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In this part of our TEAC review we'll test how fast the drive can read various media, including audio CDs. On the retail box of the CD-W552E drive we can read that DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) can be done at 52x so let's see if this is indeed the case. Let's start with a pressed data disc:

Pressed Discs:

For the transfer rate tests we used a pressed CD-ROM containing PlexTools v1.05 which was exactly 74 minutes (333.000 sectors) long. As a comparison we've also read the same disc with a Lite-On LTR-52246S recorder. Below you can see both Nero CD Speed graphs:

TEAC CD-W552E reading pressed disc

Lite-On LTR-52246S reading pressed disc

From the produced graphs you can see that both drives show a similar performance. The Lite-On drive is slightly faster than the TEAC drive but both failed to reach 52x. Their seek times were also very close but the TEAC had a slightly lower, and thus better, CPU usage:

CD-Recordable Discs:

For the transfer rate tests with CD-Recordable Media we used a back-up (CD-R) of a PlexTools v1.05 disc. The used disc was a 'That's Write' CD-R certified up to 16x writing and manufactured by Gigastorage. The back-up disc was of course also 74 minutes (333.000 sectors) long. Below you can see the produced graphs with Nero CD Speed:

TEAC CD-W552E reading CD-Recordable disc

Lite-On LTR-52246S reading CD-Recordable disc

From the graphs you can see that the TEAC was again a little slower than the Lite-On drive. Its seek times were a little higher than the Lite-On drive but its CPU usage was again lower:

CD-ReWriteable Discs:

To test the transfer rate with CD-RW discs we again used the "PlexTools v1.05" disc only this time we read from a CD-ReWriteable disc. The used disc was a 'Plextor Ultra Speed CD-RW' disc manufactured by Mitsubishi. The CD-RW disc was of course also 74 minutes (333.000 sectors) long. Below you can see the produced graphs with Nero CD Speed again:

TEAC CD-W552E reading CD-ReWriteable disc

Lite-On LTR-52246S reading CD-ReWriteable disc

From the produced graps you can see that the TEAC CD-W552E drive is limited to about 32x when reading re-writeable media. The Lite-On recorder is also limited but to about 40x. The seek times of both drives were again very close and the TEAC drive again had a lower CPU usage:

Audio Discs - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the TEAC's digital audio extraction performance we again used Nero CD Speed to do a transfer rate test. The audio disc we used was of a slightly larger size than in our previous tests (77 minutes). In the graphs below you can see the performance of both the TEAC recorder and the Lite-On recorder:

TEAC CD-W552E reading audio disc

Lite-On LTR-52246S reading audio disc

From the graphs you can see that this time the TEAC drive was slightly faster than the Lite-On drive. The seek times of the TEAC were also a little better this time and the drive again also has a lower CPU usage. Both drives have an accurate audio stream and a quality score of 10 (which is the highest score):

As a final test we used Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to extract the audio disc to our hard disk. In the screenshots below you can see the TEAC CD-W552E's performance using both the burst ripping mode and the secure ripping mode. The TEAC CD-W552 supports Caching, Accurate Stream and C2 Error Info in EAC's secure ripping mode:

TEAC CD-W552E ripping audio disc - Burst Mode

TEAC CD-W552E ripping audio disc - Secure Mode

The TEAC CD-W552E drive performs very well in both modes. It almost reaches 52x when ripping the audio disc in burst mode and its performance in secure mode is the fastest speed we've seen on a drive!

Audio Discs - Advanced DAE Quality Test:

To conclude our read tests we did an 'Advanced DAE Quality Test' with Nero CD Speed. You can see the produced results below:

The TEAC CD-W552E showed an excellent performance in the advanced DAE test. Its average read speed was very close to the Lite-On LTR-52246S recorder (33.42x) and the TEAC drive had no problems reading the CD-text and SubChannel Data on the test disc.