test the ripping speed and the quality of the Freecom drive with Audio discs, we used a pressed disc and a its clone, and we ripped their contents to our HD with EAC (burst mode). The following graphs show the results of each process.

LiteOn was faster than the other two drives, with an average ripping speed of 39.9. Mitsumi's reported average speed was 29.6x while Freecom proved to be the slowest with an average ripping speed of 28.3x.

- Advanced DAE Quality

Nero CDSpeed Advanced Dae Quality test awards the drive with a quality score 100.0 and reports that during the test there were no Sync. or Data Errors. The drive can safely be used for on the Fly Copying up to 16x. On the Advanced features the software confirms that the drive is able to Read Leadin, Leadout Cd Text and subchannel Data information.

- Support of 90/99mins AudioCDs

The drive managed to playback both 90min and 99min test discs.

- Reading/Ripping Protected AudioCDs

For this test procedure we used two audio discs with different audio protection schemes. We tested for both recognition and ripping to the hard disk. The software used was Exact Audio Copy.

* Pressed Audio disc protected by Nec Key2Audio (Celine Dion - New Day Has Come)

* Pressed Audio disc protected by Cactus Data Shield 200 (Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island)

The Freecom drive managed successfully to playback and rip the contents of the CDS protected disc. However this didn't repeat with the Key2Audio disc.