detail information

During our data read tests we saw that the Yamaha CRW3200E can reach 40x without much problems. Now let's see if the same goes for audio. Besides our audio read tests we'll of course also do some more advanced tests using Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and Nero CD Speed.

Features:

First we checked the features the Yamaha CRW3200E supports using EAC:

The supported 'Caching' feature isn't really a 'good' thing and the same goes for the unsupported 'C2 Error Info' feature. 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:

For the Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) tests we started Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and simply extracted the files in uncompressed WAV format to our harddisk. The disc 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 Yamaha reached in both modes:

Yamaha CRW3200E DAE speed - Burst Mode

Yamaha CRW3200E DAE speed - Secure Mode

The Yamaha CRW3200E has no problems reaching a DAE speed 0f 40x in burst mode. When we compare the achieved results with some of the drives we've previously reviewed we see that the Yamaha performs very well when using the bust mode but falls a little behind when using the secure mode. Please note that the TEAC CD-W540E is actually the only 48x capable reader:

So overall a very good result when you consider that the TEAC CD-W540E is a 48x drive and the Yamaha can thus compete with the fastest 40x drives.

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. Here are the results:

The average DAE speed of the Yamaha CRW3200E are again pretty good, just falling behind the Lite-On and the Plextor recorders (which are the absolute kings when it comes to DAE). We again have a problem with reading the CD-Text from the disc, just as we had when we did our TEAC CD-W540E review:

Of course we tested if the Yamaha indeed couldn't read CD-text. Therefore we created an audio disc with Nero Burning Rom containing CD-text. We played back the disc with the Yamaha and a CD-Text capable player:

As you can see the Yamaha CRW3200E now did read (and write) CD-text without problems. We also tried to play the disc in a Sony (CDX-L400X) car stereo to see if it would display the CD-Text. The disc worked without problems.

We wonder why the 'Nero CD speed Advanced DAE Quality Test' again reported that the Yamaha couldn't read CD-Text... An additional note here: according to Erik Deppe, creator of Nero CD Speed, a new CD Speed version will be released within a few weeks being the first non-beta version. So keep your eyes on www.cdspeed2000.com!

In the next step we'll see how well the Yamaha CRW3200E can read a (heavily) scratched disc.