detail information

Positive Points:

• Nice and complete software package with good manuals
• Two year warranty
• Supports 44X Full-CAV writing
• Supports 24X P-CAV re-writing
• Supports 44X Full-CAV reading
• 8MB buffer plus SafeBurn
• Excellent and innovative features:
  • Advanced Audio Master Quality Recording
  • CD-RW Audio Track Editing Mode
  • DiscT@2
• Includes Ahead's Nero Burning Rom and InCD
• Good DAE speeds (43X)
• Good DAE quality
• Excellent read speeds with copy-protected discs
• Supports Mount Rainier format
• Supports DAO-RAW writing
• Supports overburning (up to 98 minutes)
• Supports writing of 8cm discs
• Supports reading and writing of CD-Text
• Supports reading and writing of full SubChannel Data
• Supports CloneCD's 'Amplify Weak Sectors' option
• Could back-up SafeDisc 2 (before version v2.51.021)
• Could partially back-up SafeDisc v2.51.021
• Could read Key2Audio (audio protection) just fine

Negative Points:

• 'Correct EFM Encoding of Regular Bit Patterns' not fully supported
• Couldn't reach 44X when reading and writing various media
• Poor performance when reading scratched/low quality discs

When we started our Yamaha CRW-F1 review we already mentioned that this drive must be one of the most hyped recorders of this year. During the CeBit conference this year Yamaha first showed off this drive and its abilities. The drive offers some very unique features such as DiscT@2 with which you can burn images and/or text to the unused part of your CD-R disc. With this feature it's now possible to give your discs a personal touch and although this technology has its limitations, it really adds something new to their CD-RW drives.

Unfortunately the drive did have some negative points. The drive has been released as a 44X recorder and reader but the drive failed to reach these speeds in all of our tests. This is probably because Yamaha uses the 80 minute mark as an indication for the read and write speed but our test software (and most other manufacturers) uses the 74 minute mark. The CRW-F1 would sometimes be only a few seconds faster than a 40X recorder and perhaps it would have been wiser to bring out the CRW-F1 drive as a 40/24/40 drive instead of a 44/24/44 drive.

Another disadvantage is the lack of supported write speeds. When writing data the Yamaha can be set to 1/4/8/16X and then a big gap to 44X. We didn't write this down in our negative points lists because, as you will have seen during our review, the quality of the created discs was fine. The Yamaha CRW-F1's 'Optimum Writespeed Control' does a good job determining the best write speed for you media and it's thus not a problem to set the write speed to 44X and letting the drive figure out the best write speed.

As far as the negative points go these were the only disadvantages we could find. The Yamaha CRW-F1 drive is the first drive to support ultra-speed re-writing of 24X and this is a major step forward compared to the previous speeds of 10X or 12X. This drive showed some excellent write times when we did our packet writing tests and it also has been improved compared to the previous model, the CRW3200E, when it comes to handling the ' Mount Rainier ' format.

When dealing with copy-protections the Yamaha again showed some excellent read times and it was often the fastest reader for certain types of copy-protections. The drive had no problems reading the SubChannel Data at full speed, something most other drives can't do. It was too bad the drive did not support 'Correct EFM Encoding of Regular Bit Patterns' completely which is needed for the SafeDisc v2.51.021 protection but luckily when we enabled CloneCD's 'Amplify Weak Sectors' this was also fixed. The 'normal' SafeDisc 2 protection was no problem for the drive. Another thing that has been improved compared to the Yamaha CRW3200E.

When reading the audio copy-protections we also got a good result. Key2Audio could be read without any problems with both CloneCD and Exact Audio Copy. Last but not least the Yamaha CRW-F1 is also a pretty good overburner and can write and read 98 minute discs without any problems.

The price of the Yamaha CRW-F1 is listed as $ 154,- (EUR 154,-) on PriceWatch.com which is a steep price but in our opinion when you're looking for a good drive with some excellent features and possibilities this price isn't too high.

Introduction