DAE Tests

- Test Method:
We used CD DAE 99 v0.21 beta and EAC v0.9 prebeta 9 software in order to check the DAE performance of the Yamaha CRW2200E 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 9 to examine the drive's features. As the program reported, the drive does "Caching" data, supports "Accurate Stream" and can't utilise "C2" error info. All 4 tested drives supports up to 40x DAE speed.

- Pressed AudioCD results: (click here to see the CD Speed 99 graph)
The Yamaha CRW2200E has shown an un-pleasant behavior with pressed CDs, which drops it from the first place. The drive kept slowing down after 65minutes so the final average ripping speed is the slowest among the 4 tested drives. Note that although the CD Speed 99 graph seems perfect, real DAE tests with CD DAE 99 and EAC showed the opposite view. Also you can see how the drive behaves with a second pressed disc over here...

If Yamaha fix that problem the drive's DAE will be boosted up possibly to 30x (average). The Plextor drive still holds the first place with 30.3x and Ricoh MP7200A continues closely with 29.6x. The Sanyo drive comes third with 28.5x and Yamaha 2200E last with 26.4x:

- CDR AudioCD results: (click here to see the CD Speed 99 graph)
The same behavior continued with CDR media. Here the CD Speed 99 graph shows clearly the drive's drop down speed and the real life tests confirm it. The drive's average ripping speed with our test disc was around 25.8x and in this test Ricoh MP7200A got the first place with 30.0X! Plextor stayed in second place and Sanyo BP1500P in last (also showed strange behavior with CDR media):

- Advanced DAE Quality:

The Yamaha 2200E got 100 score (best) in the CD Speed 99 Advanced DAE test. The drive's average reading speed was 28.22x. However the drive has some problems recognizing the test disc (sometimes work sometimes don't)..

Yamaha said that "...in case the CD has invalid CD-Text data, the CRW2200 may or may not detect the CD depends on which position in the lead-in area it starts to detect TOC information. So we assume that the result (sometime the drive can detect the disc and sometime it cannot) may depend on the initial position of the optical head at power on..."

As for the Sanyo the drive aborts the test after a while it starts so we left it outside. Both Plextor and Ricoh drives got an 100 score (perfect) but....real life tests showed something oposite.

- Bad CDR Media results: (click here to see the CD Speed 99 graph)

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:

The best results came from the PleXWriter PX-W1610A. The drive didn't drop its reading speed, despite the fact that thumbs and dust were evident on the disc, and managed to give the lower reading errors (almost 0%). The Sanyo drive stopped reading after 5 secs so you cannot see any numbers.

If you remember previously, Ricoh MP7200A got the perfect score in CD Speed's 99 Advanced DAE test. However in real life results the drive managed to read incorrectly about 67% of the output data! Lastly, the Yamaha CRW2200E gave a high number of errors but the final % of total errors in disc is satisfactory (0.14%).

- Ripping 90 and 99mins AudioCDs
The Yamaha CRW2200E recognized the 90min AudioCD without any problems. With 99min CDs sometimes it recognize it sometimes doesn't. As you can see the drive stops reading about 94mins: