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| Posted by | Dennis |
| Posted on | 18/01/02 16:16 |
| Number of views | 3371 |
For the write tests we used both "Arita Premium Line" 80min/700MB CD-R's and "That's Write!" 80min/700MB CD-R's. Both were certified up to 16x writing but we could write them at 24x without problems.
Basic write test:
Before getting into all kinds of technical tests we thought it would be nice to show you what 24x means in 'real' terms. So therefore we wrote a 700MB .avi file to a CD-R using Nero version 5.5.6.4. Here's a screenshot of the process completed successfully:
In the screenshot you can see that the MEGALUS needs a little over 4 minutes (4:21) to write the entire disc. Like other 24x writers the MEGALUS uses three stages to write a disc:
- Zone 1: 16x (start speed for first )
- Zone 2: 20x
- Zone 3: 24x
This is called Z-CLV which stands for Zone-Constant Linear Velocity and is used to reduce the rotation speed of the CD-R inside the recorder and thus reducing noise and stress on the drive mechanism. The picture below shows clearly the different stages of Z-CLV writing created with Nero CD Speed:
The yellow
You can clearly see when the drive switches between zones. During switching the drive's buffer underrun technique (SafeLink in this case) takes over preventing buffer underruns.
Because the drive switches between writing speeds and doesn't start writing at 24x the average speed is lower than 24x.
In this case the average writing speed is 22.70x (see the picture on the left), slightly lower than the Lite-On
24102B (22.75x) and the Plextor PX-W2410A (22.76x).
Comparing:
Next we did some more tests comparing the MEGALUS to the popular Plextor PX-W2410A and the Lite-On 24102B. We based our speeds on our previous reviews done by StevieB. You can find the Plextor review here and the Lite-On review here. Please note that the tests were done on different machines so the achieved writing times can be a little off.
For our tests we used two .avi (DivX) files. One file of 700MB and one of 650MB. We wrote them at 16x, 20x and 24x. Below you can see the results:
As you can see the Waitec MEGALUS performs very well and falls between the Plextor and the Lite-On. As you can see this is just a matter of seconds and not that important. We did test every CD-R created with the Waitec in different CD-ROMs to see if the drive was able to read the burned CD-R properly and if there were any errors on the disc. Every CD-R passed our tests and had no errors.
Overburning / 90/99 minute CD-R's:
We did some 'basic' overburning with Nero Burning Rom. The MEGALUS supports overburning and had no problems writing 707MB of data to a normal 700MB CD-R. The Waitec MEGALUS could recognize 90 minute CD-R's but had problems with 99 minute CD-R's. The overburn test in Nero CD Speed showed the Waitec could overburn up to about 93 minutes.
Produced noise:
During writing the Waitec MEGALUS was very quiet. The Waitec produces more noise when reading discs but not too much.
Now for the reading tests...
Introduction
Good review though, thanks
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