detail information

Besides a massive amount of features (as listed on the previous page) the Plextor Premium drive is shipped worldwide with the new PlexTools Professional software. This software allows you to control every aspect of your drive with, but besides that it also allows you to do some advanced quality tests.

PlexTools Professional has a number of different options. Besides a normal read and write transfer rate test we can find three Q-Check tests; C1/C2, FE/TE and Beta/Jitter tests. Below you can find an explanation on these tests:

C1/C2 Test:

If you have read some of our previous reviews then you will probably know what a C1/C2 test means. These tests are used to measure the amount of errors on a recordable disc and can give you a good indication if the disc is of good quality and/or if it has been recorded properly.

The C1/C2 error test can display three different errors. The first kind, C1, uses the lowest level of error correction. C1 errors (E11+E12+E13) are almost always present on a disc and are easily corrected by the drive.

C2 errors (E22) are the second level of error correction and uses the encoded data on the disc to try to correct read errors. These C2 errors can still be read but they are not preferred. When you have a disc with C2 errors it's recommended to reburn the data to a new disc. C2 errors are a result of scratches and smudges on a disc, a freshly recorded disc should never show C2 errors.

When you have a disc that shows CU errors (E32) you can throw that disc away since these errors are uncorrectable ones.

FE/TE Test:

With the FE/TE (Focus Error/Tracking Error) test you can test the mechanical characteristics of a blank disc you're using with the Premium drive. In short this test allows you to check if the media you're using can be written at the highest speed.

The red Focus Error line reflects the capability of the laser unit to remain focused on the recording layer of the disc. The line should remain relatively flat in the graph's 0-30 range. In our screenshot this is not the case meaning that the disc should be written at a lower speed.

The blue Tracking Error line indicates how well the drive's pickup can follow the spiral track of the disc. This line should also remain relatively flat. When the FE/TE test is completed PlexTools will report if the disc can be written at the highest speed or not.

The Premium's PoweRec technique uses the FE/TE information and will adjust the recording speed automatically (if PoweRec is enabled of course). As a small test we recorded the disc we used in our screenshot above. The write speed was indeed slowed down from 52x to 40x during the recording process.

Beta/Jitter Test:

The Beta/Jitter test is a read/quality test for written CD-R or CD-RW discs. When a disc is being recorded, small pits are burned in the recording layer (dye) of the disc, using a so-called Book Standard. Data on a CD is burned via the Red Book Standard which describes the length of the pits and lands on a recorded disc.

The red Beta line indicates how well the signal pits and lands are in balance (asymmetry). A horizontal line would mean perfect balance and would give the best readability result.

The blue Jitter line measures the variation between the specification in the Book Standard and the actual data written to the disc. The lower the Jitter on the disc, the better it can be read.

The Plextor Premium drive (just like some older Plextor drives) has a black tray to reduce the jitter on a disc and besides that, the drive has an optimised PCB circuit to reduce noise on a disc. These measurements should increase the overall quality of a recorded disc.