detail information

On the previous page where we showed you the PlexTools screenshot with the listed supported read speeds we could see that audio was listed as 40X instead of 48X. Let's check if this latest Plextor drive is indeed limited when it comes to DAE (Digital Audio Extraction). For the audio read tests we used our usual 'tools', Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and Nero CD Speed.

Features:

First we checked the features the Plextor PX-W4824A supports using EAC:

As you can see from the screenshot on the left the Plextor PX-W4824A 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 (DJ Promo - Last Men Standing) 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 Plextor PX-W4824A drive reached in both extraction modes:

Plextor PX-W4824A DAE speed - Burst Mode

Plextor PX-W4824A DAE speed - Secure Mode

As you can see from the achieved results the Plextor PX-W4824A drive is indeed limited to about 40X when doing DAE. A bit disappointing since Plextor has always been considered to produce the fastest DAE drives so we would have liked to see this new drive doing DAE at 48X or even a little faster (such as the VisionTek Xtasy 48X drive). In the table below we compare our achieved results to some of the other drives we've previously reviewed:

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 our previous test and the Plextor PX-W4824A again reaches a top DAE speed of almost 42X. The seek times were again excellent and the Plextor drive (of course) has an accurate stream and gets a quality score of 10 which is the highest score. Finally the CPU usage was low which is also 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 a 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 Advanced DAE Quality Test:

The average DAE speed of the Plextor PX-W4824A drive is pretty good when you compare it to other 40X readers but the drive can't keep up with other 48X readers. The Plextor drive has no problems reading the CD-Text and SubChannel Data from the disc and can also read data from the lead-in and especially from the lead-out of the disc.

Please note that in the screenshot above the actual test was still running and 'Read Leadout' hasn't been checked yet. This was because our test computer crashed after more than six hours of reading... You'll have to take our word on it: the Plextor PX-W4824A can read a lot of data from the lead-out but it takes a lot of time.

As a final test we of course also tested if the Plextor drive could indeed read CD-Text. We played an audio disc with CD-Text using NeroMediaPlayer and the PX-W4824A could indeed read it without problems as you can see in the screenshot below (Artist and Song Title 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.