Introduction:
2000 was a great year for TDK. The TDK CyClone 121032 made a huge impact among users for its very good reading/writing performance and price. Back in November TDK announced with a brief press release the news of the CyClone 161040 drive, which promised to be the faster (16x) -nowadays- CDR-W drive surpassing Plextor and Yamaha, that shipped the fastest writing drives in the past.

This time TDK partnered with Sanyo and used their 16x solution, which has the code name "CRD-BP1400P", in order to become the first ever manufacturer who would ship a real 16x *CLV* recorder. The drive supports 16x writing speed, 10x re-writing and 40x reading speeds. If that's not enough TDK's 16x solution adds "BURN-Proof" technology, which eliminates coasters, and DAO-RAW(?)! Yep folks. All you can dream of is included in this package. The real question now is how this CDR rocket performs? Lets find out! Here are some of the specs: Writing: 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 12x, 16x - Re-writing: 2x, 4x, 8x, 10x - Reading: 40x (max) - DAE: up to 32x (max) - 2MB of Buffer + BURN-Proof technology.

Supplied Package: The package supplied was the retail European version. This included: The drive itself, a detailed manual (in 6 languages), a quick installation guide, one TDK 16x CD-R blank, 1 High Speed RW Blank, Audio cables, mounting screws and a CD-R pen. The software supplied with the TDK CyClone was: Nero 5.0.3.5, Ahead InCD 1.75 and the TDK Digital Mix Master v3.5 build 131 software.

	ATIP: 97m 24s 01f Disc Manufacturer: Taiyo Yuden Company Ltd. Assumed Dye type: Cyanine (Type 1) Media type: CD-Recordable Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown nominal Capacity: 656.40MB (74m 43s 00f / LBA: 336075)
	ATIP: 97m 34s 23f Disc Manufacturer: Mitsubishi Chemicals Corp. Assumed Dye type: Cyanine (Type 3) Media type: CD-ReWritable Recording Speeds: min. 4X - max. 8X nominal Capacity: 656.40MB (74m 43s 00f / LBA: 336075)

The front of the drive displays the High Speed Logo on the left hand side of the front tray among with the "16/10/40" logo. The tray has a blue colour adding a special paint in the drive. There are also 2 leds (read, write) and the BURN-Proof logo above it. In the back you will find the usual connectors (including the standard SPDIF digital output). Using CDR Identifier we were able to determine the manufacturer for both the TDK 16x CDR (Taiyo Yuden) and HS-RW 4-10x (Mitsubishi) included media.

Installation: We installed the TDK drive as a secondary master on the IDE controller of our motherboard and powered up the PC. After booting, the CDR-W identified itself as the "TDK CDRW161040X" and worked at "PIO Mode 4". We unchecked the Auto Insert notification, checked DMA and rebooted. The drive was marked as being manufactured in December 2000 with firmware revision v5.29.

As we were informed there will soon be a newer firmware revision, which will fix both reading/writing DAO-RAW problems.. Most of our tests were carried out using the newest Nero v5.0.3.8. For the Packet Writing tests, we used Prassi abCD v1.5.169 and not the supplied Ahead InCD since we faced several problems under WinMe OS.

Don't forget also to install the TDK Digital Mixmaster v3.0 software and head over to the TDK's upgrade page and grab a few additional skins. TDK Digital MixMaster is nice software, which will give you something to play with for many hours.

The player will remind you of WinAMP since it offers similar features such as play lists, skins, equalizer, connection to CDDB databases, plug-ins for both visual and audio. The TDK Digital Mixmaster is actually based on the forthcoming Nero Media Player. Be warned it does limit all recording to all but the TDK CyClone drive (hence the same TDK ;).

Test Machine
WinMe OS
Soyo 7VCA
Celeron II 566 over clocked to 850 MHz
128MB SDRAM PC 133
VIA 4 in1 4.27
VIA IDE BUS 3.01.1 (miniport version)
WD 18GB UDMA 66
Quantum Fireball EX 6.4GB
SCSI: DAWI 2975 - PCI (ULTRA)
ATI AIW 128
Plextor UltraPlex 40max firmware v1.12
Sanyo CRD-BP4 firmware v4.28
Sanyo CRD-BP1400P firmware v5.29
Yamaha CRW2100E firmware v1.0h
TDK CyClone 161040 firmware v5.29