Sony CRX175A IDE CD-RW - Page 4

DAE Tests

- Test Method

We used CD DAE 99 v0.21 beta and EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 software in order to check the DAE performance of the drive with various AudioCDs (both pressed and CDR). The posted DAE results are the average of both applications, but the CPU usage was only taken from CD DAE 99, since EAC occupies the system a lot more. 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

We used EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 to examine the drive's features. As the program reported, the drive supports "Caching" of data and supports "Accurate Stream"/"C2" error info. All 4 tested drives supports up to 40x (CAV) DAE speed.

- Pressed AudioCD results - (Click to see the Nero CD Speed graph)

Sony CRX175A performed good with pressed Audio CDs. Its average DAE ripping speed is 29.05X and gets the second place very close to PlexWriter PX-W2410A.

- CDR AudioCD results - (Click to see the Nero CD Speed graph)

SONY CRX175A showed a stable behavior with CDR media and improved its reading performance to 29.87X. The PleXWriter PX-W2410A is still the faster drive for DAE:

- EAC Secure Extract Ripping mode

After many requests from numerous visitors we have added the EAC's secure extract ripping mode results, which ensures maximum produced WAV quality. Note that for each drive we used the build-in detection function:

- Advanced DAE Quality

Sony CRX175A got a 100 score (best) in the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test. The drive's average reading speed was 28.18x and no errors were produced. As the following picture shows, the drive cannot read CD-Text but can read SubChannel Data (not from the lead in/out area)

- Bad CDR Media results

Despite the fact that CD Speed 99 Advanced DAE test stretches 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 in order 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:

Sony CRX175A read the cd with 12.2X and did not produce many reading errors (0%). The Plextor drive is the faster with 27.7X but it produced more errors. The TEAC CD-W524E has the best performance in this test.

- Ripping 90 and 99mins AudioCDs

SONY CRX175A does not recognize both 90/99 minute AudioCDs. The drive cannot complete the test since it stops reading either at approximately 86mins.