detail information

First things first as we check out the Plextor PX-W4012TU drive specifications as mentioned on the Plextor Europe website and as detected with additional software like Nero InfoTool:

Drive Specifications:

Overall very nice features. The drive supports all recording formats and even offers some extra technologies such as VariRec and PoweRec II (Plextor Optimised Writing Error Reduction Control) which we'll get back to later. Let's give you a screenshot of Nero InfoTool first and the detected features of the Plextor drive:

As you can see from the screenshot the Plextor PX-W4012TU (identified as PX-W4012A) can read most discs and supports all major features, except for the Mount Rainier (CD-MRW) format. The drive is 'Mt. Rainier ready' but Plextor is still waiting till the CD-MRW format is natively supported in Operating Systems. This might take a while as some people will understand... Too bad Plextor doesn't just implement it anyway. InCD does a pretty good job in our opinion with the CD-MRW format.

Buffer (Underrun Protection):

The Plextor PX-W4012TU, like all Plextor writers, uses BURN-Proof (Buffer UnderRuN Proof) to prevent buffer underruns. When the buffer of the drive falls beneath 10% of its maximum capacity, the recorder will stop recording as of a specific location on the CD. The recorder then continues attempting to receive data from the PC to refill the buffer. In the meantime, the BURN-Proof circuit determines where the last successful sector was written. Using the location of the last successful sector, the BURN-Proof circuit will position the Optical Pickup. As soon as the buffer has been refilled, the CD Recorder will start recording again. Like mentioned before in the drive specifications, the Plextor PX-W4012TU has a 4 MB buffer on board as you can also see in the screenshot below of the drive's detected features with Nero Burning Rom:

PoweRec II Technology:

The Plextor PX-W4012TU has the same features as found on all new Plextor drives. These features include quality controls like PoweRec to ensure a quality back-up. PoweRec (Plextor Optimised Writing Error Reduction Control) monitors the quality of the disc while burning and will adjust the speed if necessary. Additional, PoweRec II has been added for Z-CLV (Zone Constant Linear Velocity) writers. The write quality at the end of each zone is checked and the outcome will determine the recording speed in the next zone.

VariRec Technology:

Just like Yamaha with its 'Audio Master Quality Recording', Plextor has introduced its own technology when writing audio discs. This technology, called VariRec (Variable Recording), allows changing the laser power when writing audio at 4x (in TAO or DAO mode). With the VariRec option the user can make a slight modification to the default setting:

VariRec has the same goal as Yamaha's 'Audio Master Quality Recording'; to reduce jitter. Like said the user can make a slight modification (-2 ~ +2) to the laser power to achieve the best result for their audio back-ups.

With VariRec enabled you should be able to improve the quality of the recorded disc and make it more compatible with picky CD-players like a car stereo. The default '0' setting is based on results from a database which in turn are the result of thorough tests in the Plextor labs.

We of course tested the Plextor PX-W4012TU with and without the VariRec setting enabled. You can read more about this later on in our review when we do our audio tests.

Write Method:

As you may have seen in the drive specifications on top of this page, the Plextor PX-W4012TU uses the Z-CLV write method (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) when writing at 40x (20x and below is done in the CLV method). Z-CLV is used to reduce the rotation speed of the CD-R disc inside the recorder and thus reducing noise and stress on the drive mechanism. During switching writing speeds, the drive's buffer underrun technique (BURN-Proof in this case) takes over preventing buffer underruns. In the screenshot below you can see a test burn done with Nero CD Speed:

In the graph you can clearly see that the Plextor PX-W4012TU uses four zones to write the disc:

• Zone 1: 20x, then at 4 minute mark the write speed shifts to
• Zone 2: 24x, then at 24 minute mark the write speed shifts to
• Zone 3: 32x, then finally at 50 minute mark the write speed shifts to
• Zone 4: 40x and remains at this speed until the end of the disc is reached.

The Plextor PX-W4012TU produces about the same graph as the TEAC CD-W540E did but it's a little slower than this drive because the Plextor shifts zones a little later. Although 30.56x average is not slow we can see it's a 'lot' (well it's about 1x or 150KB/s average) slower than the P-CAV method the Lite-On writers now use (31.73x average). Perhaps Plextor will someday too switch to P-CAV or even full CAV? Who knows...

Next up in our Plextor PX-W4012TU review, the data read tests.