detail information

On the previous page we already briefly mentioned the Plextor PX-W4012TU's audio capabilities. According to PlexTools the drive can reach 40x when extracting the audio and on this page we'll test just that. For the audio read tests we used our usual 'tools', Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and Nero CD Speed. In order for EAC to use USB devices we copied Nero's 'WNASPI32.DLL' file to the EAC folder. Else this program will not recognize the USB recorder.

Features:

First we checked the features the Plextor PX-W4012TU supports using EAC:

As you can see from the screenshot on the left. the Plextor drive supports all features. 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 - Exact Audio Copy:

For the Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) tests we started Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and simply extracted the separate audio tracks in uncompressed WAV format to our hard disk. Our test disc (Thunderdome XXII - CD1) had 20 tracks and a total playing time of 77 minutes and 45 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 Plextor PX-W4012TU drive reached in both extraction modes:

Plextor PX-W4012TU DAE speed - Burst Mode

Plextor PX-W4012TU DAE speed - Secure Mode

What's this? The Burst Mode shows a very disappointing result for a Plextor drive. As you can see the drive reaches a top speed of 33.7x which is not nearly as fast as the results we got with the PX-W4012A model. We suspect the slow results were due to the interface the Plextor PX-W4012TU uses. As already mentioned when we started our review we're using a built-in PCI USB 2.0 Controller which is not optimal for transferring the data to the hard disk. We'll do some more DAE tests with Nero CD Speed below. There's no use in comparing our results to other recorders. The Plextor PX-W4012TU performed a little faster than the PleXCombo PX-320A in Secure Mode.

Digital Audio Extraction - Nero CD Speed:

Now let's check our results we got with Exact Audio Copy using Nero CD Speed. You can see a screenshot of the tests below:

The tests done with Nero CD Speed confirm what we suspected. This time the Plextor PX-W4012TU has no problems reaching 40x and shows a great performance. When doing the Nero CD Speed tests there's no actual data being written to the hard disk so the interface isn't stressed and thus the drive can reach a higher speed. In the table below we compare our results to other recorders we've reviewed. The Plextor PX-W4012TU has the fastest DAE speeds but its seek times were not that good:

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.

We created a new test disc using the Plextor PX-W4012TU recorder. We used some high quality 'Hi-Space' media which are also available from our online shop (for our Dutch and Belgian visitors only). These Hi-Space discs have a 24 carats gold reflective cover and can be written up to 24x. Here are the results from the Advaced DAE Quality Tests:

The average DAE speed of the Plextor PX-W4012TU is pretty high but not as high as the other Plextor drives we've reviewed. The Plextor PX-W4012Tu has no problems reading the CD-Text from the disc and the SubChannel Data. The drive can also read the lead-in (75 sectors) and a large area of the lead-out (which takes a long time as you can see from the screenshot) of the disc. Reading the lead-out of a disc is not something a lot of drives can do.

We also tested if the Plextor drive could indeed read CD-Text. We played an audio disc with CD-Text using NeroMediaPlayer and the PX-W4012TU could indeed read it without problems as you can see in the screenshot below (Disc Title and Artist are displayed):

Now that we've concluded our data and audio reading part, let's see how well the Plextor drive can read a (heavily) scratched disc and a low quality disc.