detail information

The next step in our Mitsumi CR-480ATE review is to test its audio capabilities like DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) speeds and some advanced tests. For our test we used Exact Audio Copy (EAC) version 0.9 beta 2 from www.exactaudiocopy.de and Nero CD Speed version 0.85 beta from www.cdspeed2000.com.

Features:

First we checked the features the Mitsumi supports with EAC:

The 'Caching' feature that's unsupported is a 'good' thing while the unsupported 'C2 Error Info' feature is a 'bad' thing. Below some more information on these terms:

• 'Caching':
  If your drive caches the audio that was just read, it would be a problem to read this data again in order to compare both extractions to find out if they match.
  
  
• 'Accurate Stream':
  This means the drive won't jitter, thus no jitter correction has to be done anymore.
  
  
• 'C2 Error Info':
  Some newer drives are able to return C2 error information beside the actual audio data. In that case EAC doesn't need to read all data twice anymore, which will result in a big speedup.

Digital Audio Extraction:

For the Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) tests we started Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and simply extracted the files in uncompressed WAV format to our harddisk. The disc had 16 tracks and a total playing time of 77 minutes and 3 seconds. We used both the 'Burst' mode and the 'Secure' mode:

• 'Burst Mode':
  Burst mode is the fastest mode available. The audio sectors are just read without any error-detection and error-correction.
  
  
• 'Secure Mode':
  The extracted audio is checked for correctness and if errors occur, EAC will try to recover them.

Below the screenshots of the speeds the Mitsumi reached in both modes:

Mitsumi CR-480ATE DAE speed - Burst Mode

Mitsumi CR-480ATE DAE speed - Secure Mode

When we compare these results with our previous reviews of the Waitec MEGALUS, the Plextor PX-W2410A and the Lite-On 24102B (all drives are 40x readers) we see that the Mitsumi CR-480ATE truly is a great audio ripper. Please do note that these test were done on different machines so the achieved times can be a little off. Nevertheless the Mitsumi reaches great results, especially in Secure Mode:

Advanced DAE Quality Test:

To conclude our DAE test we did the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test' with Nero CD Speed. This test is a very hard and intense test for any reader. Here are the results:

The Mitsumi performs very well and gets an overall score of 100 (highest) for quality. The drive reaches an average DAE speed of 28.61x and can be used for on-the-fly copying up to 16x! The CR-480ATE supports the reading of SubChannel Data and CD-Text. In the graph below we compare the achieved DAE results to the Waitec, Plextor and Lite-On drives again:

In conclusion we can say that the Plextor PX-W2410A is still the fastest DAE drive. The Mitsumi however performs very well beating both the Lite-On 24102B and the Waitec MEGALUS. All mentioned drives produce good (100%) quality when extracting the audio tracks. The Mitsumi drive however, outperforms all drives (including the Plextor) when using the "Secure Mode" in Exact Audio Copy (EAC).

The next step in our Mitsumi CR-480ATE review is the writing of CD-RW media...