detail information

To finish our Plextor PX-716A review we're going to take a look at how the drive deals with certain copy-protections (both data and audio) and if it supports 99 minute CD-R media.

Data Copy-Protection:

Let's start with a screenshot from CloneCD, showing us which read and write modes the Plextor PX-716A supports:

As expected the Plextor drive supports the DAO-RAW96 write mode which basically means that it can write uncorrected data and SubChannel data.

SafeDisc:

For our SafeDisc test we will use the Sheep tests made by Alexander Noé. Why is it called sheep test? That is because the symbol of the first 1-to-1 copy program called CloneCD is a sheep! The sheep test is an indication if the drive can backup/write weak sectors (also called "Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns").

Score:

• No sheep: can't backup any SafeDisc 2 versions without the help of software tricks.
• 2 Sheep: Can backup SafeDisc 2, including version 2.5x.xxx.
• 3 Sheep: Can write all possible weak sectors, few if any writers are able to do this.

One of our forum moderators, Womble, has written a guide concerning the "Sheep Test" which you can find here. You can read through that thread for more information. Now, let's get to the Plextor PX-716A's score:

As expected the Plextor PX-716A is a two sheep recorder, meaning that it can copy the SafeDisc 2.5 protection but it'll have problems with SafeDisc 2.9 and newer.

Audio Copy-Protections:

For the copy protected audio tests we used the PlexTools software with the 'Single Session' option enabled. We inserted the disc into the drive and waited if the tracks would be recognized. If they were we extracted some tracks and listened to them to hear if they were properly extracted:

The Plextor PX-716A drive had a problem with our Doc.loc protected audio disc. This was too bad as the Plextor PX-712A drive was able to beat this protection. Luckily though the PX-716A didn't have problems with the other discs we tested. But, when we ripped the CDS200 protected audio disc the PlexTools software did report that there were errors on the disc:

Digital Audio Extraction log
----------------------------

Start of extraction
Extracting track 14    (C:Track14.wav - 04:30)
    630 errors
    Elapsed time: 00:09
Extracting track 15    (C:Track15.wav - 04:05)
    468 errors
    Elapsed time: 00:06
2 track(s) successfully extracted
Total Elapsed Time : 00:15

When ripping a CDS200 protected audio disc it's quite common that errors are generated during the extraction process. These errors can result in small pops and clicks in the ripped tracks. We of course listened to the extracted tracks but we couldn't hear any distortions.

Overburning:

As usual we're going to finish our review by checking if the drive can write and read 99 minute CD-R media. For this test we used the Nero CD-DVD Speed software and its "Overburning test". Here are the results:

The test was completed without a problem indicating that the Plextor PX-716A can write 99 minute media. This is of course no surprise as the drive's GigaRec technology allows the drive to burn over 110 minutes of audio to a CD-R disc. Reading back the 99 minute CD-R disc was also no problem of course. However, reading back a GigaRec disc does lower the read speed to 8x:

Reading GigaRec disc